Hebrews 2:1-4 | The Danger of Not Listening

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Please take your Bible and open it to the book of Hebrews.

One of the most important safety speeches that we will ever hear is the one that we ignore the most.

Start this morning with a quiz.

What is the most important safety speech that we tend to ignore?

Where is it?

It has to do with seat belts, exits, masks, and flotation devices.

Right?

It's on an airplane.

It happens at the beginning of every airline flight.

And instead of paying attention, we're scrolling on our phones before we have to shut them off for the flight.

We're closing our eyes to start our nap.

We're opening a book to read.

Now the flight attendant gives valuable information.

But if something goes wrong at 30,000 feet, the only thing that will matter is whether or not we listened.

Familiar words are the easiest ones to ignore.

That's true on an airplane, and it's true in Christ's church.

That's the emphasis this morning in Hebrews chapter 2, in the first four verses, where we find the first warning passage in the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

So if you have your Bible with me, open it with me, and I'd like to read verses 1 through 4 if you'd follow along with me.

It says, 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.

This chapter shifts now to direct application.

The preacher of the book of Hebrews spent the whole first chapter reminding us that God has spoken first through the prophets and now through his son.

And that there's no one better than the Son.

This chapter now in chapter two begins to tell us what that means for us.

And the preacher here is addressing a Christian congregation.

It's a people who have heard the gospel.

They've gathered together like we have to fellowship, to worship together.

They know who Jesus is.

They know their Old Testament.

They know the Psalms.

They're familiar with all of it.

And so after showing Christ as God's speaker in these last days, a speaker who is God Himself and who is greater than angels, the preacher here now says that a great salvation from the Lord with the better name demands careful attention.

Now it's not a call to save ourselves by being more alert.

It's a call to treat the salvation that God has provided in His Son as the ultimately significant gift that it is.

So consider with me three warnings and one explanation from these four verses.

The first warning is a warning of danger.

He says there's a danger in not listening.

Specifically, that drifting is a natural danger in inattention.

If we don't pay attention, we will naturally drift away from Jesus.

That's what he says in the first verse, isn't it?

Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it.

Now the word must tells us that something's necessary, right?

And the therefore reminds us to look back to chapter one.

So if Jesus is who chapter one says he is, then paying attention to him is necessary.

What does chapter one say?

But let's put it differently.

If God has spoken through his son, and he has, and if that son is the radiance of the glory of God, and he is, and if that son is the exact imprint of his divine nature, and he is, and if that son upholds everything by the word of his power, if that son made purification for sins and sat down at the right hand of the glory of God, and if that son has a greater name than all of the angels, then we must pay much closer attention to what he said.

It's like sitting on the airplane and noticing that you pay more attention to what the captain says than what the flight attendant says.

And this is strong language.

We must pay much closer attention.

I like the way that J.B.

Phillips translated it.

He said we must pay the greatest attention.

So it's not enough to pay a little attention to a great salvation.

We must give the greatest attention.

Now that phrase, what we have heard, points back to everything that comes from Christ, most notably all that leads to salvation.

And it's everything beyond that that Christ has said.

Everything that proclaims Christ.

So Christianity, our faith, is from the very beginning a faith of hearing.

Because God has spoken.

Isn't that what Romans tells us?

Faith comes by hearing.

Hearing.

We receive the message and the word of God by hearing it proclaimed.

And so this verse now then moves from hearing and listening to a sailing image.

So we have to switch our thinking here for a minute.

The danger is not just refusing to get in the boat with Jesus.

The danger is already being in the boat and drifting past a safe harbor because no one's paying close attention.

Or to use the flying metaphor, the pilot overshoots the runway because he's not paying attention.

Drifting is when the boat slips past the port or overshoots the dock.

You're coming in too fast because you're not paying attention.

And more often, that kind of drifting happens through inattention.

Someone's not paying close enough attention.

That's how drifting works.

You know, we could say that sometimes, sometimes people wake up on any given morning and decide to stop listening to Jesus.

That probably happens.

But more often we just stop steering the boat.

We overshoot the dock because we're not paying attention to our speed.

We're distracted by the other things of life, and so we we neglect what Jesus has to say to us.

We don't even recognize sometimes what's happening.

So the danger in Hebrews chapter 2 is not always a sudden dramatic decision to reject Christ.

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

Often it begins with simple neglect.

We stop giving close attention to Scripture, and then it then we become less responsive to the Holy Spirit's voice, to the Son's voice.

We let other voices become louder, and before we notice, we're past the harbor.

So a drifting Christian may still be in church the majority of Sundays.

They may sing, they may bow their heads in prayer.

A drifting Christian doesn't necessarily change what they believe, but they may be less and less shaped by God's word.

Their Bible may sit open on Sunday mornings and then gather dust the rest of the week.

Our prayers might be thin and selfish and self-centered or simply routine.

And the issue isn't that we've had an off week spiritually.

The issue is that we become less responsive to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We become less attentive to the person of Christ.

We become less shaped by his word, and so we're more vulnerable to passing by the lighthouse because we don't see the light shining in the darkness.

See, drifting is not outright rebellion against the rule and the reign of Jesus Christ.

It's not mutiny on the ship.

At least it doesn't begin there.

In fact, there's not much drifting that happens initially.

You may not even notice it, which is why it's so dangerous.

And the first people to hear this sermon, we call Hebrews, faced that danger.

Some were committed to following Jesus and listening to him.

Others were in danger of drifting.

Maybe they were already drifting.

Maybe that's why we have the warning later in chapter 10 to not forsake the gathering of the saints.

So the author of this sermon warns them to pay attention.

And we must also.

Do you see that pronoun in verse 1?

We.

We must pay attention.

Lest we drift.

It's fascinating that this preacher, whoever he is, we don't know who it is.

Maybe it was Paul, maybe it was Luke, maybe it was Apollos, we don't know.

Whoever it is, this preacher is putting himself in the boat with his listeners.

So even pastors and church leaders need to heed the warning to pay attention.

Drifting here in the first part of Hebrews is connected to hearing and listening, to focusing and paying attention.

If we do not listen to the Son, if we neglect hearing him, we can drift past the place of safety and rest.

And that presents a significant problem for this preacher of Hebrews.

Because he thinks about that.

If we are in danger of drifting so far that we no longer listen to Jesus, how shall we escape?

So he begins to explain his warning about drifting in verse 2.

First, there's this danger, a natural danger of drifting.

He begins to explain that though with another kind of danger.

He points back to the law of Israel at Mount Sinai.

He wants us to hear about God speaking way back then at Mount Sinai, giving the law to Israel as a warning now.

And he calls this a warning about a lesser law that has consequences.

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?

Now, notice how this has to be understood in context.

The greater salvation is connected to the better name of Jesus, which is greater than the lesser angels.

The message, though, that we're talking about here in verse 2 is a message declared by angels.

That refers to the Mosaic law.

Understood, the Jewish tradition understood that giving of the law to Moses as having been done by angels at Mount Sinai.

Now, Moses doesn't explicitly state that in the delivering of the law in Exodus, but Deuteronomy 32, verse 2, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, says that angels attended the Lord in the giving of the law when he came to Sinai.

Deuteronomy 32:2

And so by the time that the New Testament was written, by the first century of Jesus, people commonly spoke of the law as coming through angels.

That's why we see Stephen in his speech before he was martyred in Acts chapter 7, about verse 50, 52, 53, saying that the law was given by angels.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

The Apostle Paul says that in Galatians 3, 19.

So this all is pointing back to Mount Sinai and God using angels to give the law.

Now last Sunday we saw that the Son is God who sits at the throne.

He's ruler and he's creator.

But the angels are servants.

They're amazing, they're beautiful, they're powerful, but they're created.

They're made.

And their job is to serve, but the Son is better.

So the law came through lesser messengers, but this great salvation comes through the Son.

That's why this preacher spent so much time in chapter one showing God's own words, elevating the Son, showing that he is better.

Jesus is better.

He was preparing us for this comparison.

So we're talking about a lesser law given through lesser messengers, but even though it was lesser in some sense, that message proved reliable.

How was it reliable?

Well, it was reliable because every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution.

This is courtroom language.

This is the kind of language used for a binding agreement.

A law is given and it is upheld, and there are consequences for disobeying it.

This law given through lesser messengers, angels, carries the full weight of God's authority, even though he used angels to communicate it.

So it's binding, it's authoritative, so much so that every transgression and every disobedience receives a just retribution.

What is that talking about?

Well, transgression is a stepping over a line.

We have that in our in our culture that image of a proverbial line in the sand, and you step over that.

God says there's a line in the sand, and transgression is to step over that, to do what God said not to do.

The word for disobedience here carries the sense of refusing to hear.

It's a listening word.

It speaks of refusing to hear.

And that refusing to hear implies a refusal to obey.

So a failure or a refusal to hear is disobedience, and it receives a righteous, just retribution.

Now, put that in the context of God giving his word to his people.

Even though God used angels to communicate his law, it was so authoritative and so binding that stepping over it, or even just refusing to hear it, to listen to it, and to follow through carried consequences.

Every Jewish person would understand that message.

Because all throughout the Old Testament, God repeatedly says to his people, you refused to listen.

You refused to listen.

You did not listen.

You did not listen.

So the author to the Hebrews says, God spoke.

So we must pay much greater attention.

Chapter 2 begins with an ominous warning to pay much closer attention to what we've heard.

And then verse 2 says that not listening, not paying attention, is a sin problem that comes with consequences.

Friends, drifting begins as a hearing problem.

And it's not just hearing aids, it's listening and paying attention.

And every failure to listen received a just retribution.

Received the consequence it deserved.

Now the point is that that old covenant, that old law given in the Old Testament, and its messengers were in some sense lesser than God's word through his son.

Jesus and this salvation is better.

That old law and its messengers and its consequences were in some sense not better.

But it still had bite, it still had teeth to it.

Not listening came with consequences.

So how shall we escape if we neglect a greater salvation from a greater speaker?

That leads us into verse three.

And the third danger.

How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Now, first, we need to notice that the question remains unanswered.

Right?

It's a hypothetical rhetorical question.

The implication is we won't.

Because if the lesser message through the lesser messengers received just consequences, and we have a greater speaker and a greater message, we won't escape.

Well, what does that mean for us?

Well, all we know is consequences.

He doesn't answer the questions.

So that's what we need to notice first.

Then we need to understand the preacher's argument.

He asks if this lesser message had a consequence for violations, for refusing to listen, for not paying attention.

What about the greater message?

The Jewish rabbis had a pattern of using this kind of argument.

They called it light and heavy.

We might say it's how much more?

If the lighter thing, the smaller thing, has weight or importance or consequence, then the heavier or more significant thing will have much more consequence and significance.

A modern example might be getting a ticket for rolling through a stop sign.

If the consequence for just rolling through a stop sign is a ticket, what do you think will happen when you run a red light right in front of the police officer?

How much more?

If God's lesser way of speaking carried consequences for not paying attention and refusing to listen, why would we ever think that the danger is less if we ignore God speaking through his son?

If people were accountable for rejecting the law given through angels, no one should expect to escape the consequences of not listening to the Son.

Now again, he doesn't tell us what those consequences are, does he?

He just says there are consequences.

He doesn't tell us the penalty, because the comparison itself should be enough to make us shape up and listen.

As one commentator observed, the author leaves his listeners to consider what they will not escape.

And neglect is the opposite of paying close attention.

Neglect is the mindset, the attitude that we have when we treat something as though it's not important enough to hear or to really absorb.

And the immediate danger here is not necessarily a kind of a public apostasy, a public refusal of Christ or a denial of Christ.

The immediate danger here is neglect.

We just more and more often fail to listen to Jesus.

But Hebrews knows that uncorrected neglect doesn't stay small.

Drifting can take you much farther away than you ever intended.

And that neglect, Hebrews tells us, fails to recognize the greatness of the message.

This is all the application of look at how glorious and great and better Jesus is.

Why would you ever want to neglect him?

Salvation is rescue language.

If you need rescuing, you're in danger.

But the picture here is that you may not realize you need help.

You may think that everything's going along fine.

You're right on track to land at the dock.

You may not recognize how great your salvation really is.

So he wants us to recognize and to hear again.

Your salvation is as great as the son with the better name.

The one whom every angel is commanded to worship.

It is as great as the one who is forever and ever.

Because a great Savior with the greatest name provides the greatest salvation.

Why would you ever neglect it?

And let's not forget that the warning is personal.

How shall we escape?

We might say that the preacher is proclaiming this warning inside the boat with all the people.

These are the words of a shepherd who loves the sun, loves to hear him speak, and loves his people, and he wants to warn them before they drift, to wake up those who have just started to drift.

Remember Jesus.

Look to Jesus.

Don't forget how great He is.

You've probably heard that statement that I think is first attributed to Charles Spurgeon.

Somebody asked him, why do you preach on the gospel so often?

And he says, because you so often forget it.

That's us, right?

We are all in the boat, and it's so easy for us to neglect how great the Son is, and how great our salvation is.

So these are the warnings, and now comes the explanation.

The second half of verse 3 and into verse 4.

The salvation is so great because God verified it.

God made sure that everyone knew this is exactly what God is doing.

He says, This great salvation was declared at first by the Lord, then it was attested to us by those who heard.

So there are first hand witnesses.

Now there are secondhand hearers to verify all that's been said by the Son.

And then God adds to that signs and wonders and miracles and gifts of the Spirit distribute according to his will.

So the old message was given through angels.

Now the Son has spoken.

It's God's word in both instances.

Right?

In former times, in many ways, God spoke through the prophets.

Now he has spoken through his son.

It's God's word in both instances, but the means of giving the message has changed.

Now it's through the Lord.

It was declared at first by the Lord.

We've already heard who this Lord is.

If you look back at verse 10 of chapter 1, the Father says to the Son, You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth.

So this ties the warning about attentive listening back to everything in chapter 1.

The Lord Himself, the glorious enthroned Jesus Christ, the maker of all things, the upholder of all things, is the one who first spoke this message, and those people heard it.

And those who heard it told us.

And it appears that the preacher of Hebrews was not one of Jesus' original followers who heard him in person.

He's one of those who received the message who had heard from the Lord firsthand.

So he's a second generation believer, we might say.

Because he includes himself in the us who heard from them.

And friends, that's good news for us.

We are further down the line of listeners than the people who heard this sermon the first time it was preached.

We hear the gospel of Christ from others who heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else, and so on down the line, generation after generation after generation, of believers in Christ.

And the message has not weakened on its way to us.

It's still the word that the Lord spoke.

It's still effective, it's still powerful, it's still God who spoke through the Son, and we hear the Son speak.

And how shall we escape if we refuse to listen?

Maybe you heard the Lord speak through a Sunday school teacher.

Or a grandparent.

Or a friend who wouldn't leave you alone about Jesus.

You weren't in Galilee with Jesus.

You didn't see the empty tomb with Mary.

You weren't walking the roads of Rome with Paul.

You didn't see the empty tomb.

But that doesn't mean your faith is second class.

Because the same Lord spoke the same message, and the same God confirmed it, and that continues on down the lines of faithful believers.

And all along the way, God confirms it.

He confirmed it first with signs and wonders, various miracles.

That's language that echoes the Exodus.

When God publicly demonstrated his power to confirm his saving word.

And in the same way, God confirmed the gospel through signs and wonders and miracles and all kinds of unique gifts.

The God who proved his power in the Old Testament proved the reality of his speaking in the New Testament.

And that continues on by gifts of the Spirit in the church today.

The Holy Spirit comes and indwells us and enables us to serve him in various kinds of ways.

That is further generational after generation confirmation of the Lord's speaking.

We hear the gospel of Christ from others who heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else all the way down the line.

So the evidence is significant.

The Lord spoke.

Eyewitnesses, ear witnesses, hearers, heard it.

They spoke to others who believed, and so on.

God Himself backed the word all along the way.

So, in light of all of that, unbelief, carelessness, and inattentiveness can only be seen as a failure, a transgression, or a refusal to hear because of closed ears and a hard heart.

And if the lesser message had teeth, the greater one leaves no room for excuse.

How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Again, the preacher doesn't answer the question.

Because he wants us to ponder the reality of the answer.

I don't think he's so concerned about the consequences as he is concerned about his people listening.

If God's law, delivered through angels, carried consequences for not hearing, then neglecting the word of Christ proclaimed by the Son Himself is no small matter.

Think back to that airplane.

The flight attendant gives the same speech on every flight because you won't have time to learn it in the moment of a disaster.

You won't have time to hear it and to pay attention and to learn it in the moment you need those instructions.

In a similar way, God has given us his word through his son, and he's told us the most urgent things we ever need to hear.

The time to listen is now while the plane is still in the air and the masks are still held up in their compartments.

So find the place where you drift.

That might not be so easy.

Maybe it is easy for some.

Others, it might be hard.

And ask the Lord day by day to give you greater attentiveness.

Now, for some, that might be that might be in the the first 15 minutes of the morning when your your phone gets your attention before God does, and you're way off track before you even get out of bed.

For others, it might be on Sunday afternoon, and church is over, and we've done our duty, we've fellowshipped with the saints, and now we're thinking about what we're going to get to do next weekend.

For others, it's just the steady accumulation day after day of small distractions that slowly train our hearts to listen to other things more closely than the word of Christ.

Now maybe you've never trusted Christ, and maybe you're hearing this as Christ speaking to you for the first time.

Praise God.

Don't hear this warning as the kind as a harsh judgment.

Hear it as the kindest warning that a preacher can give you.

Salvation is rescue.

Listening to the Son is the greatest rescue that you will ever have.

Christ is the refuge that God has provided.

The Lord Himself spoke it and God confirmed it.

So don't drift past him.

Trust in Jesus now.

And for all the rest of us who belong to him, pay even more attention to what you've heard.

Hold your course toward Christ and keep listening to the Son.

Let's pray together.

Lord, help us.

We confess that we sin so often in our actions when we we know what you've said and we choose something else.

We also know that we sin and just neglect.

Forgive us of both those outward, rebellious actions and that inattentiveness.

Soften our hearts by the work of your spirit to hear you speak.

May you be continually the anchor of our soul that keeps us from drifting.

May you be the lighthouse that guides us and that we always see you.

Give us ears to hear and eyes to see, so that we may be attentive to the very end, to the praise of your glorious grace.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.