Pay Attention
Hebrews 2:1-4 ·March 2, 2025· Joel Passmore
Part of: Hebrews, Toward an Enduring Faith
Pastor Joel Passmore continues a sermon series on the Book of Hebrews and reminds us that God's word is an anchor for our lives.
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It is so great to worship with you, to sing these songs together, to come to the Lord together and ask for mercy and grace, to hear your voices, to see your faces. It's good to be together in worship today. So we just began a sermon series on the book of Hebrews. So this is sermon number three of this sermon series on Hebrews. It's called Toward an Enduring Faith. So Hebrews is a sermon, really, written to Jewish Christians who were suffering and experiencing a crisis of faith.
Hebrews tells us why we should stand on Jesus and how we can do it. That's what Hebrews is all about. Here's a good summary verse. Hebrews 10.23 Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. That's Hebrews in a nutshell for us. Now, today we get a warning.
So what does it take for you to listen to a warning? Do you have to hear it multiple times? Yeah, me too. Does it need to come from someone in your inner circle? Or would a passing comment from an acquaintance be better to break through to you? Does the person need to be wearing a white coat? Or have letters behind their name? Or would you be more prone to listen to an everyman or an everywoman? Someone without those credentials. Is it better if they come to you with data?
Or with tears in their eyes? Do you have to want their approval in order to listen to them? Or do you need to know that you already have it? We get warnings all the time. All the time. Some of you, like my family, might have driven here this morning with a warning light on your dashboard that you've been ignoring.
It means the car's working. It's the on light, right? There are warnings printed on medicine, on food, on drink. Warnings printed everywhere. When a package arrives at your house, the box, the thing inside, and the stuff that wraps the thing inside might all have warnings on them. This end up. Use as directed. Danger, suffocation risk. Warnings, warnings, all everywhere. We're drowning in warnings. And maybe that's why we're so quick to dismiss them.
Even when they come from a person. A person that loves us. A person that knows us. Everyone is hesitant to speak up and give a warning to someone. Even when they see danger ahead. It feels risky to the relationship to give a warning.
Someone took that risk with me. He gave me a warning about something significant, something personal, something spiritual. He said, Joel, I'm really worried about you.
And it stopped me in my tracks. I knew immediately he was right. I knew I needed to listen. And I knew in that moment that others had warned me too. About the same thing. In quieter, more subtle ways. But I was grateful for this man who took courage to speak boldly and clearly to me. Out of love and concern.
Now that is what God does for us in the book of Hebrews. Out of love and concern. He doesn't just teach. He warns. Hebrews has five warning passages in it.
And all New Testament letters to some degree have warnings in them. But there's a little extra sauce on these. Today we come to the first warning. So let's go to the scriptures together. Hearing it not as a warning label printed on a box that we are so quick to just throw away. But as someone who knows us and loves us. Not me. Though I do know and love you. But the Lord. Who knows and loves you even more. Coming to you now. With something for you.
This is Hebrews chapter 2. Let's listen. Let's receive this together. This is God's word. It's for you and it's for me today. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard. Lest we drift away from it.
For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable. And every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord. And it was attested to us by those who heard. While God also bore witness by signs and wonders. And various miracles said by gifts of the Holy Spirit. Distributed according to his will.
Pray with me. Lord Jesus, you know every one of us. And you know exactly what it takes for us to listen. So do that for us right now. Help us to pay attention. To listen to you. Speaking to us. Calling us to yourself. Out of love and concern for us. We know that this comes out of a heart of mercy. From a powerful friend. A holy Lord. That both needs to be listened to. But also is compelling to listen to. Because you are drawing us into your love.
Oh Father. Lord, we love you. Help us love you more. Call to us now. In Jesus' name we pray. Pay attention. Pay attention. An enduring faith never stops listening to what God has said. An enduring faith never stops listening to what God has said.
Many scholars believe Hebrews was written to a small house church. In or near Rome. They would have gathered together to hear this sermon read to them. It had been written. It had been delivered. And now it's being read to them. So far they've heard the 256 Greek words. That we call chapter 1. It would have taken just about 5 or 6 minutes.
They heard about God speaking by His Son. The new and the final revelation. The Son who is superior to angels. Who is a greater word and a higher authority than anything else. Glorious truths. But why is He talking about this? So far He hasn't said.
Well, He begins to say why now. In chapter 2. It starts with the word, therefore. When you encounter this word, when you're reading your Bible, you should look back and look forward. Because what came before is telling you what the author is about to say next. Because of those truths, here's why it matters. Here's what you should do.
Chapter 2 of Hebrews is where we first hear the call for enduring faith. This is where it first comes up. The reason for the letter now begins to take shape. They are in danger.
As I said, many New Testament letters were written to people in danger. The church in Corinth was being torn apart by rampant and egregious sin. The church in Galatia was being infiltrated by false teachers who distorted the gospel.
The believers that the author of Hebrews was writing to faced a more subtle danger. They might drift away. Remember, these Jewish Christians, they had left behind the practices they'd grown up with. The sacrifices, the diet, the rituals. Their former way of life. So much of it, they had left it behind to follow Christ.
The familiar community that they had now looked at them as traitors. Meanwhile, being a Christian in the Roman Empire was hard. It did not get you a pass into high society. It did not get you a job. It did not get you friends, except with other Christians.
Scorn and persecution were on the rise. They were targeted. They were this weird religious sect that no one knew what to make of. It wasn't anywhere close to a recognized religion. They were targeted for mistreatment. They were unwelcome in many places in society. And so they're wondering, have we made a mistake? What have we done? Is Jesus really worth it? In these conditions, the preacher knows that the danger isn't really that they'll just suddenly reject Christ.
What's more likely is a gradual abandonment. The concern isn't running away, but drifting away. Small compromises. To make life a little easier. To get a little bit more of that persecution to stop. To stand out a little bit less.
You may have heard about Christians deconstructing. Leaving their faith. Becoming spiritual but not Christian. That's a real problem, but that's not what the preacher is talking about here. Deconstruction is an active process. Drifting away happens without you even noticing. And that's why it's really dangerous.
When a boat's anchor comes off the seabed, no one notices it first. Hours may go by and then you look around and you're like, how do we get way out here? Where is the shore anyway?
A boat at sea is moved by waves and currents, right? All the time. Wind blowing it. Waves hitting it. Current underneath the water moving it. All of those things move it around. And likewise, our spiritual direction is influenced by our environment.
What are the waves that are hitting us? Well, some of the same things that are hitting these Jewish Christians. But in a different context. The pressures of life. The responsibilities we have. The people that we're trying to care for. That we're concerned for. The hardships that we endure. The injustices that happen. Big and small. Broken relationships that we can't explain. Can't seem to reconcile. Waves hit us like lies from the world. Falsehood all the time.
Assaulting us. Pushing us. Meanwhile, there's temptations of relief. Temptations all the time for quick relief. Feel better now. By doing this. Those are currents and waves and winds that blow us. And meanwhile, all around us is this hostility to God. And to God's people.
This is our environment. The first thing we have to see, my friends, is that this is the world we live in. And that this environment will try to impact you and change your spiritual direction. You will not just sit still on your own. You will be moved.
Drifting may have many causes in our life, but there is only one solution for spiritual drift. You've got to have a fixed point to latch on to. You must have it. We must pay much closer attention. Another translation could be pay abundant attention. Fix your eyes intently.
That's the first part of the solution. But pay attention to what? To what we have heard. This is really important. We don't need some new teaching or novel technique to stop drifting.
We need to give more attention to what we have already heard. To what he talked about in chapter 1. The greater word from God. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus. And what God has said about him and through him. We need to fix our eyes on that one spot and keep looking.
Or we will drift. At our last house, we had bats nesting in the soffit underneath our roof. Addressing the problem began with a bat watch. Which, believe me, it sounds much cooler than it really is. It's sitting outside at dusk. About 45 minutes or an hour before the sun is about to go down. You sit there. And you have something on, like a poncho on or something on. Long sleeves so you don't get eaten up by mosquitoes. Because it's mosquito time.
And you keep your eye fixed on the spot where you think the bats are. For like an hour and a half. Looking at this one spot. You can't look away even for a second because they're so quick. They're incredibly quick. Nikki did more of these than me. I'll be honest. I did some. But you did most of them. You have to count the bats. You have to keep track of them to know if you solved the problem. And where to go about solving the problem. You have to keep your eye fixed on that spot.
And that's a long time to look at one spot in your house. When you're hot and sweating. Staring at the same spot is hard. And it's hard to do it to something that you've already heard before. On social media, they say that typically, a user will watch a video for three to five seconds before swiping up and swiping away. Three to five seconds. If you think you've seen that video before, you're swiping real quick, right? It's gone. Unless it was really, really good.
We are always craving something new. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. New is better, right? We already know this Jesus stuff. We've heard it before. We know this gospel. Yeah, yeah, Jesus and His kingdom. Swipe.
But here's the thing. We are forgetful. Way more forgetful than we realize. C.S. Lewis wrote this. Here's the quote behind me. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in your mind. It must be fed. What if those gospel truths that you believe today, what if they weren't like a piece of furniture that you put into your mind and you just put down and now it's just there?
What if there was a plant that you bring into your mind and put there that has to be fed and nourished? Otherwise, it will die. Neither this truth nor any other will remain alive in your mind on its own automatically. It must be fed.
You don't need some new insight or some new teaching or technique to keep from drifting. You just need to give careful attention to what God has already said and what He's already revealed.
It's a very simple solution. But it's very difficult. Like looking at that one spot on the house, which I would come in and Nicky would say, did you look at the same spot for an hour and a half? I'd say, yeah, totally. Fix your eyes on Christ. He is like the stars in the sky that guided sailors long ago. He is that fixed point to guide us now. Don't search for something new.
Pay much more attention to what you've already heard. Last week I talked about the people who claim to be authorities who get into our ears, who shout for our attention and say, we have the truth. Listen to us. There are other voices around us too. Scorning us. Mocking us. You're a fool for following Jesus.
You don't really believe that stuff, do you? You're so narrow minded. Your God hasn't come through for you, has He? Just look at your life. Come on, come this way. The good life is over here.
Those are the voices. I know you're hearing them. Because I hear them too. Sometimes they come from out there and sometimes they come from in here. An enduring faith comes by parting the crowd, like the aisle right here in front of me. Parting the crowd. Bringing Jesus up front. And giving Him a front row seat. Putting Him in the closest spot where His voice reaches our ears first. Where He doesn't have to strain so that we hear Him.
Paying attention means doing all we can so that His word is loud and clear. We hear in our ears all the time. And the stakes are higher than we realize. They're very high. Verses 2 and 4 is what that is all about. This is one sentence in Greek. In it, He gives the reason to pay attention. Maybe I haven't convinced you yet. Well, let's pay attention to the word. And hopefully we'll all be convinced. He says the message declared by angels proved to be reliable.
As I mentioned last week, in the Old Testament, angels were God's messengers. Speaking to people and prophets and giving God's law. Sometimes the things they said were conditional. Change your ways or you'll be invaded. But whenever they spoke, it was reliable because it was the word of God. And the preacher reminds them, every transgression of obedience received a just retribution. And it was an angel that said to Lot and his wife, escape for your life.
Do not stop or look back. Or you will be swept away. If you know the story, you know that one of them listened to that and one of them didn't. These Jewish Christians know all that and that's why they paid careful attention to the revelation that came through the angels in the Old Testament. They knew that there was retribution if they didn't. My high school chemistry teacher was notoriously tough. Everyone in the school either loved him or hated him.
He had really high expectations for his students. And he didn't suffer fools. He would go around the room in desk order. Up and down the rows. Asking questions all throughout his lecture. He wouldn't even say a sentence or two before he would ask a question. Moving all around, right? But when someone wasn't paying attention, he knew it. And he would leave that pattern and he would go straight to the person who wasn't paying attention and ask them.
And you did not want to be that person. He hated the answer, I don't know. He hated the answer, um. And he had a way of motivating you by making you feel like, I don't want to be the person that he skips to. He'd be like, Joel, hey, you know what? You can ask her out later. Right now I want you to answer this question. He would do things like that all the time.
The preacher says the earlier message from angels was reliable. Disobeying led to punishment. It's like if the writer was saying to me, you knew what would happen in that class, Joel. You knew what would happen if you didn't pay attention. Don't you have an even greater authority and an even greater word now? It was declared at first by the Lord. It was not a murmur, but a shout. Jesus is God with us. The word made flesh. And the word made flesh came on a mission.
A saving mission with his perfect life, his atoning death, his victorious resurrection, and his glorious exaltation. He accomplished that mission. Redemption. For all who put faith in him.
And this message of salvation was also attested to us by those who heard. Those who witnessed it and experienced it firsthand, they testified. They testified to what they had seen, what they had heard. They spoke of his truthfulness. They said, he's real. It's true. I saw it. I beheld his glory. I put my hands in his, I put my hands in his nail scars, in his side. We have their accounts and we have their lives, which told a story too. Of new purpose, of a new center, of a new identity.
And as they went out and testified, God spoke yet again. He also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles. And by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will. Another way to translate also bore witness is plainly endorsed their witness, which I think is actually clearer. If you've ever thought about buying a Christian book, maybe you flip to the back or you look on the inside cover. You look for the first few pages to see who's endorsed this book.
If you see a couple of speakers or authors that you recognize and that you approve of, you're like, okay, maybe I'll buy this book. You're probably inclined to trust it even before you read it. The signs and the wonders and the miracles we read about in Acts, they had a purpose.
It was God's endorsement of the early church and her mission. And saying, this is real. I am behind this. This is of me. Their message needs to be paid attention to, declared by the Lord, attended by witnesses, endorsed by God. If the previous message was reliable, and if disobeying it was perilous, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?
Do you see the weight of those words? We heard earlier from John 3, the very end of the passage. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? The answer is implied. We can't. There is no other salvation coming. This is the bus. Get on it. There is not a later one coming. For the rest of history, and even after death, there is no other bus coming. This is it.
We must pay close attention. That's the passage. I want to close with an application section for us. How about you? When you read a warning passage like this, the right thing to do is listen. No matter how long you've been following Jesus, no matter what. It does no good to read it and think, oh, so-and-so really needs to hear this. Right? Read it for yourself. Assume you have something to hear. The preacher, go back and read it, he uses we language throughout this.
He put himself in the exam chair. Let's do the same. I want to give you three places to examine in your life for drifting. And let the Spirit do its work as you think about these things.
First, look for drifting in belief. A ship that's drifting will have some gap between where it is and where it should be. Sometimes there's a gap between what you believe and what God says in His Word. Between what you think is true and what He says is true.
Sometimes it's just because you don't know. You don't know what God says is true. In that case, paying a closer attention is pretty simple. It just means reading His Word more. Learning more. What does God say is true?
But next comes the hard part. Next comes the hard part. After reading comes trusting. Comes being humble. And accepting the truth. Even when it confronts your own beliefs. Your own assumptions. Your own presuppositions. About what is true.
Close the gap by taking Him at His Word. And embracing what He says is true. Second, look for drifting in repentance. Now listen. Every one of us, including me, some days perhaps especially me, there is a gap between how God tells us to live and how we actually live. Right? There's always a gap there. For every Christian. We know what is right, but we fail to do it. We know what is wrong, but we do it anyway. That describes every person, every Christian, but here is the crucial part.
Here is the part to pay attention to. How do you respond when you see that gap? Someone who is drifting sees the gap, sees their sin, but no longer cares. They have no grief over their sin. There is no desire to change. There is only an excuse. A shrug.
This is a really bad sign. To stop the drift and return, our response to sin must be humble repentance. And a desire and an effort to change. Friends, if I've just described you, take it seriously.
If you see your sin and there is nothing in you that's like, I need to repent of that, will you please come talk to me? I've been there too. Talk to somebody. Because that's a sign of drift. We need to feel about our sin the way God feels about our sin. God wants it gone. That's His plan. It's to make it gone. We should want it gone too.
I'm not saying you shouldn't. Am I being clear? Everyone sins. It's about how you respond to it when you see it. The final one is this. Look for drifting in devotion. There is a really piercing word in verse 3. Neglect. But the problem is neglecting such a great salvation. We don't neglect something or someone that we truly value, at least not for long. If I saw a penny on the ground, I would not even bother picking it up. I'm not ashamed to admit that.
It's not worth the potential that I might tweak my back in bending down to pick up that penny. But a $100 bill? I might cross a busy intersection to go get that. I might open up a manhole and crawl down into a sewer to get a $100 bill.
Because it's worth something to me. I don't neglect it. I don't walk on by. What about God's fatherly approval as you try to obey Him? Clumsy as it may be. But your efforts towards obedience and your father's approval of that, His smile on that, what is that worth to you? What is it worth to you to hear Him say to you someday, well done, good and faithful servant? How much do you want Him to say that to you? If you feel adrift in your devotion, take it to God.
Ask Him to make you yearn for it more. He'll answer those prayers. Say, Lord, I love you, but help my love for you grow. Remind me what a great salvation this is, what you have saved me from, what blessings you have brought me into. And then when you pray that, keep going after Him. Keep pursuing Him. Keep obeying Him. Make choices in your life, big and small, to live dependently on Him. In prayer, in the Word, in the church, as Paul wrote, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
When He's glorified in your eyes, as you seek to follow Him, you will value Him more. It's irresistible once you see the glory of God. You see how incomparable that beauty is to everything else you might have been chasing.
Here's my last and my shortest comment. And please, church, always remember, there is hope for drifters. There is hope for drifters. I don't know whether one, two, or all three of those things that I just went over lands on you. But there is hope for you. Because God can bring you back to the shore. He can do it, can't He?
The writer of Hebrews wouldn't have bothered giving this warning if it were too late. For these people. There was hope for them and there is hope for us. Make the decision now to take the drift seriously. And go after God and pay attention much more closely to what you have heard. Make the decision today to do something about that drift, my friends. Don't wait until tomorrow.
Go to God today to resolve yourself with His help to close that drift. Ask Him to bring you back to the shore. Together, let's pay much closer attention to what we've already heard. The greater word of such a great salvation. That's good news for us today. The God who is chasing after you. Who is going after you in a boat. You're drifting away. Come back. I'm here to grab you. And to pull you back to shore. Cry out for His help today. Cry out for His help today.
Cry out for His help today. Cry out for Christ. Cry out for Holy Christ.