In the second chapter, therefore we ought to
give the more earnest heed to the things
which we have heard, lest at any time
we should let them slip.
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?
Which at the first began to be spoken
by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us
by them that heard him.
The Lord also bearing them witness, both with
signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and
gifts of the Holy Ghost according to his
will.
Now, we're taking the book of Hebrews right
along, verse after verse, and chapter after chapter,
and we have arrived now at this section.
And we begin with the word, therefore.
A word that doesn't seem to have very
much meaning, really, but it has tremendous meaning
here.
Therefore links what he's going to say with
what he has already said.
That keeps it in what the theologians call
context.
You know the saying that if your text,
a text without a context is a pretext.
And there are a great many texts that
are merely pretexts.
But this is a context.
Therefore, he said, because I've said this, now
I say this.
You see, the Bible never attacks the emotions
direct, which is the favorite technique of many
religious leaders.
To attack the emotions direct, the general idea
being that if you can get a tear,
that you have made a saint, and that
if you can get a man so badly
shaken that he has to blow his note
loudly, that it's the trumpet of Gabriel, and
that all is well.
The truth is simply, brethren, that there is
no connection whatsoever between our emotions that are
worked up like that and truth.
Truth raises emotions, but always it's truth that
does it, or else it is not properly
religious emotions at all.
So the scripture says, therefore, that is, the
Bible way is frank and honest and logical.
Certain things are true, and here they are,
says the Holy Ghost.
Therefore, because they're true, certain obligations lie on
you, and here they are.
Now, that's the way the Bible works.
That's the way Paul wrote his epistles.
That's the way the epistles of the other
writers of the New Testament were written.
That's the way the prophets wrote, that's the
way Moses wrote.
It is, these things are true, and because
they're true, therefore you ought to believe this
and do this.
That's the way it works.
Now, the certain true things that are declared
here are mentioned in the first chapter, that
there is someone called the Eternal Son through
whom God spoke, and in him God has
spoken his final word to men.
Always keep that in mind.
There will be no further revelation to man.
God has spoken.
He who in the beginning, in olden times,
spoke in time past unto the fathers in
various ways and in piecemeal fashion, has now
in these last days spoken unto us by
his Eternal Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
And that Eternal Son, because of who he
is and because of his position and because
of his offices, he has given to his
word, or God has given to his word,
supreme authority.
And because this is true, therefore we ought
to give the more earnest heed to the
things that we have heard.
Now, there are errors which men have made.
They have not perhaps come right out and
said them in so many words, but they
think them.
And what we think, so are we finally.
And some have said or thought that there
are any numbers of religions and all are
good in varying degrees, and therefore why should
we give the more earnest heed to the
message of Christianity?
Well, God has spoken in his Son and
has said, Hear ye him?
And Moses said, God will raise up a
prophet like unto me.
Him shall ye hear, and it shall come
to pass that whoever will not hear him
shall be cut off from among his people.
Jesus Christ is not another teacher.
Jesus Christ is the final teacher and the
last word of God to men.
And then there are those who would say
that there is nothing to be disturbed about
because Christ carries the supreme authority of God,
and there is nothing for you and me
to be worried about.
But just because Christ carries the supreme authority
of God, to ignore that authority is a
grave offense.
And some will say, God will take the
initiative, I don't need anything.
I believe that God will always be the
aggressor.
I believe that too, incidentally.
But remember that God has already taken the
initiative when he sent his Holy Son Jesus
Christ to the world, and then when he
sent the Holy Spirit down to take the
things of Christ so that God has already
taken the initiative and there is no place
to hide and there is reason to be
bothered, we ought not to consider that when
we get disturbed we ought to go to
a psychiatrist.
If God can't disturb us, he can't move
us.
If he can't move us, he can't save
us.
If he can't get us concerned about the
things of God, why he can't do anything
at all for us.
It was said of John Wesley that he
was a man with a concern.
We sing these hymns about being concerned and
moved.
We sing them, but we don't have to
mean them.
But we ought to mean them because we
ought to give them more earnest heed, which
means careful attention.
We ought to read, we ought to listen,
we ought to search, we ought to examine
and re-examine.
And it ought to be an earnest heed.
We ought to put away levity and frequency
and fun.
The curse of everything today is it's got
to be funny.
If it isn't funny, it's not popular.
But there is nothing funny in God seeing
his race wander away into night.
There was nothing funny about his sending his
Holy Son to be born of a virgin,
nothing funny about his persecution and his crucifixion,
nothing funny about the coming of the Holy
Ghost, nothing funny about the judgment or levity
or frequency or fun.
When we consider the things of God, we
ought to give the more earnest heed to
the things which we have heard.
Now, says the more earnest heed, and the
great labor of the church has always been
to get people to take serious attention, or
give serious attention.
It's been the labor of the church every
place it's been the labor of the church.
Now, a great many pastors and preachers don't
worry about this at all, because they don't
expect anything and don't get it.
But if a man of God has the
burden on him, the burden of the Holy
Spirit, he will want to stir the people
to serious attention.
And until serious attention has been given to
the claims of Christ, it is for us
as if the Bible had never been written,
medicine that sits on the shelf and is
not taken, food that is left in the
refrigerator and never eaten, never nourished anybody, heat
that is not turned on, never warmed anybody.
And the Bible itself, though it is nourishment,
though it is light, though it is warmth,
though it is medicine to the soul, yet
it never helps anybody where there is not
serious attention given to it.
And when we don't give serious attention, it
is as if Christ had not come and
died, and it is for us to neglect
all that is meant by his coming and
dying.
Now, I notice two characteristics of the average
natural man.
One of them is moral insensibility, this lack
of feeling.
He can't feel the whole moral question.
And it's a strange paradox that he may
be troubled by his inability to feel and
yet can't feel.
Then there is spiritual lethargy, an unnatural inward
drowsiness when faced with the claims of God.
If we hear a speech, we immediately call
up headquarters and want to know how we
can get a fallout shelter.
And if somebody makes a lecture on cancer,
we examine ourselves and wonder if that last
vein was the cancer.
We are always concerned, but we are rarely
concerned when it comes to spiritual things.
Moral insensibility and spiritual lethargy are two great
curses because they keep us from taking earnest
heed.
Now, the source of this dangerous condition is
the semi-anesthesia caused by the act of
sinning.
When a person sins, he anesthetizes his conscience
to a certain extent.
The Bible called that cauterizing the conscience.
You know, if you cauterize a thing, it
will hurt at first, then it will heal
over, and after that you have no feeling
there where the cauterization took place because you
have developed a hard shell, a skin there.
And sin does that.
It cauterizes the conscience, and pretty soon it
doesn't bother us that we're sinning.
I'm a blinding agent of the unholy one
we call the devil.
I preached last Sunday morning from this book
of Hebrews on angels, and somebody came to
me afterward and said they had enjoyed it
but wanted to know if I would also
sometime preach on demons.
Well, that's something I don't want to preach
on, but something I assume I must sometime
because the devil blinds the minds of those
who believe not, thus the light of the
glorious gospel of Christ might shine unto them.
Then there is preoccupation of the making of
a living.
Jesus called it the cares of this life.
I want to say this to you this
morning, and I think as the preachers say
that I have no fear of successful contradiction,
that if all of you listening to me,
would put as much earnest time in and
give as much serious attention to seeking God
this week as you're going to put in
to making a living, you would become a
much finer Christian, and by next Sunday you'd
wonder what had happened to you.
And I'd like to say that if you
women listening to me would give as much
earnest heed to the claims of Christ and
to the needs of your own soul, as
you're undoubtedly giving to your cooking and to
your family, at the end of the week
you would have made such spiritual advances that
you would be ashamed of the way you'd
been living before.
But the simple fact is God gets the
leftovers.
God never gets the main meal, he gets
the leftovers.
God never gets anything new, he gets the
hand-me-downs.
We give to God that which we don't
need instead of giving to God for ourselves.
But if we were as concerned with our
spiritual condition as we are with our homes
and our business and our income, we would
go forward spiritually at a great rate.
And the beautiful thing about it is we
wouldn't neglect our homes to do it, and
we wouldn't neglect our business to do it.
You don't have to take your choice between
making a living and going forward with God.
You can do both.
You don't have 17 children, do you?
And there was a woman once by the
name of Susanna Wesley, and she had 17
children.
I think she had 18, and John was
the 17th.
Well, 18 children, and yet she kept that
house thick and spanned.
And she was known as one of the
greatest women of her time just because she
decided she could look after her family and
still make spiritual progress.
And I will say this, too, that if
you who are students would seek the face
of God as earnestly as you seek books
over these coming weeks, you would find yourself
growing in grace like grass by the watercourses.
But there's the constant seeking after pleasure, and
that keeps people back.
There's the physical pleasure, comforts and various vices
and food and the rest.
And there are mental pleasures such as social
pleasures and gambling and amusements and the reading
of fiction.
There are aesthetic pleasures, art and music and
learning and culture.
But all these put together, they demand, they
simply give pleasant sensations, the same sensation a
baby gets by sucking its thumb.
And the whole human race has grown up
thumb suckers.
And we give over, we give to the
getting of a pleasant sensation the time we
ought to get the saving of our souls.
Peter said, Save yourselves from this wicked and
untoward generation.
Peter, why would you say that the average
evangelical won't like it?
Well, I don't care what the average evangelical
likes.
Peter said, But though we may not be
in earnest, I want you to know God
is in dead earnest.
God the Father was earnest when he planned
and finally accomplished the work of redemption.
God the Son was earnest when he sweat
bloody sweat in the garden of Gethsemane.
And God the Holy Ghost is always in
earnest when he comes to dwell in the
natures of man or the nature of men.
And it says here, we ought to give
the more earnest heed to the King James
Version.
I'll leave that to men who have anything
better to do.
But in this case, I want to just
make a correction here.
And if you'll notice in the margin, it
says, Lest at any time we should let
them slip.
And the margin says, Run out as a
leaking vessel.
And other versions have, We should drift away
from it.
Oh, this spirit of drifting, this spirit of
leaking.
A lot of us have leakage of the
heart.
A great many people have leaking hearts.
They leak in their spirits or they drift
as a boat drifts away.
Things that we have heard, they're here.
God has declared them through his Son Jesus
Christ, our Lord, and he has set them
here to save us all and to bless
us all.
Some have listened and been interested and pondered
and hesitated and then done nothing about it
at all and are slowly drifting away from
the rock of truth out of a falls,
maybe sunning himself and lazily waiting for a
bite.
Not knowing until it's too late that he
has drifted so near to the falls that
he can't recover himself.
And so with a scream he goes over
to his death.
I wonder how many of them, how many
persons there are that have gone over the
falls because they allowed themselves to drift away
from the truth.
Well, how do we neglect by drifting from
it?
And how do we neglect it?
Well, another form is leaking away.
We get the truth in our heart but
it leaks away.
We let it leak away and here is
the heart-breaking truth that some hearts are
leaking.
We have leakage of the heart and our
good resolutions all leak away.
Comes around the New Year, and on New
Year's Eve they get unsilvered.
But start making resolutions.
I have resolved that I will be kinder
to my wife this year.
I resolve that I will give regularly to
the church.
I resolve that I will pray regularly every
day.
I resolve that I will not let a
day go by that I do not read
the Holy Scriptures.
I resolve that I will seek to know
God better.
I make my resolutions.
But you know the heart is a leaky
thing and before the 1st of February the
average person's resolutions have all leaked away.
There are the good intentions, the strong whine
of spiritual desire.
When you hear a man preach, a man
that touches you particularly wherever he might be,
suddenly you conceive a strong desire for God.
And the strong whine of spiritual desire, you
are long after it.
But the little vat of your heart is
leaky and pretty soon it all leaks away
and pretty soon there is no desire left
at all.
And the love of spiritual things, you see
the difference between spiritual things and earthly things
is that the things of the Spirit are
so modest.
The things of the Spirit are not pushing
in on you.
The things of the Spirit are not singing
commercials to you.
The things of the Spirit are not knocking
on your door and urging you.
The things of the Spirit are waiting.
It is written of Jesus that he did
not lift up his voice nor make himself
to be heard in the street.
He did not cry aloud but was calm
and quiet.
You came to him for the truth but
the things of the flesh are so insistent,
so clamorous.
Before you are up in the morning they
are clamoring at you, trying to get you
interested in buying what they want to sell
or doing what they have decided that you
should do.
I am on a one-man strike against
buying anything that is advertised by singing commercials.
I just won't do it.
I hope sometime they don't get around to
singing about everything because I will have to
go to the woods and live on roots
and berries because I just won't buy it.
If they sing about it, they can have
it.
Anybody that is that silly and anybody that
thinks I am that silly and had a
half with it, they are coming to you
and urging you and pushing you by example
and by precept and by instruction and by
advertising and by urging.
They are trying to get us to go
certain ways and do certain things.
But the things of the Spirit, I heard
what a great Welsh preacher once said that
Jesus Christ is a gentleman.
He won't break down anybody's door.
He stands at the door and knocks and
people come in unto him but he never
pushes through the door.
Or it can be.
In Oregon where I was a couple of
weeks ago, cabins are all along.
They all look pretty much alike.
They are made out of fur, wood, unpainted,
nice brown wood, rather nice to look at.
Well, they must be painted, though fur wouldn't
be that brown.
I would assume they are stained.
And they all look pretty much alike.
I was walking along and I had my
Bible and I suddenly opened the door and
pushed myself in.
Here was a fellow laying on a bed.
And I backed out.
Oh, pardon me, I said.
Pardon me, I thought this was my cottage.
Well, it wasn't.
It was the one next to it.
I haven't gotten over that yet.
That wasn't a woman anyhow.
At least it was a man.
And there he was laying on a bed.
But I wouldn't have done that so I
pushed in there.
But if I'd go to your house and
I'd see you draw the blind and I
pushed the bell once, I wouldn't push it
twice.
If I pushed the bell once and you
looked and I saw the blind go down
or the Venetian blinds flip, I'd say to
myself, they don't want me there and I
would take a bus back home.
But our Lord is never intrusive.
The things of the world are intrusive.
And here's the point I'm trying to make
in wandering around.
It's this, that if you're going to give
attention to the things of God and save
your own soul, you're going to have to
have a good intention, good resolution, and then
do it and see to it that you
do it.
And don't let the devil prevent you.
You're going to have to take yourself by
the scarf of the neck, shake yourself up
and say, Lord God, I'm going to see
if I can't be a better man next
week than I was last week, and a
better man next month than I was last
month.
Well, I wonder what we're going to do
about all this.
God meant it when he gave us the
law.
Christ meant it when he died and rose.
The Holy Ghost means it.
How much more will we be judged if
we heed not the truth than they were
judged who heeded not the law for it's
written, for if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received
a just recompense or reward, how shall we
escape if we neglect so great salvation which
at the first began to be spoken by
the Lord and was confirmed unto us by
them that heard him?
God also bearing them witness both with signs
and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of
the Holy Ghost according to his will.
How shall we escape?
I intended to.
I intended to later, but there wasn't any
later time.
I didn't understand, but they understood enough.
I was too busy, but as the song
says, at last they have found time to
die.
Somebody else says, nobody in my crowd paid
any attention, but it's always so.
When the saving voice of God speaks to
a crowd of men, it's only one here
and there that hears it.
When the voice of God speaks to a
family that heard it, the rest of them
are overthrown in the flood.
Somebody else says, if I pay attention to
this, I'll lose my job.
The chances are you won't, but if you
do, any job that you lose that saves
your soul, guarantees your heaven, certainly will be
a wonderful bargain.
Somebody else says, I want to have some
fun yet and then I will become a
Christian.
I've heard that no later than this week.
I won't answer that.
That's too, it is too meaningless, lacking in
significance to warrant any answer to all.
And then others say, I was afraid of
what people would say.
Afraid of what people would say.
Society is in a conspiracy to make us
all alike.
Society is in a conspiracy to make us
all bad.
Not too bad, because if we get too
bad, we're problems to the police.
But not too good, for if we get
too good, we're fanatical, so they say.
So society wants to keep us nice, trimmed
down, going to church, supporting boys' clubs and
girls' clubs and hospitals and all those things
are all right, certainly.
But society wants to keep us just good
enough not to be a problem to the
police and bad enough not to bother their
conscience.
But I hear the voice of God calling
us to a better kind of life.
And that's why the book of Hebrews was
written at all.
The whole book of Hebrews was written to
people half in and half out.
People on the borderline, some were in, some
had tasted the good word of God and
some were gazing over.
Nobody wanted to buy.
And the man wrote the book of Hebrews
an urgent, vibrant, living book that he might
speak to those who were on the border
and say, go on over, you can dare
to do it.
Go on over and speak to those who
couldn't quite make up their mind whether they
wanted to obey and believe.
Say, you dare obey, you dare believe.
That's why the book of Hebrews was written.
May God grant that we do not let
these things slip away from us, that we
do not drift away from them, and that
we do not allow the truth to leak
out of our hearts.
There's any time of the year when the
truth leaks away, it's summertime, because there's everything
to do and short time to do it
and all the rest.
But by the grace of God, we must
not allow this to happen.
We must keep our hearts spiritual and we
must go on with God.
We must feed on the word day and
night.
We must pray often and we must pray
regularly and we must obey.
We must repent.
We must do the will of God.
Lest the coming of the Lord come upon
us and we know it not.
Now, Father, we pray thee, bless this truth.
Long ago thy servant wrote these words.
We, thy servants, in this time long after
hear them.
There is a living as if they had
been written yesterday and delivered this morning.
O God, we lift our eyes to thee,
to thy Son, Jesus Christ, the Lord, who
is above angels and who sitteth at thy
right hand and we pray, give to us
a spiritual urgency.
Give to us a longing which is more
than human.
Give to us, we pray thee, a desire
that's like a fire burning in our bones.
That the claims of Christ, thy Holy Son,
may be so strong within us that we
cannot neglect them.
We shall press on like the day spring,
rise higher and higher to the shining light
and unto the perfect day.
We ask it in the name of Jesus
Christ, our Lord.
Amen.