Scripture:
Hebrews 2:1-3 “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip (drift away).
For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward,
How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation…”
INTRODUCTION: There is question about who is the author of the book of Hebrews. Some feel that it was Paul but others do not agree. At any rate, the book of Hebrews was written to believers rather than to unbelievers. Many Jewish believers having stepped out of Judaism into Christianity now want to reverse their course in order to avoid persecution. It was written to encourage these Christians to continue in the faith. One problem for them was they were faced with persecution. When the pinch was on them, they were having difficulty handling it. It was not that they hadn’t faced hardship before because they had. The writer of Hebrews addressed their problems and was giving them encouragement as well as five warnings throughout the book. These same things can encourage us today as well as warn us to stay on course or to get back on course if we are not living where we should be.
1. NEGLECT: The first warning to these people was concerning neglect. Neglect is usually not a DELIBERATE thing. People are sometimes even unaware that it is happening. You might think of many things that can be considered neglect. We could neglect friends until the friendship is ruined or neglecting family until the damage is irreversible. In order to have a good friendship or family relationship it must have an investment of time and be a two way street. We have all had friends that we called on the phone and they never call us back. It is not a two way street and finally we give up and the friendship dies out.
You could neglect repairs on your home until so much damage is done that it would take thousands of dollars to repair the damage.
Another area of neglect is in your health. You have heard people say, “If I would have known that I would live so long, I would have taken better care of my health.” People often do not take care of their health when they are younger and later on they have all kinds of problems and can never recover. We never hear people say, “I want to ruin my health and end up with lung cancer or a stroke.” People take the attitude, “It won’t happen to me,” and continue to drift along.
STORY: There was a man on TV the other night who weighed over 700 lbs. He was only 26 years old. He said he didn’t have any discipline and the pounds piled on. He lived alone in his grandfather’s garage. To go from room to room he couldn’t walk through the door unless he went through it sideways. He was developing several health problems and decided that he would go on a weight loss program which he did. He was struggling with the exercise program the personal trainer had set up for him. Would he give up and quit? I don’t know, but he managed to lose a few pounds. I don’t know if he finished.
Sometimes neglect is not that obvious. Two men were fishing above a low dam on a river near their hometown. As they were concentrating on catching fish, they were unaware that they had drifted until they were not far from the water flowing over the dam. When they realized their situation, the current near the dam had become too powerful for them to keep their boat from going over. Below the dam the water was dashing with strong force over boulders and through crevices in the rocks. Caught by the swirling waters under the rocks they never came to the surface. After days of relentless searching, the divers finally found one body, and then two or three days later, the other. The danger of drifting is not limited to the physical realm. Our scripture today gives the first of five warnings. Our spiritual life can drift toward destruction as well. Drifting requires no effort of us. It is a natural thing to move toward what is convenient and comfortable. Paying attention is hard work and it involves focusing. It involves focusing on not only hearing but obeying. It is possible to drift along for years without thinking about the seriousness of our neglect. Drifting or slipping back into darkness is usually unperceived by the person but clearly seen by others.
Neglecting church week after week until you don’t want to go is another subtle way to drift away from God. All the time you could say, “I will get started as soon as the garden is planted, or when the kids are older or when things slow down on the job.” The WHEN never comes.
Sometimes we neglect reading the Bible so long that we can’t get our faith developed to believe for things when a crises comes into our life.
The writer of Hebrews says in verse 2:1, “It is crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift away.”
It is crucial because the result of drifting is that we have no power over sin in order that we may life an abundant, victorious life and no joy in being a Christian.
2. UNBELIEF: The second warning is found in chapter 3:7-4:13. It is a danger of unbelief that is tied to disobedience. You might say, “Oh, I don’t believe what God says about this,” and then follow it up by deliberately not doing what he tells us to do. This scripture tells us, “today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion during the time of testing in the desert…” A hard heart is not conducive to belief or obedience. It is something that does not please God and only puts us on a downward spiral where we find it difficult to believe the Bible anymore or to obey it.
Listen to people talk today and you will pick up many things about their belief system. What does the Bible say about heaven and hell or about healing or about God’s provision for us. You may be surprised at what people say they don’t believe. We can stubbornly set ourselves against God so that we are no longer able to turn to him. God can have many promises for us listed clearly in the scriptures and we say, “No thanks, I don’t believe that.” There is an old saying, “Doubt and do without.” Scripture tells us that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). We do without many things because we let unbelief creep into our life. We water down what it is possible for God to do for us by many things we say. When we say, “God can do it but I don’t think he will do it for me,” we do without. That is a form of unbelief. Or we say, “Oh, I couldn’t ask God for that. I am so unworthy,” Scriptures tell us to “Come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).
3. Not Maturing: The believers were not brand new believers but they were slipping back to where they started. Hebrews 5:12, says “For when for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again which are the first principles of the oracles of God…” These Christians kept going back to Square 1 instead of moving on to learn new things. An example of that is when a writer takes out a sheet of paper and starts out writing a paragraph and then crumples the paper up and throws it into the trash never getting beyond the first sentence or paragraph. Sometimes after awhile, the trash can is running over. That’s the way these Christians were because they never got beyond the first basic truths. We need to grow in knowledge and become mature Christians so that we can be able to distinguish good from bad. The writer tells them you ought to be teachers by now but you have to have someone teach you the basics. You have to continually go back to Square 1. How many times do we have to go back to Square 1 and relearn the basics.
A little girl was always falling out of bed at night. This continued for quite sometime. Her mother said, “You are going to sleep too close to the edge.”
We need to move away from the edge when it comes to our Christian faith. Move beyond the edge to learn more of the promises of God, learn more of what God is trying to teach us.
4. Drawing Back: Hebrews 10:38 says, “…if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” Verse 39 says, “but we are not of them who draw back unto perdition (destruction). The Jewish Christians were tempted to give up the struggle and go back. If we give up and turn our backs on all we have learned we disregard Christ’s sacrifice. These Christians were warned, “Don’t throw it all away now that you have come this far.” Quitting is never an option.
You might look around and notice that some people who were faithful to church are no longer there anymore. Where did they go? Have they drawn back from the things they had known all these years? I think the answer to that is, “yes,” and this is sad.
We can ask ourselves, “Am I drawing back from the things I have learned over the years?”
5. Refusing God: The last warning the writer gives the Jewish Christians is found in Hebrews 12:25. “See that you refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.”
If you compare the first warning with this one you will see that this one is a more intense warning than the first one, neglect. This one is a more deliberate refusal. It is hearing but not taking heed. Don’t turn a deaf ear to what you have heard. He used this many times in scripture by saying, He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Let him HEAR and DO what they hear. Do we hear and then neglect, do we hear and not believe it, do we fail to learn and grow? If so, we will draw back and continue on a downward spiral and last we will end up deliberately refusing God.
CONCLUSION: In conclusion we must evaluate where we stand with the Lord. Maybe we have neglected the things we have heard and known about for a long time but we have the encouragement to reverse the subtle downward spiral and continue on our journey. James 4:8 tells us what we can do to get back on track. “Draw nigh (near)to God and he will draw nigh (near)to you…”
If we have drawn back from God, we can reverse that today by turning our hearts toward him and drawing near to him.
Hebrews 12:1 concludes by telling us, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…
The Message Bible puts it this way, 1-3Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!
