Heb 2:1–4 — Such a Great Salvation

We have looked at Hebrews chapter one and the superiority of Christ over the angels. No angel was ever given these words, you are my son, today I have begotten you. No angel was ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

Pay Closer Attention

We have the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God who became man, who has accomplished our salvation and has now been exalted to the right hand of God. What a glorious King, Lord, and Savior we have. And so the author of Hebrews then turns to his first exhortation There are many of these sprinkled throughout the letter to the Hebrews, these calls to persevere in faith, these calls not to turn away from the Lord, but to persevere in confessing him. And so we have our first one here in our text today, Hebrews 2. Verse 1, therefore, in view of this glorious Son, this superior Son who is far greater than the angels, who has accomplished a far greater salvation than was experienced by the people of God in the old covenant, therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

We must be diligent to fan the flames of an earnest faith in the Lord, to be deliberate about not forgetting these wonderful truths. We must pay much closer attention to the gospel lest we drift away from it. If we do not pay attention, if we do not make that deliberate effort to not forget, to not drift, then we will drift away. And if we do not pay attention, We do not strive to continue to believe in the Lord, then we will begin to forget.

That is the application that we are going to look at the end of the sermon. That is the application, is let us remember the gospel and let us be deliberate about it. The author of Hebrews continues on and gives a reason why. Why is it that we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard?

The Binding Word Delivered by Angels

Well, he makes this argument in verses two through four about the similarity and also the dissimilarity between the old covenant and the new. 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? What is the message declared by angels? The message declared by angels is the old covenant, also referred to as the law. Angels were closely associated with the inauguration of the old covenant.

You can read about it in the book of Exodus. All throughout the book of Exodus, angels are mentioned. For example, in Exodus chapter three, as God is beginning to call Moses and prepare him for this wonderful work, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And it says, God called to him out of the bush. Is it the angel that called to him or is it God who called to him? It is God who called to him out of the bush through the mediation of an angel.

Again, later on in Exodus chapter 19, this is after the 10 plagues of Egypt, after they have come up out of the Red Sea and come into Mount Sinai. In Exodus chapter 19, Israel encamped before the mountain, before Mount Sinai, while Moses went up to God. And again, we have the same language. It says, the Lord called to him out of the Red Sea. Not the bush this time, but out of the mountain.

The Lord called to him out of the mountain. The fact that it uses that same language, just as we saw in Exodus 3, that God, through the mediation of the angel of the Lord, called to him out of the bush. So also here, we are to understand, even though the angel is not explicitly mentioned, we are to understand that the Lord, through the mediation of the angel, called to Moses out of the mountain.

Then we have the giving of the Ten Commandments and some additional civil laws. Then in Exodus chapter 23, this is all before Mount Sinai. Chapter 19, they come to Sinai. Chapter 20 is the giving of the Ten Commandments. Chapters 21 through 23 are additional laws.

And at the end of Exodus 23, God says, Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. “‘Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.’” My name is in him. An interesting descriptor for an angel, that God placed his name in the angel, indicating clearly this idea that God is using the angel to mediate his revelation. Paying careful attention to obey the voice of the angel is simply another way of saying, pay careful attention to obey my voice, the voice of Yahweh, and do not rebel against me, for I will not pardon your transgression. God is speaking through the angel.

Later on in Deuteronomy, in Deuteronomy chapter 33 and verse 2, we have a reminiscence. This is now 40 years later. The wilderness generation has died and the next generation is about to go into the land. Moses is about to pass on the torch to Joshua. And Moses is recounting what happened at Sinai.

And he says that God appeared in a theophany at Mount Sinai, accompanied by myriads of angels, myriads of his holy ones. And that language of God at Sinai accompanied by myriads of angels is repeated again in Psalm 68 verse 17, which is a further reflection upon Deuteronomy 33 and the events that took place at Mount Sinai.

Angels, by their very nature, are messengers. That is what the word angel means, both in Hebrew and in Greek. An angel is a messenger, a messenger from God. They are a messenger from the heavenly invisible realm where God dwells in heaven. And therefore, if Sinai, if God’s coming to his people at Mount Sinai was heaven coming to earth, if it was an angel-filled theophany, then it follows that they were involved in communicating the divine message. That we refer to as the law. That is what the author of Hebrews is referring to in our text when he says, the message that is the law was declared by angels. Of course, it was God himself. It was Yahweh who spoke all these words, but he did so through this theophany, which includes not only the glory cloud, but also the angels that are associated with it.

In Jewish tradition, after the writing of the Old Testament, in Jewish tradition, this tight connection between the giving of the law and angels was made even clearer. It is implicit in the text, although in Exodus 19 through 23, it does not specifically mention that angels communicated the law. But it is implied, and the Jewish tradition saw that implication in the text and made it even clearer and said that the law was given by angels.

And the fact that particular Jewish tradition was agreed to and reinforced by the New Testament writers is made clear in our text here in Hebrews 2 verse 2. There are also two other passages, in the New Testament that mention this. In Stephen’s speech in Acts 7, verse 53, and in Paul’s letter to the Galatians in chapter 3, verse 19. So there are three New Testament verses which state that the law was given by angels, that is, through the mediation of angels. Reaffirming a Jewish tradition, which itself is based upon drawing out the inferences within the text of the Old Testament itself.

This explains why it is that the author of Hebrews began in Hebrews 1 with this long exercise of proving the superiority of the sun over the angels. Why spend so much time proving this point that the sun is superior to angels? The reason is that he is preparing for this argument here in our text.

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, how shall we escape if we neglect this great salvation that was spoken not by angels, but by the Lord Jesus himself, by the Son. The law was glorious. It was mediated by angels. It was accompanied by all the signs of theophany, the fire and the thunder and the sound of the trumpet and myriads of angels. And it was very impressive. And when God gave the law and made that covenant with God’s people at Mount Sinai, the Sinai Covenant, it was impressive. It was powerful. It was It was impressed upon the minds of the people of God just how awesome God is, just how holy God is, just how weighty and significant this covenant is, and how important it is not to disobey the Lord’s commands.

Confirmed by the Lord and His Apostles

How much more impressive, how much more of an impact ought it to make upon us when we are not standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, but we are sitting in the congregation of God’s people like us here today, and we are hearing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed by the Son of God. And testified to by the signs and wonders that were accompanying the coming of the new covenant in the early church as well as the attestation of the apostles. That is mentioned in verse 3. This salvation was declared at first by the Lord, that is by the Lord Jesus himself when he was here on earth, and it was attested to us, it was confirmed to us by those who heard Jesus, that is by the disciples, by the apostles. Just as Israel at Mount Sinai was in awe of this glorious God and this covenant that he was making with his people, so also we ought to be in awe of the new covenant that has been communicated to us through Christ, the Son of God, through the apostles, and also with God’s own bearing witness to it by giving signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

Now let us go back to verse two, because the argument is not only to see that the mediation of angels is surpassed by the mediation of Christ the Son in the making of the new covenant, but there is another point as well which is made there. It says, verse two, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution.

Now when we see that language there, every transgression or disobedience, where it is a little bit easier, it is easy for us to mistake that and to think that it is just talking about ordinary sins. But it is not just talking about ordinary sins that we commit, that even the Israelites committed. It is talking about a specific kind of sin. It is talking about covenant-breaking sins. Is talking about the kind of sins that indicate a heart that has been hardened in unbelief. And we know this because if you turn to the next chapter of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 3, the author of Hebrews recounts some of these transgressions and these acts of disobedience that were punished in the Old Covenant.

So in Hebrews chapter 3 and verses 16 through 19, We read these words, as it is said, today, if you hear his voice, I am actually backing up to verse 15, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. That is a key idea. It is not just talking about ordinary sin, but sins in which you harden your heart against God and rebel against him.

For, verse 16, who were those who heard and yet rebelled? They heard the law, they heard God’s covenant that was made at Mount Sinai, and yet they rebelled. Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

So the same language is used here. You have the language of rebellion, the language of disobedience in chapter 3, but that is fleshing out for us a little bit more about what it means in verse 2 of our text that every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. Every time the people of God sinned against God in a rebellious way, rejecting God’s promises, rejecting the establishment of Moses as their prophet and leader. God visited them with swift judgment and retribution. Every transgression was swiftly punished.

It is interesting that you do not see this operating in the time of the patriarchs. You go back before the coming of the law at Mount Sinai to the time of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. They too received God’s covenant promises. But you do not see this idea of them being struck with immediate death whenever they sinned or disobeyed the Lord.

But you do see it beginning in the book of Exodus, beginning with this old covenant that God made at Mount Sinai, indicating that God was taking sin very seriously. God is teaching God’s people. He is teaching them that He is a holy God, and that if God’s people reject the covenant, if they disobey in that hard-hearted rebellious way, God will not take it lightly, but will bring swift retribution against them. Just read throughout the book of throughout the Pentateuch, from Exodus to the book of Numbers especially, there are many incidents.

When they complained against the Lord because of a lack of water or food, or when they said, who made this Moses to be the ruler over us? The sons of Korah rebelled against the leadership and authority of Moses and Aaron, and God had the earth swallow them up alive. Or the most, the biggest moment of rebellion in the wilderness wandering years was the rebellion at Kadesh. The rebellion at Kadesh.

This was when God sent the spies into the land to spy out the land. And they came back with a bad report, except for Caleb and Joshua, but 10 of the spies came back with a bad report. They said, it is too hard for us. We cannot do it. There is giants in the land. And they turned God’s people, and they turned them to a heart of unbelief, and saying, God is not going to be able to bring us into the land.

Even though, astonishingly, they had just seen, decades before, that God had delivered them from Egypt, and brought them through the waters of the Red Sea, divided the water before them, and brought them in. They should have known that God would provide for them, that he would protect them, that he would give them the victory over their enemies. But yet they rebelled against the Lord because they had a heart, an evil heart of unbelief in rejecting God’s promise.

The author of Hebrews is going to spend quite a bit of time on that particular moment of rebellion in Hebrews chapter three and four. And he is going to say that today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did at Kadesh, but continue to believe in the gospel and strive to enter that rest by faith.

So our text here is very clearly making a comparison between the Old Covenant and the New. The term Old Covenant, the term New Covenant is not used in our text, but clearly this is what it is referring to. All of this language here is covenantal language. Even the language of transgression means to transgress a covenant, or the idea that there is a just retribution when they break the covenant.

Also the language here of the message declared by angels proving to be reliable. In verse two, that language of being reliable could also be translated as legally binding. The message, the law, declared by angels proved to be legally binding. And how do we see that? We see it because every covenant-breaking transgression and disobedience received a just retribution. And so the author of Hebrews is making the comparison, but also showing the dissimilarity, but the comparison and the dissimilarity between the old covenant and the new. If the message declared by angels proved to be legally binding, and every covenant breaking was judged by God, how shall we, how shall we in the new covenant escape if we neglect this great salvation that we have in Christ?

This great salvation that, as he goes on to say in verses 3 and 4, was declared first by the Lord Jesus and was attested to us by those who heard him, that is by the original disciples. It was declared at first by the Lord, the Lord himself, the Lord Jesus himself when he was on the earth and he was going around and preaching the gospel and healing the sick. He was declaring this great salvation.

That is an interesting thought to think about. I do not think we often really dwell on that reality, but it is an important truth that Jesus was a preacher of the gospel. We tend to just think of Paul and the apostles as being preachers of the gospel, but Jesus himself preached the gospel. In fact, if you recall, in Luke chapter four, when he made his inaugural sermon at Nazareth, in the synagogue of Nazareth, his hometown. Luke tells us that was the first sermon he gave.

What does he do? He opens up the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And he reads from Isaiah 61, which says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. Why? Because he has anointed me. He has commissioned me to do what? To proclaim good news to the poor. That is the word preaching the gospel. In Greek, it is the same word. He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. Not referring to the economically poor, but to the poor in spirit, to those who know their need and come to the Lord for grace and forgiveness. To the humble, not to the Pharisees who are proud, but to all the sinners and the tax collectors and those that are like the disciples who have no earthly righteousness, but who are looking to Christ for their deliverance and salvation.

Our text here reminds us of that wonderful truth that we so often forget, that this great salvation that is revealed to us in the New Covenant age, this great salvation was first declared by the Lord Jesus himself when he was on this earth. He proclaimed it through word and deed, through word because he preached the gospel, He communicated the truth of the gospel to God’s people, but he also proclaimed it with deeds that backed up that gospel. Every time he healed the sick or cast out a demon, he is declaring the same gospel in an outward way, confirming the truth of the gospel that he was proclaiming. Just as he said to the paralyzed man, he said to the paralyzed man, remember the first miracle that Jesus does?

He says, Son, your sins are forgiven. He does not heal him right away. He says, sons, your sins are forgiven. And the Pharisee said, who is this who can forgive sins? And then he says, but so that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So that you may know that I do indeed have this good news to preach to the poor. He said to the man, take up your bed and walk.

The outward healing of the man’s sickness was a sign of a confirmation of the good news of the gospel of the forgiveness of sins. Jesus himself proclaimed and declared the good news of the gospel, not angels, But the Son, the Son of God Himself declared this gospel and proclaimed it to the people.

And furthermore, it was attested to us by those who heard. This word attested is actually the verb form of the same adjective that was used in verse two that is translated reliable. Or I said, I translate it also as legally binding. The message declared by angels proved to be legally binding. And then go down to verse 3b, this new covenant gospel, the gospel of the new covenant was declared at first by the Lord and it was made legally binding, it was confirmed legally to us by those who heard, by the apostles themselves. The apostles were Similar to the witnesses that bear witness to the truth of the gospel, just like the angels were messengers and witnesses of the truth of the Old Covenant, the apostles also bore witness. They confirmed it. They made it legally binding to us.

And as well, we also have a reference here in our text to the various signs and wonders and miracles that were done in the early church. Just read the first few chapters of the book of Acts. You have the day of Pentecost itself, when all the first disciples spoke in tongues and communicated the gospel to all of the visitors in Jerusalem in their own language. Some of the other signs and wonders that happen through the apostles remind us a lot, do they not, of what was happening in the days of Moses.

For example, we saw, I mentioned already, that the sons of Korah rejected the authority of Moses and Aaron and God judged them. We have something similar, do we not, in the book of Acts? Remember in Acts chapter five, when Ananias and Sapphira lied? And they were struck dead immediately? That sounds very Old Testament-y, does it not? Sounds like Old Testament stuff happening there. That does not happen today. We do not do that today. We do not say, if you lie or if you sin, we are going to strike you dead. No, we do not have that power.

But what God is showing us in the text is that what is happening at the very beginning of the foundation of the new covenant is very similar to what happened at the days of the foundation of the old covenant. It was attested to us. It was not just attested, it was legally confirmed. It was covenantally confirmed to us by the apostles with God himself bearing witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

What are some implications that we can draw out of this text? The first implication I would like to draw out of this text is that this passage is a powerful rebuke to all of those in our contemporary scene who claim to have the power of the apostolic office and the ability to perform signs and wonders. There is a movement out there called the New Apostolic Reformation, you may have heard of, NAR.

And these people are false teachers. They are claiming to have this same power and this same authority that we see here in our text, that according to the author of Hebrews, even from his perspective, was already in the past. He is writing this some 40 years after the day of Pentecost. And he is already looking at this as something in the past.

He says that this inaugural Covenant Foundation This foundational covenant-making event took place in the days of Jesus when he was on earth preaching the gospel, and it was legally confirmed to us by the apostles who heard the Lord, but we were not there. We are simply hearing it from the apostles.

And God bore witness to this foundational event of the establishment of the new covenant, just like with Moses and Israel in the Old Covenant. This passage here is clearly making a comparison between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant event, the event when those covenants were established.

When the Old Covenant was established, it was accompanied by miracles. Remember Moses, he performed those 10 plagues, turning the river of the Nile into blood. God gave Moses the power and the ability to perform miracles, not in his own strength, but by the Spirit working in him. There were signs and wonders associated with the establishment of the Old Covenant. And it was all done with a purpose in view, to show the people how serious this is, that God is acting in history, that he is making a covenant that is legally binding with God’s people.

Those today who claim that they are apostles or claim that they can perform signs and wonders, they are false teachers because they are claiming something that totally contradicts the teaching of the scriptures concerning the purpose of that apostolic office and the purpose of those signs and wonders, which was associated with the foundational events of the making of the new covenant. And is not something that we should aspire to today.

Now it is true that we can pray and ask the Lord to perform a miracle and heal someone with cancer, but we are not claiming that it is by our power that we are somehow performing a sign and wonder. We are not making a covenant. Yes, the Lord does miracles even today. He can do anything at any time, and we can pray and ask Him to do that. But that is not the same thing as these covenant foundational events that confirm the reality of a covenant that is being confirmed once for all. So that is the first implication of our text.

It is the answer to all of these false teachers who are running around today claiming these things. And they are all false. They are all manufactured. They are not true. They are not true miracles. I am sure you have heard that quip. If it were really true that they had the power to do that, why are they not over there in the hospitals healing everybody and emptying the hospitals right now if they really had the power to do that? It is all a fabrication and a claim to spirituality that is belied by the reality of the teachings of the New Testament. Another implication that we get from our text that I think is very significant is to understand the nature of our Bibles. What is our Bible? Our Bible is It is divided into two parts.

The Old Testament and the New Testament. The word testament is simply the word covenant. It is the Latin version of the word for covenant. And so our Bibles are a record of and a report of these two covenants that God made. The Old Covenant, summarized in the writings of the Old Testament, and the New Covenant, which is given for us in the writings of the New Testament. God’s word, when he comes and gives us his word, is covenantal. He gives us his word in the form of covenants. It is true that there can be, after the covenant has been made, there can be further revelation. For example, in the Old Testament, this with many prophets being raised up.

But what are the prophets doing? The prophets are coming to either remind us of how we have fallen short in not keeping the covenant, and to warn us about judgment or to tell us about the coming of a new covenant. That is what the prophets are all about. The prophets are all about the two-fold revelation of calling God’s people to obedience and repentance and warning them that the covenant sanctions are coming if they disobey. But also in the midst of that judgment and warning to look ahead to the days of the Messiah and the making of the new covenant.

All of scripture is covenantal, even the parts that do not immediately seem that way. Like, for example, the Psalms. The Psalms do not immediately jump out at you as being covenantal, and yet the more you study them, the more how often the Psalms meditate upon these glorious covenants. Psalm 105, which I use for the call to worship, is all about that, remembering the covenant that God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, rejoicing in it, praising God for it, calling God to be faithful to it. Even the laments are asking, God, you made these promises and yet right now it does not seem like they are being fulfilled. How long, oh Lord? And yet the psalmists turn always, even when they cry out in their lament, they always turn to trust, saying, the Lord was faithful in the past, so I know that he will be faithful again in the future. All of scripture is covenantal.

It either belongs to the record of and all of the associated materials associated with the old covenant, or it belongs to the record of and all of the materials associated with the new covenant. The four gospels are telling us, just like the book of Exodus in the Old Testament is telling us the account of how God called the covenant mediator, and then how through that covenant mediator, he established a new covenant, The Gospels are just like the book of Exodus. Exodus focuses upon Moses, who was a type of Christ, and about the covenant that God made through him. So also the Gospels focus on Christ, the new Moses, and the covenant that God has established through his death and resurrection. And then we have other writings in the New Testament, such as the epistles, that apply that covenant for us and call us to greater faithfulness to the new covenant and show us the implications of it for our lives. The Bible is a covenantal document divided into two parts, the Old Covenant and the New.

But then thirdly, and this kind of leads right into this. Thirdly, we should see this argument that the author of Hebrews is making here. How much more. If that is the way it was in the old covenant, that it came with these sanctions of judgment for transgression, if it was declared by solemnly declared through the mediation of angels, then how much more should we pay attention to this new covenant that is not established and mediated by angels, but by the son of God himself? That was proclaimed and declared by the Son of God in the flesh, that was legally confirmed to us by the apostolic witness as recorded for us in the Gospels, with God himself bearing witness, God himself saying, yes, this is what I am doing. And he did so by sending those signs and wonders and miracles that were experienced by the early church in the book of Acts.

Such a Great Salvation

All of this should leave us with a tremendous impression. It should leave us with this sense of awe that we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves. It should warn us against the danger of drifting away. This is the application of the text. Since we have such a great salvation, since we have a salvation that is so great, so wonderful, so cosmic in scope, established through the Son of God himself, we must pay much more careful attention to it. And we must guard ourselves against falling away from it.

Apostasy, that is turning away from the Lord, saying, I do not want to have anything to do with the church or with Jesus Christ anymore. I am just going to go live my own life. Apostasy does not usually happen all of a sudden. It usually happens gradually.

It is like when you are out swimming in the ocean and there is a riptide. And you are not really completely aware of it, but you start to slowly shift and drift. If you do not take precautions, if you are not conscious about the fact that you are drifting, you are not aware of it, you can easily begin to drift in the current. Before it, you are way off course.

The Danger of Drifting Away

So that is what the author of Hebrews is warning us against here. We must pay much closer attention to this new covenant, to this glorious gospel, to this glorious salvation that has been established through Christ. Because if we do not, if we do not make that effort to consciously pay attention and to remember the gospel, then we will drift away from it. And then before it, we will have apostatized. If we are elect, we have the promise that God will keep us and preserve us in the faith. But it is nevertheless something that we should be aware of and be conscious of. What can we do to avoid drifting away? How can we avoid drifting away?

Number one, by considering how great this salvation is, how great this new covenant is. It is so awesome. It is so wonderful. It is so rich. It is so deep. It is so profound. It goes all the way back to the eternal counsels of God’s own purpose and plan for everything. It was revealed through types and shadows in the Old Testament and the Old Covenant. And it has come now in the person of Christ in these last days. The greatness of the salvation is directly related to the greatness of the Savior, the Savior who is the basis of this salvation. We should consider how great it is.

I often think that we make the mistake of using the word salvation too lightly. Because in our evangelical culture, we tend to talk about salvation mostly in terms of our own individual conversion. Our salvation. I was saved on March 21st, 1995, whatever it was. And we talk about our story. And we talk about when I was saved.

So the word salvation kind of gets shrunk down to this kind of small individual story. Another problem with it, of course, is what do you do about people that grew up within the church and they do not really have a clear dateable moment where they can say, I was converted on this day. They just grew up in the church and they have always believed in the Lord. So the word salvation, I think, it is too easily shrunk down into a small dimension.

And I do not think that is what the author of Hebrews is referring to when he says, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? He is talking about something much bigger than you or me and our own story. Although that is important, important for us to reflect upon God’s work in our lives and how he has brought us to himself. But he is talking about something so much bigger. He is talking about the salvation that has been accomplished in Christ.

Maybe one way we can avoid Reducing the word salvation down to that small level that is common in our evangelical culture is to change the word. Maybe a better translation would be the word deliverance. Is that not what salvation is? It is deliverance.

When God delivered Israel from the Egyptians and brought them up out of the waters of the Red Sea into the land, and he made them his people, that is what it is for us. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great, such an awesome, such a massive, staggeringly significant deliverance that God has accomplished for us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So how can we avoid drifting away? It is by considering how great this deliverance is and how great the deliverer is, how great is the Son of God who has accomplished that deliverance for us.

And then secondly, another way we can pay much closer attention and avoid drifting away is very simply the application of the letter to the Hebrews. The application of the letter to the Hebrews is found in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 25. Hebrews 10:25 is the whole point of this letter.

That might be overstating it a little bit, But in terms of the practical point that the author of Hebrews is trying to make, he says, not neglecting the habit, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some. It is not just a throwaway line. He is not just giving one particular application to his letter. He is saying, do not neglect meeting together with God’s people on the Lord’s day for worship, but rather encourage one another and all the more as the day drawing near. The author of Hebrews is warning the people because some of them are beginning to absent themselves from worship. They are not coming to worship and they are beginning to drift away.

And you can see how that could happen to any of us. Has it ever happened to you where you have not been to church for a while? And you find yourself kind of drifting away. You find your heart subtly kind of losing that sense of, genuine faith and love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

The things of this world, the entertainments, all of the things that we do in life, some of which are good. We do need to have, we need to go to work. We cannot always be thinking about the gospel every moment of the day. We do need to do things in life like family and work and all those things.

But if we start to neglect worship, then it starts to fade and we are beginning to drift away. That is what the Lord has given us worship for, to remind us again, to set before the eyes of our heart, the spiritual radar of our hearts, to be able to perceive the greatness of this salvation, and to be in awe of it, just like Israel was at the foot of Mount Sinai.

And to not neglect it, but to hold fast to it, and to follow the Lord. Let us draw near to the Lord by faith. And we can do that even now as we come to the Lord’s table, which I think is also part of the reason why the Lord gave us communion. He said, do this in remembrance of me. That we would not forget. And so thank the Lord. He has given us this sacrament to remind us again of the covenant that he has made with us.