Hebrews 2:1-4. 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 recompence 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; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will?
Sometimes it is good for us to stop and inquire as to what use we are making of the Word of God, and what benefit we are receiving from it. This passage is an exhortation for us to give more earnest heed to the things we have heard. We cannot believe in Him of whom we have not heard but, as the Bible makes very clear and as experience makes clear, we can hear without believing. It is of the utmost importance that our hearing should be turned into obedience, and that we should receive the Word in faith and love into our souls.
As enabled, we may consider (1) the things which we have heard; (2) the warning given to those who have heard these things; (3) the exhortation given to those who have heard these things.
1. The things we have heard.
The Apostle is directing attention particularly to the great salvation. We have heard what God has to say about the great salvation. We think first of all of its greatness in the light of what it saves us from. If we do not appreciate our need of salvation, we will never appreciate how great salvation is. In the chapters we read, two things are brought out concerning our need of salvation. There is, on the one hand, the fact that this salvation – this Saviour – delivers from sins, and then there is the fact that He has destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” and delivered those “who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage”.
Sin and death sum up the situation in which we are by nature. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We have transgressed His law, we have disobeyed His commandments, we fell in our first parents, we were born in sin, and sin has characterised our lives from the very beginning. We have not loved the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and we have not loved our neighbour as ourselves. We have broken all the commandments. If we offend in one point, we are guilty of all. If we do not have love to God in our hearts, we are not capable of keeping any of His commandments, and that is our position.
There is none righteous; no, not one, and that has brought us into a state of misery. It has made us liable, as The Shorter Catechism says, “to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever”. The wages of sin is death. God’s justice demands that the soul that sins shall die. That death is not only the separation of soul and body for a time, but being cast away from God, separated from God, shut up under His displeasure for all eternity. As the Catechism says again, “Every sin deserveth God’s wrath and curse, both in this life and that which is to come”.
We do not really believe that by nature. Even when we have that notion in our minds, we do not have that conviction in our hearts. Do we really believe that every sin deserves God’s wrath and curse? Do we really believe that our sin is such an affront to God, such an attack on God, such an undermining of God’s authority that the only just consequence is to be exposed eternally to God’s wrath and curse? We have to get some measure of conviction on this point before we realise how great salvation is and how awful and evil sin is – that it is a bitter thing to sin against the Lord – and how just God is in His condemnation of the sinner. Something of that truth has to get into our conscience before we will ever think of the salvation set before us in the gospel, as something that is beyond any measurement. So one way of bringing out the greatness of salvation is to think of what it saves us from: sin, death and the curse of the broken law.
We also have to think of what salvation introduces us to. The context speaks of God bringing many sons to glory. These people, who were dead in trespasses and sins, whose every sin deserved God’s wrath and curse eternally, are saved; so they are sons of God, whom He is bringing to glory. “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Gal 4:4-7). That is the glory of this salvation.
God’s children are not saved by the skin of their teeth, as it were, although that is how it feels in their experience. They are saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation – so great a salvation that they are not just servants who are reconciled to God, but sons, adopted into His family and given all the privileges of His children, able to come to the throne of the Majesty on high and say, “Our Father, which art in heaven”. He “lifteth the needy out of the dunghill . . . that He may set him . . . with the princes of His people.”
But I think the greatness of salvation here is especially connected with the greatness of the Saviour. That is the theme of this book, and that is what brings home to us the greatness of salvation. When we think that the Saviour is the Son of God, the brightness of His glory, the express image of His Person, the Creator of all things, the One whom the angels worship, and that He has taken on Himself the work of saving His people from their sins. To do that, He has taken our nature: not the nature of angels, not the nature of the highest possible creature, but the nature of man. He has taken on Himself the burden of His people’s sin. He has taken on Himself their curse and condemnation and, by Himself, He has purged their sins. By Himself He has delivered them from the power of Satan, from the power of death, from the fear of death; and it is set before us that the greatest work God has ever done is to save His people from their sins.
Creation is nothing in comparison. He created all things by the Word of His power in the space of six days, and all very good. He could have done it in a moment, in a flash, if He wished. He had His own reasons for spreading it over a week. Up until the time that Christ died, the Sabbath day commemorated the work of creation, and then the Sabbath day was transferred to the first day of the week, the day that Christ rose triumphantly from the grave, because here is something that is more memorable and brings more glory to God than creation. We cannot begin to think of the magnitude of this creation that includes this little world, with its human beings. People are discovering new wonders continually, but all this does nothing to reveal the glory of God compared to the accomplishment of Christ, the Son of God, on the cross of Calvary, when He purged the sins of His people and set them free from Satan’s power.
Satan has his power because we are sinners. That is how he can get us to think the thoughts we think and to have the fears we have. But Christ has deprived him of his power, and surely this manifestation of the greatness and glory of the Son of God in our nature must be a tremendous work! It must be a great salvation. “In that salvation wrought by Thee His glory is made great” (Ps 21:5).
We see the glory of Christ, even on the cross of Calvary, in the face that was marred, the visage that was marred more than that of any man. What a great salvation it is when you think of what sinners are saved from, and what they are saved to, but especially when you think of the great Saviour, the One who is set before us in the everlasting gospel.
We also have to recognise that God Himself has made these things known to us. God spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, but He has spoken to us in these last days by His Son (Heb 1:1-2). As our text says, these things began to be spoken by the Lord. He came from God, the Word made flesh, to reveal the will of God for the salvation of His people. He preached the kingdom of God. He made God known; He made God’s purpose of salvation known. It was known in the Old Testament, but now it is made known with greater clarity by Christ Himself, and what He revealed has been confirmed to us by those that heard Him.
The apostles were communicating what Christ Himself and the Spirit of Christ revealed to them. “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” No scripture is of any private interpretation, which means that it is not coming out of their own minds. It is not the way they think. They are not saying, “I think this is the way it is.” When we read these epistles or any part of God’s Word, we are not getting the writer’s interpretation of what was revealed to him. We are getting what God has infallibly communicated. Yes, the men were fallible and weak, but God made them what they were and gave them the thoughts and the words. God formed everything about them in such a way that, while they were writing these things themselves, what they were writing was the very Word of God. He bore witness to that, as it says here, “with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will”.
In His sovereignty, God accompanied the revelations that were given through these men with signs and wonders, with works of power – which were confirming what they were saying. These works were in accordance with what they were saying, works that were not human but supernatural, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are the signs of the apostles. These things occurred in order to confirm the truth, before the Scriptures were complete, as we have them in the canon of Scripture today. It was a period when revelation was being completed, and the Holy Spirit was giving the people these miracles to give authority to what the apostles were saying.
We do not need the miracles now. We have the complete Bible, but the Holy Spirit still bears witness, not with signs and wonders but by making that Word speak to the souls of sinners and transform them. It is a greater miracle. Why are people wanting things like speaking with tongues? Childish things have no place in the Church of Christ today. The greatest confirming miracle of the truth of the Scriptures is the Scriptures speaking to the souls, minds and consciences of sinners and transforming them, making them new creatures. The Bible comes with its own authority; we do not have to give it authority. It has its own light, its own power. God is still bearing witness by the Holy Spirit to the truth of what God has made known to us through the prophets, through Christ, through the apostles.
Have we felt the power of that truth ourselves? Then we do not need to scrape around for evidences of the truth of Scripture, however useful they are in their own place in addressing the agnostic. The Word of God has its own authority, and we believe it – if we do believe it because its authority has been impressed upon us. The Spirit of God has made the reading and the preaching of the Word a means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in their most holy faith. These are the things which we have heard. We have heard them because God has spoken them, things concerning the great salvation, things concerning the great Saviour.
2. The warning given.
The warning is to take care lest we let slip, lest we neglect, lest we be guilty of disobedience, lest we receive a just recompense of reward. The margin points to containers that are leaking: you pour water into them and it runs out through holes. Does that not describe the hearing of many under the gospel, perhaps all of us at times? The truth is poured into our minds and memories, but as far as efficacy and giving heed are concerned, it just leaks away and leaves no lasting impression.
The other allusion there could be in these words is to a ship at sea or in a great river, and there is a harbour that it is meant to enter, yet because the captain is not paying attention to his charts and instruments and position, but is taken up with other things, it slips past the harbour. That is what many sinners are doing under the gospel. They are drifting along. They are pre-occupied with other things, often legitimate in their own place.
I suppose the lives of most regular gospel hearers in our day are free from scandal and the things they are occupied with are legitimate in themselves, but anything that takes up our attention so that we let slip, or do not give heed to, the things we have heard is dangerous. We ought to examine ourselves as to whether we are in that situation. We hear the Word of God, and the Apostle says, “We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things”. It is as applicable to the preacher as to the hearer. We ought to take heed, lest we let them slip. We can make these things known to others and slip past the harbour ourselves! We have to beware – in the pulpit and in the pew – of neglecting the great salvation. The same word is used in the parable Jesus told about the king that made a marriage for his son. He sent out messengers, servants, to bid people to the marriage. We are told they made light of it, and went, one to his farm and the other to his merchandise. The remnant, the others, took these servants, treated them badly and slew them.
The gospel hearer may not react violently against the gospel or the preacher of the gospel, as they did, but those who neglected the invitation were absent from the marriage supper just as the others were. They missed out on what they were invited to partake of, not by slaying the messengers but by just neglecting it. Most gospel hearers who do not come to know the grace of God in truth are just slipping along, not violently opposed to it consciously – just not really interested, not interested enough for their chief concern to be to have Christ as their Saviour! They are neglecting the great salvation, thinking lightly of it, a salvation accomplished by the Son of God in human nature, a salvation that the angels are looking into, stretching their necks, as it says, to see what it is all about.
Yet many whom it concerns most intimately are neglecting it, and that is disobedience. It is disobedience to a plain command: Repent and believe the gospel. It has all the authority of God behind it. The unbeliever is included with all the horrible sins that exclude people from heaven. Yes, we know murderers, adulterers and robbers, and all the terrorists and wicked people will be excluded, if they do not repent. But the Lord is saying, Among them all are unbelievers, those who heard the Word of God, who read it every day of their lives from the time they could read, and yet they drifted on to a lost eternity, they neglected the great salvation. They refused to repent and believe. These are transgressors and disobedient.
It says in 2 Thessalonians that Christ will come in flaming fire to take “vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel”. That is all you need to do, that is all I need to do, to perish. We are condemned already, but how the neglect of the gospel adds to our condemnation. It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of judgement, than for sinners who have been acquainted with the revelation of God in all its fullness. Yes, every sinner, supposing they never heard about the one living and true God, supposing they never heard about Christ and the great salvation, will perish. There is no other way to heaven except through Christ. No other religion, no Christianity without Christ will take a sinner to heaven. Every sinner has light enough to condemn him, but what must be the condemnation of the sinner who goes to eternity with his head full of the gospel and yet it is a gospel that he has disobeyed! That is what we are warned against: simply to let slip, to neglect – perhaps not rising up in opposition to, but not acting upon, the truth with which we are confronted.
3. The exhortation.
“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.” Therefore. In view of the greatness of salvation and of the Saviour, in view of the privileges we have because God has acquainted us with these truths in His Word, in view of the danger we are in of letting slip, of just drifting to eternity neglecting the great salvation, we ought – it is necessary for us – to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard.
There is a sense in which that is applicable to every one of us. It is to the Church that the Apostle is writing, to those who had made some kind of profession of Christ. Even those who really are the Lord’s people, although they will never perish, they can suffer a great deal through not giving more earnest heed to the Word of God. We can become very impoverished in our Christian lives and very unchristian in our thoughts, attitudes and behaviour. We can lose much conscious blessing through not giving heed to His Word.
But especially in view are those who are in danger of not attending to the truth at all. The exhortation is to give more earnest heed – the most earnest attention we can – to the things we have heard. They are to become matters of real concern to us. We are not just to read the Bible casually and hope that somehow we will get a blessing through it. Those of us who profess Christ find ourselves falling into that situation. Especially late at night, perhaps, you just feel you have to read a passage. You read it, and when you are finished reading, you cannot remember what it was about. That is not going to bring a blessing to anyone, although the Lord is merciful.
But the Lord said, “Search the Scriptures . . . they are they which testify of Me” (Jn 5:39). Let us search the Scriptures, looking for Christ and desiring that God would reveal Christ to our souls and make Him our Saviour, a reality in our soul’s experience. That was said about the Bereans. The apostles were more or less driven out of Thessalonica because the people would not listen. Many of them were converted, but the Jews as a whole would not listen to what was being said. But when the apostles went to Berea, these were more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they “searched the Scriptures daily” to see if these things were so. “Therefore many of them believed.” They were earnestly attending to the truth. They were searching the Scriptures. They were receiving them with readiness of mind. It was a readiness to submit to the authority of God’s Word.
We have to be intent, intensely intent, on seeking the Saviour, seeking salvation as it is revealed in His Word. We cannot drift into the kingdom of God. “Strive to enter in at the strait gate!” “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Mt 7:14). Few are looking for it. The Lord makes it very clear in His Word that, if anyone asks, he will receive; if he seeks, he will find; if he knocks, it will be opened unto him (Mt 7:7).
We know that it is not in the sinner by nature to seek the Lord or use the Word of God in that way. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3). But our inability does not excuse us. Both his obligation and his inability press on the sinner. Why are we unable? It is not a God-imposed inability. It is a sinful inability. It is our sin that we do not repent. It is our sin that we do not believe. It is our sin that we do not come to Christ and receive Him and rest upon Him as He is offered to us in the gospel. And what is our sin cannot be pleaded as our excuse in the Day of Judgement! We cannot come before a judge saying, Although I am here on my hundredth charge for stealing, I cannot help it because that is my nature. We will not be able to say to God, It is my nature; I cannot believe because it is my sinful nature! “God commandeth all men everywhere to repent.”
I came across a statement by Thomas Boston: “If you do what you can, perhaps the Lord will do for you what you cannot do for yourself”. Now that statement has to be carefully guarded. It is not as if the work is shared between us and God. It is not as if our doing merits His doing on our behalf. But there is an important point there. A person cannot just sit back and expect God to save him. Many a one has been saved that was not expecting God to save him. As the old saying has it, “They came to scoff and they remained to pray”. We are not limiting God, but you may think of people who were hearing the gospel day after day, year after year, and still letting slip, still neglecting, still not stirred up to seek the Lord. We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, to all the doctrines of God’s Word but especially the truth concerning Christ as the great Saviour of sinners, as the Author of the great salvation.
There is much here that we can use to examine ourselves and our attitude to the Word of God. What use have we made of that Word? We know these things. We have known them all our days. We can put in order the doctrines of the Bible. The children learn The Shorter Catechism and it is an excellent summary of biblical truth. We have the whole Bible. We believe that it is true, but what effect has it had on our relation with God, on our seeking of Christ? Are we coming and going from the place of the holy, from the Bible, from preaching, from the fellowship of God’s people, still drifting along towards eternity. Time is like a river flowing to eternity’s vast sea, and so many gospel hearers are just drifting along, neglecting the great salvation.
We ought to give the more earnest heed, that kind of heed that will keep us awake. If you are here without Christ, nothing better could happen than that you could not sleep for a night, or for many nights, through concern for your soul. That is the kind of attention we need to give to the Word of God, so that the Word would get into our minds, our hearts, our consciences, and that by the power of the Holy Ghost we would be made willing to entrust ourselves to this great and glorious Saviour.
1 Preached in Edinburgh on 9 January 2011.