Sermon Tone Analysis

If you were here last week, then you hopefully will remember that we discussed three different reasons that Jesus Christ is worthy of our worship.

We first looked at how He is worthy of our worship because He is the fulfillment of God’s revelation.

Then, we looked at how He is worthy of our worship because He is the exact fingerprint of God the Father.

Finally, reason number three is that Jesus is far superior to the angels.

And hopefully, you remember that I sent out a challenge for you to go home and read the rest of Hebrews chapter one, and write down the differences between Jesus and the angels.

And before we go any further, did anyone remember to do this, and if so, what differences did you find?

The book of Hebrews is fascinating for several different reasons.

One of those reasons is that it is filled with what theologians call “warning passages.”

These are passages where the writer stops what he is talking about, and begins to talk about how dangerous it is to walk away from Christ, and things like that.

In the thirteen chapters of Hebrews, there are five of these warning passages, and this morning’s passage is the first of those five.

So to see the passage that I am talking about, I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter two, and we will be reading verses one through four of this chapter.

Again, 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 transaction and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him; 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?”

Let’s pray together.

The title of this morning’s sermon is “Warning: Do Not Neglect Salvation!”

As you probably picked up, the theme of this morning’s sermon is the theme of salvation.

And while I truly love preaching sermons on great topics like Providence and Jesus’ superiority to angels, there is no greater privilege for a preacher of God’s word to focus on the topic of salvation.

And as we study these four verses, we will come across three key points that outline this theme for us.

In verses one and two we will see “The Problem.”

In verse three we will see “The Plan.”

And finally; in verse four, we will see “The Proof.”

And, as always, I encourage you to take notes from the sermon, because you never know what new lesson will jump out from God’s word that you never noticed before, even if you’ve read this passage 100 times.

Let’s begin with point number one.

Point #1: The Problem

Let’s start our study by looking again at verse one of our text.

“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.”

Notice that the first word of this verse is “Therefore.”

Any time your Bibles use the word therefore, it is reminding you to look at the passage before it.

And raise your hand if you can remember what Hebrews chapter one was all about.

Ok, and what was it about?

Yes, thank you.

Hebrews chapter one revolved around Jesus’ worthiness because of His superiority to angels.

So this verse says “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard.”

In other words, this verse means, “Because Jesus is superior to the angels, we should pay even more attention to what Jesus says than what angels say.”

But that raises the question, “What did Jesus say that is so important?”

I mean, Jesus said a lot of things, didn’t He?

In fact, at the end of the Gospel of John, John says that if everything Jesus did and said were recorded, the world itself could not contain all of the books.

Well, obviously everything that Jesus says is extremely important, but the theme of this passage is the theme of salvation, so we must understand it to mean that we must pay close attention to what Jesus said about salvation.

And to these Jewish readers, Jesus said some extraordinary things about salvation.

Think about how salvation was obtained in the Old Testament times.

The book of 1 Samuel says that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins; and for the people, that meant taking their sheep, their goats, and their cattle to the temple to be sacrificed, so that the blood of the animal could replace their own blood.

Now, Romans chapter four makes it clear that salvation was not gained through the sacrifice itself, but through faith in the sacrifice; but the people in that time probably did not understand that difficult concept.

For them it was, “I take a lamb, I kill the lamb, God forgives me of my sins.

Every time I sin, I repeat this process, and God will cover my sin with the blood of this lamb.”

But what did Jesus say about salvation?

Jesus came and said that He would be the Lamb for everybody.

Jesus knew that the law was extremely rigid, and that even though God loved the world immensely, He would not look the other way and ignore mankind’s rebellion.

He knew that God is love, but He also knew that God is holy, and God is just, and God is perfect.

Jesus knew that the law about forgiveness coming through the shedding of blood would be a statute until the end of time.

Someone always has to die because of sin.

Romans six twenty-three says that the price you receive for sin is death.

But Jesus said that He would be your Lamb.

He said that He would die, so that you did not have to.

Isn’t that the most amazing news you have ever heard?

Church, that is the message of the gospel.

That is what the writer of Hebrews was talking about when He said that we had to pay extremely close attention to the words of Christ.

Because the day is long gone when God accepted the sacrifice of lambs, goats, and cattle.

Now, God only accepts one payment for your sin, and that is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Let’s move on in our passage.

Look now at the end of verse one, where there is a great phrase that I want you to notice.

The Bible says, “lest at any time we should let them slip.”

This is one of those times in the Bible where sometimes things are just lost in translation from the Greek to the English.

In the Greek language, this verse has the idea of something floating down a stream away from the place it is supposed to be.

The idea that comes to my mind is of one of those lazy rivers in a theme park, where you get on your inner tube, and let it simply take you wherever it wants to take you.

You don’t have to paddle to go anywhere; and really, you have very little say over your final destination.

You are simply captured in the flow.

This verse says that we are like that in life.

But, does this verse say that we are drifting towards God, or drifting away from God?

This verse says that we are drifting away from God.

What the writer of Hebrews is saying is that if you take a random human being, and you put them on the lazy river that we call “Life,” that human being is drifting farther, and farther, and farther away from the God that created him or her.

In fact, some people drift so far away that they can’t even acknowledge that there is a God they are drifting away from!

Some people drift so far from the Truth that they have simply stopped caring anymore, and they believe that there is nothing they can do about it.

So bear with your pastor as he attempts to create a mental image for you.

This verse says that humanity (and remember, we are talking about humanity without Christ) is slowly drifting farther and farther away from God.

And who can tell me what the final destination of this drifting is? Yes, death and hell.

Well, in our illustration, death is going to be represented by a waterfall.

And we’re going to build on this illustration again in a little bit, but for now, just imagine a man in an inner tube floating down a river, headed straight for a deadly waterfall.

Let’s quickly look at what verse two adds to this point.

“For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transaction and disobedience received a just recompense of reward.”

In this verse, the writer reminds the audience that every time an angel spoke a message from God, the message happened just like it was said.

Whenever an angel said that judgment was going to come because of sin, judgment came.

If even an angel has the authority to make these things happen, how much more so does the very Son of God!

So point number one of this sermon is that there is a problem.

And not just your run-of-the-mill flat tire sort of problem, but the kind of problem that has the potential to forever ruin your life.

We humans have sinned against God, and in our sinfulness we are traveling farther and farther away from the One we are supposed to follow.

And there is a very steep price for our sin.

The price of our sin is that we are slowly creeping towards a waterfall called death and hell.

It is a terrifying problem.

But guess what: this is not the end of the story.

Let’s move on to point two.

Point #2: The Plan

The plan of salvation is seen in verse three of Hebrews chapter two.

Verse three reads, “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;” This is one of the most famous verses in the Bible for talking about salvation.

How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

So the author is still playing off of this idea of drifting away from God, and his readers knew that the end of that drifting is destruction.

So the writer says that there is no way of escape except through the salvation of Jesus Christ.

That's not something we like to think about in our pluralistic society, is it?

When the writer asked how people could escape if they ignored Christ’s salvation, he was asking a rhetorical question.

He knew full and well, that there is only one way of salvation, and that is through Jesus Christ.