Hebrews 2:1-4 Episode 2 - The Danger of Drifting

The author warns his readers against the danger of drifting away from Christ, showing that if breaking the Old Covenant was justly punished, how much more would we face punishment if we walk away from the New Covenant. This New Covenant, the “great salvation” was proclaimed by Christ and his witnesses, while miracles were done to attest to its truth.

- PODCAST TRANSCRIPT -

Joel

Hi, welcome to the Two Journeys Podcast. This is episode two in the book of Hebrews titled, “The Danger of Drifting,” where we discuss Hebrews 2:1-4. I'm your host Joel Hartford, and I'm here with Pastor Andy Davis. I will start by reading verses 1-4 of Hebrews 2, "Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 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, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." So Andy, this is the first of a series of warnings in the book of Hebrews. What does the author exhort us to do in verse one?

Andy

Well, the danger here is of apostasy. That's ultimately what the author to Hebrews is concerned about, and we've got in one translation, three aways: you've got drift away, don't drift away in chapter two, don't turn away in chapter three, and don't fall away in chapter six. And so that speaks of a kind of process where somebody goes from being a fervent professor of faith in Christ to denying Christ entirely. And so this is the first of the warnings, and so we have to heed it. And so what the author to Hebrews is urging all of us to do is to look after our heart after Christ, that we would be passionate after Christ, that we would love him and walk with him day after day and not allow sin or unbelief, or the world or Satan's attacks to cause us to drift away from Christ. And so that's my concern here. It's a concern all of us should have. I really think any Christian who thinks that they are in no danger of drifting away from Christ probably have already begun to drift away. They're not aware of the danger of this. And so all of us need to be vigilant after our own souls so that we do not drift away from Christ. That's what he's talking about in this section.

Joel

Now, he says we must pay much closer attention. What does it mean to pay much closer attention to what we have heard?

Andy

Well, he begins by referring to what he's already said. He uses the word “therefore” because of what he's already laid out in chapter one about the greatness of Christ, how he is the Son of God. He's the radiance of God's glory. He is the exact representation of his nature. He created all things. It was the Word of creation, power by which the Father created all things. He sustains all things. By his powerful word he provided atoning blood because of the greatness of Christ, because of the greatness of his station in that he is the Son, excuse me, the Son of God, a title never given to angels. He's greater therefore than the angels. Because of the greatness of Christ, we must pay more careful attention to what we have heard. And what we have heard is the gospel, the word of God. Apart from the Word, we don't know anything about Jesus.

You can't look at a beautiful sunset or look at creation, nature, a horse running in a field or beautiful wild flowers and think of Jesus if you're a pagan. You're never going to think about Jesus. You may think about a great powerful creator, but you would never think of the Son of God. That comes exclusively by the ministry of the Word. And so the word of God, the gospel is what we must pay more careful attention to. We need to pay more careful attention to the gospel we have heard.

Now the danger of drifting away is so great. It is vital for us to understand what the author is talking about here. This is much in my heart today as a pastor, 400 plus people sit in front of me every week as I preach. And I'm concerned about all of them that they might be in the process of drifting away from Christ.

Now, when I think about the idea of drifting, I think about a gradual process where imperceptibly, your heart grows a little bit harder towards the things of God. The image that's in my mind is a nautical image of a boat that wasn't securely moored to a pier or to a dock and just the undulating waves, the rising and falling little by little. If you went away and came back in one minute, you wouldn't see a difference. The rope may have moved a little on the dock. It's not tied up, it's just laying there on the dock. The ship's still there, the sailboat maybe. But if you went away and came back in four hours, it might be gone entirely, especially if it's connected to the ocean, the rising and falling of the tides. And so for me, I think it's a spiritual image of individuals who little by little because of sins that they're committing, some worldliness, movies they're watching, books they're reading, neglecting quiet times, shortening their quiet times. They're not praying. They're not reading the Word. Little by little, they don't even know it, but they're losing their first love. They've forsaken their first love like it says in Revelation 2. My concern here is that people would be alarmed that I could ring a bell of alarm and say, "What's happening with your soul? Are you more fervent after Christ now than you were a year ago? If not, then you're in the process of drifting away." And the remedy the author gives us here is pay more careful attention to what you have heard. Because of the greatness of Christ, because the world will someday end. That's where he was at, at the end of chapter one, he's going to roll up the universe like a garment and throw it away. Because of that therefore, because of the greatness of Christ and the work that's going on, pay careful attention to the state of your soul.

"When I think about the idea of drifting, I think about a gradual process where imperceptibly, your heart grows a little bit harder towards the things of God."

Joel

So what are some tangible habits that we could put into practice that would be the means of paying very close attention to the gospel message delivered? Who wants for all to the saints?

Andy

Joel, that's a great question. And I think we've got to start with Romans 10:17 which says, "Faith comes by hearing."(Paraphrase of Romans 10:17) Later in this chapter two, he's going to say these words, "We see him, we see Christ who is made a little lower than the angels."(Paraphrase of Hebrews 2:7) We don't see him not with our physical eyes. Well, what is the eyesight of the soul but faith? The ability to see the greatness of Christ and to see the greatness of your own soul and to see where we're heading, eternity, heaven and hell. To see these invisible spiritual realities, you must have faith. Faith is the eyesight of the soul. So for me, I want to say faith comes by hearing, and faith is maintained by hearing the word of Christ. The practical outworking of this is: be in the Word, every day at least. You're going to have your daily quiet time. You're going to be feeding on the word. In the morning, I would recommend. You get up, you get the sleep out of your eyes, you get awake, whatever you need to do to do that. And you pray a simple prayer, not a long prayer, but just say, "Lord, by your Holy Spirit, open the Word to me. Teach me wonderful things in your law." And then begin reading the scriptures. Read with understanding and read with prayer. Mix it in with prayer and pray and read for the health of your soul. Not so much the salvation of a lost loved one or the things going on in your church or in the world. Go after your own soul. Say, "Lord, I pray. Remind me that you are my savior. You're the lover of my soul. Remind me of the great danger that my soul is in through the world of flesh and the devil. Help me to see these things." And so go after that. And I would say at least every day, but I think multiple times a day, we have the opportunity now with some of the technology, smartphones to be streaming sermons. The content that you and I are doing here, Joel, with Two Journeys or just the text of scripture, you can listen to chapters of the Bible. So just be feeding on God's word. And then once a week, assemble with the people of God to sit under the preaching of the Word. Sit under the faithful, spirit-filled ministry of the word of God. And if your church isn't doing that, if your pastor isn't doing that, then find a church that will. It's the most important thing a pastor can do, is feed the flock by the word of God.

Joel

That's really crucial. And you'd see that even in Hebrews when he rebukes them in chapter 10, forsaking the fellowship. This is part of paying careful attention. That's good. Now he says, "For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?"(Hebrews 2:2-3) So what is the connection here, the word sense or some translation used the word for, to this message declared by angels, what kind of argument is he making?

Andy

Well, I think we just need to keep going back again and again to what the book of Hebrews is for, who it was written to and what's going on, what are the themes in it. And so I believe that the author to Hebrews is writing to Jewish professors of faith in Christ who were under immense pressure to forsake Christ Jesus as the Messiah and turn back to old covenant Judaism. And so he's warning them not to do that. This is the first of those warning passages. He's warning these Jewish professors of faith to not turn away from the new covenant that Christ has brought. And so he establishes the superiority of Jesus to angels. And what he's going to say is a superior mediator, Jesus, brings a superior covenant resulting in a superior life. That's the overview of the whole book. And so the superior mediator is Jesus. The angels mediated, according to the author to Hebrews and Stephen and some other writers: the Apostle Paul and book of Galatians, the angels mediated the old covenant. And so that's the message spoken by angels, the law of Moses, the 10 Commandments, the Levitical priesthood, all of that old covenant. And it's a how much more argument if the old covenant had to be dealt with very seriously and every violation received its just punishment, frequently by death. There was a lot of capital punishment in the Old Testament that if you did not obey the Law of Moses and went after other gods, you would be put to death physically. But Jesus said, "Do not fear those who kill the body and after that can do nothing to you. I'll tell you who to fear, fear the one who after the death of the body can destroy both soul and body in hell."(Paraphrase of Matthew 10:28) That's a how much more argument. If the old covenant Jews were punished most severely by ignoring the Law of Moses and so that they would be executed by stoning, how much more are we in danger if we turn our back on a new covenant that was mediated to us by the Son of God?

And the threat is not physical death but eternal death in hell. He's really using a serious warning here. The message mediated by angels came with attendant punishments if you didn't pay attention. How much more should we pay careful attention to the gospel of God's grace, mediated to us by the Son of God? That's the argument he's using here.

Joel

That makes sense that the new covenant, I mean it's expanded. The salvation is so much greater, right? We're going to learn that in Hebrews 8, but also the warnings are so much greater.

Andy

The soul is eternal; the body is not. All of us are going to lose these physical bodies. We must all be changed, and so we will not spend eternity in flesh and blood which cannot inherit the kingdom of God. He's making how much more argument, if the threat to the physical body was enough to get those Jews to obey the old covenant, how much more should the threat to the soul be to get you to be serious about the new covenant?

Joel

In Hebrews 2:3, when he says, "How shall we," he used the word escape. "How shall we escape if we neglect such great salvation?" I'm assuming he's talking about escape eternal punishment?

Andy

Judgment. You turn your back on Jesus, you have no other savior, and he's going to talk about this very seriously in chapter 10. It's one of the most terrifying passages in the entire Bible. People who trample the Son of God underfoot, there's nothing left for them, but a fearful expectation of judgment and raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. That's where we're heading in this book. He gives you a little bit of a foretaste of that here in chapter two. He's saying, "Look, if you let yourself drift away from Jesus, what are you drifting away to? You're drifting away to condemnation." And so he actually uses a very scary motivator here. We pastors, we hear all the time about hell fire and brimstone preachers. And so we're like, "We don't want to mention hell or judgment." The author to Hebrews is not laboring under any kind of restrictions like that at all. He is trying to scare these people. He's saying, "Look, do you realize what's happening? If you drift away from Jesus you're drifting toward hell". We're not going to escape. There's no way to escape the God who sent Jesus. There's no way to escape. If you forsake the gospel, he will find you. There's nowhere you can go. Where can you flee from his Spirit? Where can you hide from his presence? If you go up to the heavens, if you go down to the depths, there's nowhere to escape. We will not escape if we ignore such a great salvation.

Joel

He used the word neglect, and I think that goes hand in hand with pay much closer attention. He says we must pay much closer attention and that we don't want to neglect this salvation.

Andy

There's an exertion to the healthy Christian life. We have justification by faith alone apart from works. That's how our sins are forgiven. But we must strive after holiness. He's going to say that also in Hebrews 12:14. Without a holiness that you strive after you will not be saved, you will not see God. And so he's urging them to do their part, and their part is to not neglect it, to feed their souls on the word of God to fight for the health of their faith.

Joel

What did we learn about the message of salvation from chapter three as far as the progress of the gospel, first from Jesus, and then on?

Andy

In terms of the process of the salvation: first, Jesus came and announced it, and it was announced through Christ, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”(Matthew 4:17) “Repent and believe the good news.” He announced that when he began his public ministry, but then it expanded through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It expanded on the day of Pentecost. And the author of Hebrews is mentioning that here: it was testified, God testified to the gospel by signs, wonders and various miracles. It's an incredible progression that we have, first Christ and then the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

Joel

Now, I neglected this phrase, “Such a great salvation.”(Hebrews 2:3) Can you explain why he calls it great?

Andy

Well, I mean what he's talking about here he uses incredible expression, “So great a salvation.”(Hebrews 2:3) And I think there are a few books in the Bible that give us a sense of the greatness of the salvation as the book of Hebrews. Romans is probably greater, but Hebrews is glorious in its display of the greatness of our salvation. We have a great Savior. And I think there may be no book other than perhaps the Gospel of John that gives us such a clear picture of the deity of Christ and the greatness of Christ. We have a great savior who worked a great redemption for us at the cross, and it's a hundred percent effective for all of our sins. And we have the greatness of the Holy Spirit who was given to us to complete our salvation. And so we have this idea of the greatness of our salvation. We don't know how great it is. We all of us underestimate it. We're going to see on judgment day how great a salvation it is. We're going to see what a great savior Jesus is and how great was the danger we were in.

We're going to see finally in the end, how great were our sins. We underestimate them. Now, we forget them. We don't think much of them. We underestimate them. We are going to see on that day, how great were the enemies? How great was Satan and his demons, how much more powerful than us they were and how clever they were and how devious were their schemes. We're going to see the greatness of this. And we're going to see the greatness of the world and its allure on our souls. How did we survive it? We're going to wonder, we'll know why, because God in his great sovereignty protected us through this world. We underestimate all of these things. But he uses this phrase, "How shall we escape if we ignore [or neglect] so great a salvation?"(Hebrews 2:3) That turns it around and says, “This is a great salvation.”

Joel

Let's talk some more about the bearing witness by signs and wonders. It says, "God bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles."(Hebrews 2:4) So we see this, the pouring out of miracles at these different epics in redemptive history, specifically with Moses, Elisha and Elijah. I said it backwards, Elijah and Elisha, and then with Jesus and the apostles. Why were the miracles really important to the early spread of the gospel?

Andy

Well, the miracles were just supernatural displays of the power of God, centering around the messengers of God, centering around Moses, centering around Elijah and Elisha, but even more centering around Jesus. No one, no single individual in history has ever done as many and as great miracles as Jesus Christ. Even though Jesus said, “Greater things than these will you do,”(Paraphrase of John 14:12) he was speaking to the whole church. There's no individual, not the apostle Paul, not anybody, not Moses, not any of the Old Testament prophets, who did the number of miracles that Jesus did. It was a river of miracles, unbelievable river. Huge populations went out to Jesus and he healed them all. And so that was a display of the sovereign power of God around Jesus. And Jesus said, "Believe in the signs." All right. He said that in John 5. He said the same thing to his disciples the night before he was crucified, "Believe on the evidence of the miracles." Miracles were a suitable ground for us to believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

The signs, the works that the Father sent him to do, testified that he is the Son of God. And so those miracles made it impossible to do anything except believe that Jesus was the Son of God or call his works really the works of the devil, Beelzebub, which Jesus calls the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Now, I'm not going to get into that whole discussion of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but I think it is at least possible that Jesus was saying, when there is this kind of display of miraculous power and you ascribe it to Satan, that's as horrible an outcome as you possibly can have of the greatest revelation of God's power there ever will be. And so I think we have a similar thing now with this first generation of the church, maybe lesser miracles, but still there were miracles being done by the apostles. There were some healings done by Peter, some healings done by Paul. It wasn't a river of them like Jesus, but there were still signs, wonders, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. And what the author's doing is he's saying, "Do you understand you're being warned now? You saw a gospel preached by his apostles, by those who heard him. They were first generation and they went to your locality." Because they were Jews, probably it was Peter, but maybe some of the other... Most of the apostles went and ministered to the Jews. You heard the word of God preached by those who heard Jesus, by the apostles, and they worked signs and wonders in your midst. Do you understand the kind of danger you're in if that's not enough for you?

Joel

Now, I do have a question. I think many have questions about signs and wonders. We Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ upholds the universe by the word of his power, that God, not a leaf falls to the ground apart from him causing it. And we're not anti-supernatural in any way. We believe in miracles. We believe that you go and you pray for someone and sometimes God heals him. But it's just so clear that these radical miracles that accompanied the early church are no longer present. Why do you think that is?

Andy

Well, I think he really was targeting out the messengers, first and foremost above anyone Jesus. But then secondly, as the author says here, those who heard him, his apostles. And I think with the end of the apostolic era, there wasn't the need to mark out the messengers anymore. There are miracles that happen now. I believe that I've seen some miraculous healings in direct answer to prayer, but they don't travel with me, they don't travel with anyone. They don't go from place to place like they did with Paul or Peter. He's not marking out the messengers now by wonder working powers. So for me, first of all, I believe if you have a robust doctrine of the sovereignty of God over everyday life and the doctrine of providence, a miracle itself is pretty hard to define because any definition you give, it's like, "Well, God does that anyway. God sustains every living thing every moment." If you start getting into violating laws of nature, things like that, I think that gets closer to it because we just learn how the world works as we're infants. We see that when you let something go, it falls. When you slip and bump your head, it hurts. I mean, you just learn things about the physical world. You're learning science though you're not enrolled in a science class, and then suddenly you see something you'd never seen before and you're like, "That's a miracle. I mean, I've never seen anything like that before." And so people that define it somewhat like a violation of the laws of nature, it's getting close, but keep in mind God's not subject to those laws. It's just hard to define. All I'm saying is the basic premise of your question is we don't see these kinds of things anymore, not like you read about them in the Bible, and I think that's true. You hear accounts, but sometimes they seem spurious to me. There are false workers of miracles and we need to know. The Bible teaches us that, and at the end of the world, the antichrist will do false signs and wonders. We have an era of miracles that's yet to come that actually will lead in entirely the wrong direction.

We have to be on guard and be careful and realize that God can do anything. He can do miracles now. He never said he would stop doing miracles, but I'm cautious. And so what I want to say is one thing I don't see is I don't see a specific messenger marked out by wonder working miraculous power today, that I don't see, not that I believe. I mean, you see guys on TV, but you get the feeling of the whole thing's been set up like a magician or something like that. I don't see that as any clear proof.

Joel

Now it talks about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I think these are different than the sign gifts. He says, "The gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will."(Hebrews 2:4) And so let's talk about that just when the gospel comes and the Holy Spirit indwells believers, and then he equips them with spiritual gifts. What is this?

Andy

I think there's two answers I could give. One is that the immediate circumstances of these hearers where they had seen supernatural signs and wonders, and so it could be that the gifts of the Spirit were speaking in tongues, things like that. So that when the Holy Spirit came, as we see in the book of Acts, there's a clear display like with Cornelius or whatever, where everybody just starts speaking in languages that they hadn't studied or speaking in perhaps the tongue of angels, and we can get into the whole doctrine of tongues, et cetera. But the idea is there was a supernatural marker of the gospel. It's a big deal to turn away from it, that's still kind of carrying out that same earlier argument. But nowadays, we have the gifts of the Spirit that are around to build up the body to maturity, “He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to prepare God's people for works of service so the body of Christ may be built up.”(Ephesians 4:11-12) 1 Corinthians 12-14, those three chapters talks all about spiritual gifts, how they're to be used. And they are special abilities given by the Holy Spirit, by the Trinity actually, Father gives the spiritual gifts, the Son gives them, and the Holy Spirit gives them to individual Christians for the purpose of building up the body of Christ. At any rate, the author's purpose here is saying, “You saw these spiritual gifts at work in your midst. You knew that when you went to church, things were happening. The word of God was being taught, lives were being changed, people are being healed, it was an amazing time. How can you turn away from all that?” That's what he's saying here.

Joel

To ask a closing question, this section is a warning against drifting away in the Christian life. We believe in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, that in those who God has done a genuine work, he will bring it to completion. And so how does a Christian who believes... the simple way of saying that is the once saved, always saved, but really what we mean is that the Christian will persevere to the end by the power of the Holy Spirit. Why is it necessary then if we believe that to really heed a serious warning like this from scripture that is talking about a danger to your soul of drifting away? But we know Jesus says, "I don't lose any of my sheep," in John 10. It says not a single one. So what is the purpose of the warning then for the Christian?

Andy

It's a very good question, and I think there is no book in the Bible that answers that question so powerfully as the book of Hebrews. What I got out of my years of studying the book of Hebrews is that the warnings are necessary to finish the salvation of the elect. And the elect are the only people who really heed them. The elect heed the warnings. They take it seriously. They fight sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. They put on the spiritual armor; they put on each part with prayer knowing they're going to be assaulted spiritually today. And that if they don't put on the helmet of salvation, if they don't put on the breastplate of righteousness, if they don't take up the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit, if they don't fight, they're going to get slaughtered today. They're going to sin. They're going to violate their conscience. They're going to be a little bit further away from Jesus. They're going to have to come and confess that same sin again.

"The elect heed the warnings. They take it seriously. They fight sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. They put on the spiritual armor; they put on each part with prayer knowing they're going to be assaulted spiritually today."

And they've wounded their conscience and now they're limping with a wound just like Jacob limped the rest of his life. They have to actually then limp. They don't want to go through all that. They heed these warnings because it's a serious deal. And so I don't believe that anyone that's genuinely justified by faith in Christ will ever lose that justification, end up in hell. No way. But here's the thing, the warnings are needed. We're in danger. The world, the flesh, and the devil are dangerous, and they're far greater than we can handle, and God wants us to take that seriously. The book of Hebrews tells us the warnings are essential to finish our salvation as he's going to say later, "To lay aside every hindrance and run with endurance this race marked out before us."(Paraphrase of Hebrews 12:1)

Joel

That's really good. Well, that was episode two of the book of Hebrews. For the next episode, episode three, we'll talk about the Son of Man being crowned with glory and honor. Thank you for listening to Two Journeys and God bless you all.