It's chapter 2, and I think that the
subject as introduced in the calendar is very
evident, very evidently based on the passage there.
I think it will be appropriate if we
read it once again because I would pray
that the thrust of this whole passage might,
by the grace of God, grip us tonight.
We are all, I fear, we are all
in danger of drifting whether we be professing
Christian or whether we be not Christian.
And there is a danger here which we
need to look at.
Let me just read these first four verses
once again, therefore.
In the light of everything that the writer
has said in the first chapter, now he
comes, and you notice, 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, the 7th verse is therefore, and he
links what he's saying here with what has
gone before, and that therefore is a very
important link.
We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to
what we have heard, so that we do
not drift away.
For if the message spoken by angels was
binding, and every violation and disobedience received its
just punishment, how shall we escape if we
ignore such a great salvation?
This salvation which was first announced by the
Lord was confirmed to us by those who
heard him.
God also testified to it by signs, wonders,
and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy
Spirit distributed according to his will.
If it is true that there is only
one true God, as we believe, and if
he has spoken to mankind, and particularly if
he has spoken to mankind in a person
who is equal to himself, so that he
was able to say everything he wanted to
say, and do everything he wanted to do,
then it follows necessarily, does it not, that
failure to take heed to what God has
said and done involves us in very serious
consequences.
If there is only one God and he
has spoken, and we fail to take it
seriously, surely the consequences must be grave.
Now, having made such cardinal statements as he
has made at the beginning of the first
chapter, the writer of this letter comes in
chapter 2, he comes here to enlarge and
to apply some of the implications.
And one of the implications is wrapped up
in what I have just tried to say.
We cannot believe that there is only one
God who has spoken to mankind in his
co-equal Son.
We cannot truly believe that and play with
it.
We must take earnest heed to what God,
the omnipotent Creator, Lord and Judge, has said,
if he has spoken at all.
Now, this is a very remarkable passage.
It's one of the great, one of the
gigantic passages we find in the Epistle to
the Hebrews.
I want to take just one or two
threads out of it this evening and let
them speak for themselves.
We shall keep as close as we can
to the maritime or the nautical language that
is employed here.
And I want us to begin by looking
at the peril that is perceived by the
writer.
It comes out in the first verse.
We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to
what we've heard, so that we do not
drift away.
So that we do not drift away.
He envisages the peril of men and women
who have apparently heard the gospel tidings, but
drifting away from it, not being gripped by
it, not responding to it, not having chosen
to believe it and receive it and act
upon it, as we said in singing just
now that we were doing.
The evident danger envisaged here, therefore, is precisely
that.
There were those among these Hebrew Christians that
are addressed whom the writer felt had simply
gone through the motions of a kind of
decision.
But there were evidences in their lives which
pointed to the fact that really the thing
could not be real.
They were not really anchored in Christ.
They were not really loyal to Him.
As a matter of fact, they were drifting
away from the very port of entrance into
the continent of Christian salvation.
There are a number of pictures, I believe,
a number of metaphors in the mind of
the writer as he writes these words.
Now, we cannot dogmatize as to what predominates,
but it's evident that some such picture as
this or some such pictures as these are
somewhere in the back of his mind.
He's thinking, first of all, of individual people
in terms of a ship on voyage.
He may say that it's a quaint picture,
but it's a very significant picture.
He thinks of people as boats or ships
on the high seas of life moving, going
somewhere.
I don't know whether you've ever thought of
yourself like that.
As a ship on the high seas moving,
going somewhere.
But behind that, there is another picture.
Now, this can be otherwise understood, but I
believe that in the light of what most
of the commentators say, the second picture would
be something like this.
The ship has now come to a point
where it is opposite the harbor entrance and
the landing point that will lead into a
country or a continent concerning which the writer
proceeds to speak under other metaphors in this
remarkable epistle.
In this very context, he speaks of it
as a so great salvation.
That's one way of speaking about it.
Later on, he will speak about it as
being within the veil.
That speaks of intimate spiritual intercourse with God.
Not a veil between.
Of coming close up to the almighty God
of the universe and being able to hold
converse and communion with him.
And he uses various metaphors, various images, but
right here, he's talking about the way in.
And continuing with this image, this nautical image
of individuals as a ship on voyage, they've
now come to the place where it is
possible, if they will, by the grace of
God, it is possible here, at this point,
if they move in this direction, it is
possible to enter into the country, to step
onto the continent of Christian salvation and to
move into an ever larger experience of the
grace and the power and the mercy of
God, if they follow the teaching that has
been given them.
Then there is another picture in his mind.
He sees that possibility.
The ships are there on the high seas.
They're supposed to be going somewhere.
There is the harbor and the point of
entry, but he discerns an unseen current.
Whether the people in the ships, whether the
ships, the human ships, are seeing what's happening
or not, he sees, he discerns, the writer
discerns, an undercurrent carrying them away from that
important and only point of entry into salvation.
And he sees them now like ships adrift,
without any power of their own to move
in the direction they ought to go, but
he sees them being gradually carried by the
tide, gradually being borne away and gradually coming
further and further from the one and the
only entry, let me repeat, to the continent,
into the continent of salvation, drifting, drifting, drifting.
Of course, we may laugh.
Drifting is not so important if that which
is drifting is just driftwood, if it's only
a little bit of flotsam, if it's only
an old branch of a tree or a
little bit of old furniture that somebody's thrown
away.
It doesn't matter so much.
You can watch it drifting, what does it
matter?
Let it go with the tide.
But if it's a child, if it's a
man or a woman made after God's image
with eternity in his heart, in his soul,
then it's all so different.
For an immortal soul made after the image
of God with a capacity to live for
all eternity somewhere is drifting and in danger
of passing the only place of entry into
that within the veil.
Then that is very serious.
A peril perceived.
A ship.
A drift.
A human vessel.
I wonder whether that could be a picture
of some of us tonight.
I wonder.
May God grant us to know if that
is the case, to come to ourselves and
to recognize it and by the grace of
Almighty God to be able to turn around
and steer the ship into the place of
refuge provided by God and into the beginnings
of an experience of life everlasting with Him.
We ought to take the more earnest keys,
says one of the translations, of the things
which we have seen and heard, particularly the
things we've heard, lest we should slip beyond
their reach.
Now the second thing that we notice here
is the plea that is addressed.
The plea, and it is here, is it
not?
You can hear this.
This writer is more emotional here than he
is in many places in this great epistle.
I don't think he was a very emotional
person.
But even here, actually, it's the intellectual that
predominates.
But you can hear a sense of peril
here.
He's in anguish here.
You see, he's afraid that these people are
going to be lost.
And so you can sense that.
I simply cannot read this passage without overhearing
the grim undertones of a siren warning of
danger.
Or, more accurately, of course, it is not
so much the wail of an impersonal mechanism,
a siren or a foghorn or some electric
alarm system.
No, no, not at all.
It's rather the cry of a faithful friend
who can see what others can't.
And out of the faithfulness of his soul
and the compassion of his spirit he cries,
Warning!
Be careful!
You're passing the point of entry into God's
so great salvation.
Be careful.
It is true that the rational predominates, as
I've said, because he bids them to pay
more attention, to come and think seriously.
That's the invitation.
But under all that, behind all that, beneath
all that, is this great compassion of his,
this great concern of his.
The writer of this letter shares, I believe,
the very same compassionate concern as his divine
Lord on an earlier occasion, you remember.
And in not altogether dissimilar circumstances.
Matthew and Luke record the agonizing cry of
our Lord Jesus over the city of Jerusalem.
Jesus discerned that whatever he said, whatever he
did, there was nothing anymore that would persuade
those dear people, the ancient Jews of ancient
Jerusalem, there was nothing in the whole wide
world that even the incarnate Lord could do
to persuade them that he was the Son
of God, the Messiah.
They would not believe.
And so, these two evangelists record this amazing
prayer of his.
Oh, Jerusalem, this cry of his, I should
say.
Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets
and stone those sent to you.
How often I have longed to gather your
children together as a hen gathers her chicks
under her wings.
Are you not willing?
Look, your house is left to you desolate.
For I tell you, you will not see
me again until you say, Blessed is he
who comes in the name of the Lord.
There are some evident similarities between those two
incidents and between the pleading voices in both
cases, but there is one evident difference.
There in ancient Jerusalem, they've crossed the line
of no return.
The people addressed by the writer of the
letter to the Hebrews had not yet crossed
that line, it seems.
There was still the possibility, there was still
the hope that they would return and draw
near against the current and enter through the
harbor into the salvation that God had made
possible in Christ Jesus.
And here, he pleads with them, and he
does so primarily in asking them to think.
Look at the burden of his message.
He reminds them in the first place of
some lessons from the past.
Look at verse 2.
For if the message spoken by angels was
binding, and every violation and disobedience received its
just punishment...
Now, that's enough for a moment.
Let's just look at that.
The ancient Christian Jewish community addressed here would
know exactly what he was referring to.
We must know likewise in order to appreciate
the thrust of his message.
The primary reference here is to the giving
of the law to ancient Israel.
God's mind was made known to the ancient
people through the prophets, as we read in
chapter 1 here, but especially through the law.
And there are indications in both the Old
and the New Testaments that angels somehow or
other had a share in the mediation, in
mediating the word of the eternal law to
man through Moses.
Somehow or other, the Old Testament and the
New indicate that angels were involved there somewhere.
Now, it doesn't matter where.
We just take it as a general reference.
Angels were involved somewhere, so that it is
right to say that the law was mediated
through angels.
They had a share in it.
The reference to angels is most natural in
this passage, because you remember, as I read
from chapter 1, the writer there has gathered
together all kinds of scriptures from various parts
of the Old Testament to prove one thing.
To prove that the Son, in and through
whom God has spoken in these last days,
was infinitely higher and greater than all the
angels put together, and than any human creature,
angelic or human.
The Son was infinitely greater than anyone, anywhere,
anytime.
Now, he says, if the word spoken through
angels was so steadfast, that's the word that
is used, so abiding, so unmovable, you couldn't
change it, you couldn't get rid of it,
you couldn't gloss over it, you couldn't jump
over it, you couldn't avoid it without consequences.
If the word spoken by angels was a
word and you broke it, you were inevitably
punished by consequences that corresponded.
Then, and this is the thrust of the
whole thing, how much sorer will be the
accountability and the punishment due to those who
neglect not the word that God has spoken
through angels, but through his infinitely greater Son.
The late Bishop Westcott describes this passage about
the law here by telling us, by saying,
or by writing words to this effect.
He says, there is a self-executing power
in the law.
You turn back to the law of the
Old Testament and it has a self-executing
power.
You break it, you don't really break it,
it breaks you.
You break yourself, to be more accurately.
When you disobey the word of God, when
you disobey the law that was mediated even
through angels and the man Moses, when you
disobey the law of God, you literally break
yourself.
And there is no need for any human
being to come in to do anything.
God sees to it all.
It just happens by the divine ordinance.
Because God is just.
Whether it happens immediately or ultimately is neither
here nor there.
You read in the Old Testament, book of
Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and other books there, you
read of how the law of God was
often applied immediately and men and women were
punished there and then for their sins.
That doesn't always happen.
God has appointed a day of judgment.
Many of us escape judgment in this world.
God delays the consequences of His just retribution.
But we cannot escape it.
It is involved in the law, says this
writer.
There is a self-executing power in it.
And sooner or later, the day will come
when it will catch up with us, even
though God only spoke the law through angels
and Moses, though Moses is not mentioned here.
Now then, immediately afterwards, the writer goes on
to relate that fact to the realities of
the present, as far as these Hebrew professing
Christians were concerned, and I believe as far
as you and I are concerned.
If the message spoken by angels was binding,
and every violation and disobedience received its just
punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore
such a great salvation?
The salvation of which the New Testament declares
is such an immense, such a majestic, such
a glorious phenomenon, there is nothing to compare
with it.
Its architect was none other than the Almighty
God Himself.
And the one who made it possible was
none other than God's own and co-equal
Son, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of the
Old Testament, the servant of Jehovah become flesh,
God incarnate.
There could be no greater.
And the Lord incarnate did not only live
the perfect life, He died an atoning death
for sin.
He died in the place of sinners.
He took the sins of men upon Himself,
and He, the greatest of all beings, died
the death that was due to transgressors.
Not only that, He Himself preached the message
that through Him and His death, men might
be forgiven and come to God and be
His children and His redeemed.
He preached it.
He declared it.
And He ordained others to go into all
the world and declare the same message.
Neither is that all.
When the disciples went forth to preach that
message, He, the Lord Jesus, in fellowship with
the Father, sent forth the Holy Spirit to
bear witness to the fact that the disciples
who were preaching this message were preaching a
divine message.
You often ask, or some people often ask,
why is it that we encounter so many
miracles in the New Testament that we don't
meet today?
Now, there may be many parts to the
answer that ought to be given to that
question.
But one aspect of it is this.
There, way back there, way back in the
New Testament times, it was necessary for men
and women to see that the Word given
by the Lord Jesus to His disciples to
declare to the nations was indeed the Word
of God.
That the Gospel was really the Gospel as
conveyed by the Lord, conveyed by the Son
of God to His disciples.
That they hadn't added to it or taken
away from it.
That it was the authoritative Gospel of God
to sinners.
And how could that be done?
Well, there were gifts of the Holy Spirit.
There were all kinds of things that went
on.
The Holy Spirit evidently imparted gifts.
And there were signs and there were wonders
which manifestly indicated that these men were in
the hand of God.
And their message was the message that God
had given them.
They were not liars.
They were not fabricators.
They were not dreamers.
God was with them, you see.
Now, can you see the point?
If the Word spoken by angels was such
that every transgression received a just recompense of
reward, how shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation?
It originated in God.
It was made possible by God's Son.
It is confirmed by God the Holy Spirit.
It is eternal.
It brings men and women into fellowship with
the living God Himself.
And the half has not been said.
I can't speak of it all tonight.
But you see the thrust.
How can we escape if we neglect, if
we allow ourselves to drift past the entry
into the harbor that leads into this continent
of experience?
Now, can you answer that question?
If you can't answer that question, there is
something that you as an intelligent creature will
want to do tonight.
If you say, well, I know how to
escape.
I can escape the consequences of drifting along
and paying no heed to the gospel.
I can escape the consequences.
I know some way out.
Well, all right, if you are sure that
there is a way out, carry on.
But if you have no answer to the
question of this writer, then, my friend, before
you leave this sanctuary, you need to give
them more earnest heed to the things you've
heard.
Lest in slipping away from them, you will
not be able to turn your back around,
for the tide will be so completely against
you, that you'll never find harbor again.
Oh, this is a serious message, this.
You see, it is so true, isn't it?
You and I are being influenced by unseen
tides and currents of thought and influence.
Some of them very pagan.
I was thinking of some of them as
my colleague Mr. McLeod was speaking this morning
about secularism.
We are being influenced, whether we like it
or not, by our newspapers, by everything we
hear with our ears and see with our
eyes.
We are being influenced, and there's a tide
that is taking us away from what God
has done and said in His co-equal
Son, and confirmed by His co-equal Spirit.
And yet we think we'll get away with
it.
One is grateful for the learning and the
institutions of learning in our day.
But you know, in many, many institutions of
learning, that which is taught seems
only to enable man to drift further away
from God.
And the knowledge that is purveyed is very
rarely a knowledge that makes known the Creator,
the Lord, the Savior of man.
One of our contemporary preachers has highlighted this
tragedy by referring to Gerald Kennedy's report of
this startling experience of a man who visited
the Bell Laboratories.
Let me read this to you.
On the desk of one of the executives
of the Bell Laboratories, this visitor saw a
machine that truly represents the end of the
line.
It was a small wooden casket, the size
of a cigar box, with a single switch
on the side.
When you flip the switch, there's a buzzing
sound, and the lid slowly rises so that
a hand can emerge.
The hand reaches down, turns off the switch,
and then goes back into the box.
The lid then comes down, and the buzzing
ceases.
That's all there is to it.
A machine that does nothing but switch itself
off.
Men and women, that might be laughable were
it not for the tragedy that secular knowledge
in our world today is doing precisely that.
It is providing knowledge for mankind to switch
itself off.
Millions of our students on our campuses are
taking their own lives.
The percentage is larger among them than among
any other community.
Many others are just switching themselves off from
God, and they are left with a night
to which there is no star.
Charles Wesley, in two rather unfamiliar stanzas, provides
what may well be the pattern for us
as we conclude our evening's meditation.
I'm not familiar with these, but a dear
friend of mine, with whom I once worked
very closely, discovered them somewhere in Wesley's books.
And here they are.
He was so steeped in scripture too.
Loosed from my God, says Charles Wesley, and
far removed.
Long have I wandered to and fro, On
earth in endless circles roved, Nor found whereon
to rest below.
Back to my God, at last I fly,
For all the waters still are high.
Fill with inviolable peace, Establish and keep my
settled heart.
In Thee may all my wandering cease, From
Thee no more may I depart.
Thy utmost goodness called to prove, Loved with
an everlasting love.
Will you join him?
Wanderer, drifter, turn, come into the
harbor which God has provided for men and
women like you and myself.
This is the day of salvation.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we bless you for the occasion
that brings us together, this being the Lord's
Day.
The day on which our Lord Jesus rose
from the dead when he had finished the
work of salvation, and thus the day on
which his great salvation, planned by yourself, rendered
possible by him, was sealed with a heavenly
seal.
This is the day.
And tonight, our Father, we pray that those
of us gathered here may not only be
solemnized by the sentiments of this inspired writer
to the Hebrews, but, O God, that we
may be constrained by your word through him
to take the more earnest heed and make
our penitent way to your feet.
In Christ, your Son, we ask it in
his holy name.
Amen.