Hebrew 2:1-4

Well, we're gonna spend a little bit of time studying uh the book of Hebrews.

That's where we're at as a church.

That's the um series that we're in the middle of.

But before we do that, we're gonna receive um our tithes and offerings.

Just a quick update.

Here's where we're at financially as a church for the month of November.

Um the when it comes to the um finances and the church, as many of you know, we run a relief center on um throughout the week.

And we have this strange thing that's happened where we've got all this food that comes at us from primarily from Amazon, but also from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.

It's about a million dollars worth of food every month.

And that food is offered to us.

It's like, hey, come and get it.

It's free.

All we've got to do is pay for a truck.

But we are not really big enough financially to pay for that truck, and um, and we've been kind of limping along trying as a a little church to carry the cost of that.

And we've tried different things, we've done some cost sharing where um we have other churches that also distribute the food and and they kick in some money to cover the cost of transportation, but it costs us about between$3,500 to$4,500 as much as$5,000 a month to pay for a 26-foot box truck.

And um so this last um week on Tuesday morning, I woke up to an overdraft email, overdraft transfer email from Wells Fargo saying that um they had transferred like$10,000 from our savings into our checking.

And um what ended up happening was uh Penske truck that we rent from had gone into our account and had taken over ten thousand dollars out of our checking account for the truck, and there's some confusion over what's owed, and so we're trying to um I've gotten uh some of it back, or I've gotten it back temporarily, is where we're at.

Um, but they have their version of like why they think we owe that much, and I'm saying no, I don't think we owe that much.

But we've canceled all of business with them, and um, and then in and what it caused me to realize is that we need a better solution.

And so um starting yesterday, we launched a capital campaign to try to raise$80,000 to buy a truck.

And instead of doing a lease, we've we figured let's try to buy a truck, and that's really the the other outside churches that support us, some of the bigger financial contributors to the church, they don't really want to give on a monthly basis four thousand dollars for a truck lease.

They'd rather just see us in one foul swoop just knock this out, buy a truck, have a maintenance budget on it, and just um keep going.

So um it's great, a great ratio, you know, four thousand dollars um a month to be able to get a million dollars dollars worth of food is awesome, but it just was too hard of a sell for the people that support us.

So you'll see online that uh there's a bunch of, you know, there's videos of me talking about this, there's gonna be emails that go out.

Um what I'm asking for you all, one of the great things about our church is that we all give, right?

I I I don't know the specific amounts of what we all give, but I our accountant lets me know, hey, here's the people that give to the church.

And for the most part, everybody a part of our church is giving something, which is awesome.

I love being a part of a church like that where everybody's pitching in.

Um, but we're we're not big enough to do it.

But what I do need help is I need you to pray for this.

We really for every week that goes by, right now we're renting a smaller truck from Enterprise, and it's still a good like$900 a week, which we don't have.

We have about we could probably budget about$250, maybe$300 a week towards it, but we just don't have it in the budget to do this.

And so the faster we can raise this money, the faster we can buy a truck and really cut a massive piece of our budget and cut it out of there.

Um and so if you could pray for that over this next seven to fourteen days, something's got to come together for us to be able to continue to pick up uh that food.

And then if you do happen to have uh friends that you want to share the campaign with, it's like the website uh looks like this.

It's got like a little video from me explaining it, and people can give directly through the website.

So the address is baltimorechurch.com slash truck, and uh it'll be fun.

We'll see where we're at next next week.

This is uh the direction that some of the the people that have bigger um chunks of money or access to bigger chunks of money, uh this is the direction they've asked us to go.

So we'll see see what the Lord provides.

I don't know.

I know the um the free fruit is crazy and uh it seems like a god thing, and uh yes, ma'am.

Well that's uh right please, please pray for that.

That'd be great.

And and there there's he totally can do it.

He gave us the free food, right?

Amen.

Right.

So he can give us a truck.

Yeah, yeah.

No, there's um I've already heard two, there's a couple different people that have been working on this for me.

Jack Lee has been working on it, and then a couple of other people, and there was already by Friday night, there was this interesting connection with this um leasing company that they already they did, they gave a truck to another food bank in Annapolis, I think, or something like that.

And then uh for six months, I think they gave it to him for free for six months, and then the monthly payments are like$900 a month or something like super cheap, which would be great.

Um, we could totally do that.

So, yeah, if you'd pray for it, I will try to share.

You'll see see a lot of information about that um online.

All right, let me just pray for it though, right now.

Lord, we thank you for three years of um truckload after truckload after truckload from uh these different companies.

And uh we're grateful, God, that you have like we didn't even go chase that down.

We didn't knock down a wall, we didn't have to call somebody over and over again.

It's just like you dropped this opportunity in our lap.

And um we want to be good stewards with the church's money, and we don't know um how to do exactly how to make ends meet right now, and um, so we just commit that need to you.

Would you lay it on people's hearts to like you like Yvonne said, maybe somebody would give us a truck or provide us with the money to buy a truck, one way or another, Lord?

We just ask that you would provide, and uh, we're grateful in advance for what you do.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so we are in Hebrews, and this uh this morning the um sermon is titled Pay Attention.

This is just that's actually in the text from Hebrews chapter 2, 1 through 4.

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

In a second, we're gonna read it together.

If um if you um think back to your own experience in first grade, second grade.

Anybody ever been through first or second grade?

Yeah, okay, good.

Yeah, good, yeah, thank you.

Yeah, so I'm a first grade dropout.

I I didn't even make it through all of first grade because I had such a difficult time paying attention.

Actually, halfway through first grade, my family moved from Hawaii to New Jersey, but I was struggling so much in the classroom that the decision was made, hey, let's um let's take Josh and we're gonna stick him in a homeschool setting, which would allow me to go at my own pace.

And I was actually um I had such a difficult time paying attention that my parents said, Hey, we're gonna stick you with a specialist, we're gonna have them diagnose you.

And it was a series of questions about, you know, can you remember this series of numbers?

And by the time I went through this process with the specialist, I was clinically diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.

And from there, the treatment was like this um basically this computer treatment, kind of like how we play um games or on iPads now with brain games that help kids intellect.

Well, that's what I was doing back in the late 80s and early 90s on a Commodore 64.

It would flash up like numbers on a screen, and then I was supposed to try to remember those numbers all in an effort to help me um pay attention for a longer uh span of time.

My brain worked good, but it just would not track with a teacher because there was a squirrel out the window, and there was a bird over here, and there was a kid tapping his pencil on the desk.

And why did they put that vent up there against the wall?

You know, as I couldn't track and pay attention long enough to be able to get the math and the science and the history stuff that was being taught in the classroom.

Our capacity to pay attention is something that uh it's easy to take for granted, but it's a uh theme that's near and dear to my own heart because of my own struggle to pay attention.

And so what happened over the years was I had to overcompensate and learn to really focus intensely to set up my environment so that I could zero in.

Anybody that's been around me for any length of time knows that I'm pretty much useless if I'm talking to somebody on the phone.

There's no way for me to like talk to somebody on the phone and also do something else because I have to pay attention, I have to focus so hard to just track with the person and and not lose what is um what they're trying to communicate.

But it's possible, according to the writer of Hebrews, to know to not pay attention spiritually, to have a uh a spiritual attention deficit.

And the writer of Hebrews, we're coming to his first warning where he says, you need to pay attention.

So let's look at the text here.

We'll go through these first four verses and then pull out some application.

It says this for this reason we must pay attention all the more to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away.

For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding in every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

This salvation had its beginning when it was spoken of by the Lord, and it was confirmed to us by those who heard him.

At the same time, God also testified by signs and wonders, various miracles and distributions of gifts from the Holy Spirit according to his will.

Lord, we do ask that you'd pray that you would speak to us through this uh text.

Lord, you know in our own lives how where we're at spiritually, whether we're drifting away or we're focused in how we ought to be, but we give you our lives and are willing to receive correction where we need to hear it.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Really, the big idea from these first four verses is this you need to pay attention so that you won't drift away.

But this is not that just like you need to pay attention to the math facts in first grade.

It's not, hey, you need to pay attention so that you know um what's going on with your spelling or with your English or with science.

No, this is spiritually, you need to pay attention.

You need to pay attention so that you don't drift away.

And the idea, really simply, is that your salvation, the gospel message that you believed was not just a one-time event where you're saved and now you can check out emotionally and intellectually, but no, you need to pay attention.

You need to pay attention.

Now we we can understand, I mean, we're all at varying points of our capacity to pay attention in other arenas, right?

Our probably our academic performance is proportional to our ability to pay attention.

But there is this scenario, this possibility that you can just kind of consider it for a second in your own life.

Are you paying attention spiritually?

Does God have your attention?

Does he have your engagement with your mind, with your heart, with your soul, who you are, does he have your attention?

Now to get at this point, to receive the warning that the writer makes, we've got to get a little bit of history and context here.

So if you're new to reading the Bible, there's two parts.

There's the Old Testament, and then there is the New Testament.

And the first part, that first part of your Bible is called the Old Testament, and it tells the story about how God made the universe.

He put people in the world to rule it with him, and they failed to follow his instructions.

That's what we call the, what is it?

The fall.

Thank you very much.

That's right.

And then God began a long rescue plan starting in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

God promised that there would be the seed of the woman would overcome the lies of Satan, the destructive work that Satan had seeded the world with, the seed of the woman would overcome this, and there would be someone who would come on the scene and crush the serpent's head, which really was going to be Jesus.

Now they didn't know it then, but this promise was given in Genesis 3.

And so this long story unfolds through the whole Old Testament about God beginning to rescue all of humanity from the fall, from the spiritual death.

Do you know when when God said to Adam, in the day you eat this, you will surely die?

Did he stop breathing?

No, he didn't.

But some things died, right?

What are some of the things that died in the day that he ate that fruit?

He spiritually died, yeah.

Yeah, what else?

Yeah, they're friendships with one another, right?

Adam and Eve, they're blaming each other, right?

They're blaming each other.

Fellowship with God.

Fellowship spiritually died, yeah.

Yeah, this death came over, and they need God.

That's not how God designed the world, right?

God loves us.

He has a plan for us.

He wants to rescue us.

And so we began this rescue plan.

So Genesis tells a story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, and then we get to Exodus, which is the story of exiting out of Egypt.

Going to the promised land, right?

Exiting out of Egypt and going to the promised land.

And so, in when Israel is in the wilderness, Moses is leading them through the wilderness, and they receive what is called the law, right?

The covenant law of God.

But here's what you need to note in order to understand our text that we're looking at.

There is an obscure passage out of Deuteronomy 33, verse 2, that says that the law was given or mediated or brought to the children of Israel through angels.

Deuteronomy 33:2

Look at this verse here.

It doesn't even say angels, it says holy ones, but this is where it's talking about the angels.

He said, The Lord came from Sinai and appeared to them from Seir.

He's shone on the Mount Peron, from Mount Peran, and came with 10,000 holy ones with lightning from his right hand for them.

Here's the thing you got to understand.

If you are a Hebrew, if you're a children of, if you are the children of Israel, they had their tradition based off this text and their tradition that God gave the law through angels.

You see this, it comes up in the New Testament when a guy named Stephen explains the same thing.

He tells the story of the children of Israel, and he said, You received the law under the direction of angels and have yet have not yet kept it.

And so the children of Israel, when they thought about angels, they would associate angels with the giving of the law.

Now, when you think of angels, you probably think of like some Cupid or something with a little bow, right?

Or I mean you do not associate, like unless you're Jewish and have this tradition, you're associating angels with, like, oh, my guardian angel that takes care of me when I'm driving around Baltimore City, or, you know, keeps me from getting shot when I'm driving around Baltimore City.

Or I don't know what you associate with your angels or the angels that are protecting you.

But if you are Jewish and you're following this tradition, you would think of angels as the deliverer, those that delivered this law to Moses.

That's important because there's an argument that the writer of Hebrews is making from a lesser to a greater position.

A lesser to a greater position.

Here is the argument.

The angels delivered the law to Moses.

Under that law, transgression and disobedience received a punishment.

So think back to the story of the children of Israel.

Did they obey the law that God gave?

No, he didn't, right?

And so we all, so now we go forward 2,000 years, we all, we are all that much more accountable and expected to respond to the message of salvation.

So you have an the Jews, children of Israel, received the law.

We've also received a message from God, and so our message that we received, we're all that much more accountable.

Why are we all that much more accountable?

Well, that's the next part of the argument.

It's because the message of salvation came from Jesus.

And it was attested to by others, it was witnessed by others, and God testified to it by signs, wonders, miracles, and gifts from the Holy Spirit.

So there's this, these four verses are beautifully.

There's this there's mirroring.

In the Greek, there's alliteration, there's poetry.

The way that these four verses are written are just beautiful.

Um the way that the argument is laid out is beautiful.

The big idea is this pay attention.

You need to pay attention lest you drift away.

And this is the guts of the argument.

This is why you need to be paying attention.

The writer, or let me give you this uh quote first from Barclay.

He says this he's he's using some Greek words here, um, transliterated into English.

Prosekin is the word pay attention, prosekin.

It can mean to moor a ship.

So in our translation, it's translated pay attention, but it can be a um uh maritime term about mooring a ship to a dock.

And perine is the term for drifting away or drifting in the water, and it can be used of a ship which has been carelessly allowed to slip past a harbor or haven't because the captain forgot to allow for the wind or the current or the tide.

So this first verse could very vividly be translated, therefore, we must more eagerly anchor our lives to the things that we have been taught in case the ship of life should drift past the harbor and be wrecked.

It is a vivid picture of a ship drifting to destruction because the pilot is asleep, or in other words, not paying attention.

So the warning, the warning about drifting away rests on this type of argument: a focus on who delivered the message, a focus on what happened to those who disobeyed, and a focus on what made the message of Jesus all that much more special.

So here it is with Jesus in it.

In other words, why should you pay attention so that you will not drift away?

It's because Jesus delivered the message and not just angels, right?

If you, if, in other words, if you look back at the children of Israel and they had this fondness and appreciation for angels because they helped deliver the law through Moses, shouldn't we have so much more of an attentiveness because Jesus delivered the message?

And the second point is the children of Israel got less of a message, but were still punished for disobedience, right?

God held them accountable for what they heard in the law.

It was delivered only by angels.

It was not as good as the New Covenant.

It was not a saving message.

It was just a standard of measurement of blessings and cursings.

And yet still the children of Israel were held accountable.

And the third is this idea that the message of Jesus is all that much more special because one, it was public in that it was confirmed by those who heard him.

And second, God had it accompanied by signs, wonders, and miracles and gifts.

What's that talking about?

In other words, when Jesus did his ministry on earth, Jesus did signs and wonders and miracles, evidencing, making it clear that he was the messenger of God.

It's common, this kind of logic is common throughout the Bible, right?

You have one standard.

Here it's the children of Israel.

If God held Israel, the children of Israel, accountable, will he not much more hold us accountable?

It's a graduated form of logic.

This is the um basis for this idea to pay attention.

Pay attention.

Wake up.

So that you don't drift spiritually.

It doesn't necessarily come naturally.

In fact, I think being somebody who is spiritually focused is a discipline.

Because our human experience is distracting, is it not?

Do you remember Jesus when he taught about um uh in it's in Matthew 6 and 7, he taught about what you focus on and what you put your eyesight on.

And he says, if your eye is singular, your body will be full of light.

But if your eye be evil, your body will be full of darkness.

The evil eye is an eye that is has it's focusing on a bunch of things.

It's easily distracted, is the idea there that Jesus is talking about.

And he's calling his followers to be those who have this singular focus.

All right, so let me go back to just kind of a personal story.

When I was 14 years old, I came alive spiritually, and I just had this hunger for God.

And I wanted to live my whole life for God, but I had a problem.

I I had the rest of my life.

I had school, I had friendships, and so I went to an older Christian and I said, How does this work?

How do you how are you supposed to like be a Christian and like God wants all your affection and all your heart?

And it's like, you know, how much of the and I used literally use this example.

I said, if it's a pie chart, like is it like 10%?

Is it 15%?

Like how much percent does do I give to God in order to like like be making him happy, right?

And he said, no, that's not how it works.

He gets the whole pie, right?

He is the entire pie chart, but then he he's the one that authors your entire life.

So paying attention does not mean that every single moment you're thinking about Bible verses or that you're praying every moment, but it means that the disposition of your life is one that is offering itself to him wholeheartedly.

Remember why God loved David?

It's because David was wholehearted in his devotion to God.

Do you remember that?

Now, do you think that David, every moment of his life, was thinking about God's stuff, spiritual stuff in heaven?

No, sometimes he was cutting off pieces, appendages of Philistines, and other times he's killing a giant, and other times he's, you know, leading in battle or running away from Saul.

And not every single moment is a moment where he's thinking about God, but the disposition of his life is towards the Lord.

Where at the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, it's like, God, my life is yours.

My life is yours.

And it's this continue as much as is needed and as often as it comes to mind, it's this turning our lives back over to the Lord.

It's putting things in perspective.

And so I don't think it is the same, the idea of being spiritually paying attention is not for the same idea as me being on a phone call and only being able to focus on that phone call.

Instead, it's more of this bouncing our lives off of the Lord back and forth.

It's kind of like when you go and throw a ball against a cement wall and it's it's going back and forth.

In our relationship with the Lord, it's like doing life, and then it's like, Lord, here's my life, and then going back in and heads down doing life, right?

And then going back to the Lord.

And it's this like just continually offering ourselves to the Lord in this just in a friendship way.

I think it became more and more real to me as I realized the idea of the presence of the Holy Spirit, that when you and I make a decision to be a follower of Jesus, we are given, we come alive.

We were dead spiritually, severed, and our relationship with God was broken, but then we're given the Holy Spirit.

When we enter into a relationship with Him, the Spirit of God comes into our life, and the Spirit of God animates us or helps us have that relationship.

And so it is not just on us to check in mentally, but it's a permission giving to God's Spirit to lead us through the day.

It's a, Lord, you have your way, literally, a person.

It's not just a force, it's not just an energy, we're not Jehovah's Witnesses.

We believe in the person of the Holy Spirit.

A person lives in us and is animating our soul to have that relationship with the Lord.

And so this ability to pay attention spiritually is as much of a discipline of saying no to the distractions and yes to the listening to the Holy Spirit as much as it is anything else.

Jesus used, as Jesus taught on this theme, he used extreme language to convey this idea, to make it clear that look, you need to be awake.

You think of like the ten virgins and how five were negligent in tending to their lamps as they were waiting for the bridegroom to come.

Do you remember that story?

There was five that didn't tend to their lamps, and then there were five that kept their wicks trimmed and oil in their lamps.

That was the idea of readiness or being attentive.

The ones that didn't weren't ready for the bridegroom to return, those were the ones that were not paying attention.

They were not focused.

There is embodied in that parable the same principle that the writer of Hebrews is trying to convey here.

In 1 Timothy 4 1, it says this.

There's those who are going to depart from the faith, but they're going to pay attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.

They're going to use their spiritual capacity to pay attention.

They're going to listen to other voices.

This word also comes up in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 19.

2 Peter 1:19

We also have the prophetic word strongly confirmed, and you will do well to pay attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Do you see how Peter is borrowing from his master's parable when he talks about paying attention?

It's like a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

Is he borrowing?

Is he possibly borrowing from the metaphor of the parable of the virgins?

Maybe.

Sometimes the Christian message is understood as a single decision.

Like I got saved back then.

I got baptized.

But the idea, anybody who honestly reads through the teachings of Jesus and looks at Paul's letters in the general epistles and the book of Revelation, you see that the idea of being a follower of Jesus is not just a single historic decision we made in our life, but it is a lifestyle.

And the disposition of the Christian is one that is attentive.

The warning words on the other side from being paying attention is to be slothful, to be dull in our hearing, inattentive.

Another writer says this the peril against which the community is to be on guard is that of drifting away like a boat that is gradually slipping away from its moorings.

This suggests a movement that may be subtle and undetected by those on board, and along with the term neglect, points to a gradual unthinking movement away from the faith.

Do you see that?

A gradual, unthinking movement away from the faith.

Here's the invitation of the text.

Here's why this is not written during Moses' time, but it's written to our time.

Is because we have the Spirit of God.

When the writer writes this warning to pay attention lest you drift away, the Holy Spirit is there for you and I, making this a reality.

So when you look at this and you're like, I don't know how to pay attention, or I don't know, I don't understand the Bible that well, or I don't know, like, I don't even know how to hear God's voice.

Here's the beautiful thing.

When you give your life to Jesus and you finally get to that point where you say, Hey, I'm ready to follow you with my whole heart, he gifts you with his spirit, who makes this concept a reality.

Maybe you're not yet a follower of Jesus, and you need to hear from this text a rescue message that Jesus is ready for you to listen.

He's ready for you to listen to his message.

It's a message of salvation.

If we go back to the text itself, notice over and over again how it's this great salvation.

How we how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

This salvation had its beginning when it was spoken of by the Lord.

As we go through the book of Hebrews, as we go um, as we travel along, one of the great themes that was front and center to this writer is that the God of the Bible is the God who speaks.

He speaks daily.

And he keeps telling these Jewish Christians, like, look back at your history.

Look how oftentimes God spoke to your forefathers, your grandmas and your grandpas.

Look, God speaks to people and he expects you to listen.

When I sat there in first grade, and my teacher, who was so nice, I can't remember what her name, I think it was Miss Clark, when she was talking, I wasn't listening.

She was going on and on.

All I remember from really first grade, I kind of remember being in that classroom, and one time I was at recess and they were playing kickball, and I was just so like out of it, like this ball just came and like hit me right in the forehead.

All I know is this is I was checked out in first grade.

I was not listening.

And the writer of Hebrews is saying to us, Look, pay attention.

Wake up, lift up your heads, like trim your trim your lamps, fill your lamps with oil.

Be ready to listen to what the Lord says.

Wait till we get into chapter three and four.

He's gonna quote from Psalms Today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts.

That was the problem that the children of Israel faced, and it kept them.

When we were talking this morning, Bryce, we were talking this morning about how God kept the children of Israel out in the wilderness for 40 years, right?

They were left in the wilderness for 40 years for one reason, because they didn't listen to God's voice, they didn't trust him, and it was a mess.

And that's the example that's going to be held up for us in the book of Hebrews.

So Jesus who loves us is saying to us, hey, pay attention.

Don't don't drift away, don't be that ship that misses its harbor because you're inattentive.

Lord, we understand that you sometimes allow us to go through things in our life uh that is painful so that all of a sudden we snap to attention and so that we can hear what you have to say to us.

Lord, we just would pray that we could hear clearly what you're trying to communicate to us this morning and in our lives.

We want to pay attention to our own place where we're at spiritually.

We want to land where you want us to land.

We want to anchor where you want us to anchor.

We want to be spiritually alive.

Lord, thank you for your love for us, that you care for us, and that you've allowed us to have that personal relationship with you this morning.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.