Clough Hebrews Lesson 11
Doctrine of Perseverance and Introduction into First Warning Passage – Hebrews 2:1
Tonight we move to a new section of the
book of Hebrews; we have worked with Hebrews 1:1 through
Now the key to chapter 1 is verse 2 where it says “God spoke,” and it’s very important we remind ourselves that that is the major point of the chapter. We spent a lot of time on details and it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. So the big point is that God has spoken and therefore we are dealing with revelation and therefore if you have the beginnings of a divine viewpoint framework certain things should click and here’s an opportunity where you can apply some of that divine viewpoint framework, where you have creation, it’s a point in time, and at creation God has to reveal… remember the two forms of revelation? What are they? Theologians use two words to describe the two kinds of revelation: general and special. Now the general revelation is about God, it’s about man, it’s about nature but it comes to us through man and nature, it’s an indirect revelation. Special revelation is about God, man and nature but it comes to us from God directly. So you have a direct revelation that is special and it’s verbal, God speaks to man, instructs him in certain things, and then you have the general revelation in the structure of the universe. Now which of the two categories of revelation is logically prior to the other one? Special is logically prior to the other one.
Another question, was special revelation needed before man became a sinner or could he have existed sufficiently only on the basis of general revelation? Shall we take a vote? [someone answers] He needs specific or special revelation. Can you think of a simple illustration, if you just recall, again recall the concrete details of Scripture. Can you think, visualize now, the Garden scene. Can you think of something in the Garden before the fall… before the fall, that clearly exemplifies the fact that Adam could not just have been let loose in the Garden without special revelation. [Someone answers] All right, God told him what he should be doing. What was something else God also told him about? Without special revelation how could Adam have properly used the trees? In other words, before Adam became a sinner he still needed special revelation in order to operate the universe according to instructions. Like you have a piece of machinery, a washing machine or a new car, you have to have a verbal set of instructions from the manufacturer on how to work the thing. So all men need special revelation.
Now why do we go back to all this revelation thing? Because the result and the grand conclusion of it all is that after the fall, after the fall all revelation is either judgmental or gracious but there’s never again a neutral type of revelation; technically there wasn’t before but it’s very clear after the fall that when God speaks He’s either being gracious or He’s judging; those are the only two impacts that revelation has. Now the important thing to see about this is that you can’t remain neutral under revelation. When revelation is occurring it drives you into one camp or the other camp; you cannot stay in the middle. You may think you can stay in the middle but in effect you’re being pushed down one road or you’re being pushed down another under the force of revelation. This is why we have to recall once again, before we start with Hebrews 2:1, that the overall objective of this epistle is that it is an epistle of exhortation. You remember when we dealt with the Psalm series the Psalm series gave us some principles on prayer, which we’re reviewing in our prayer meeting, but this epistle gives us principles of exhortation. Those of you who think you have the gift of exhortation, you ought to pay very close attention to this epistle because this epistle tells you how to organize your exhortation so it’s effective. This epistle is a Biblical model of how to exhort, how to encourage believers and you don’t just encourage them by patting them on the head and saying everything will be okay. You’ll quickly see that the author of Hebrews doesn’t do anything of the sort. Yet, this is the Biblical model of proper exhortation.
Let’s look at Hebrews 2:1-4; here is the first of many warning passages in the epistle. We’ve had doctrine up to this point, now the epistle begins a series of warnings. “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. [2] For if the word spoke an by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, [3] 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, [4] God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?” Question mark, notice it’s a question. From verse 2 through verse 4 you have an “if, then what” type thing. “If, then what,” that’s the structure of the sentence from verse 2, verse 3, verse 4 it’s all one sentence, “if, then what.”
Now verse 1 is the content of the exhortation; verses 2-4 is the explanation or the reason for the exhortation. But verse 1 is the one that we want to zero in on tonight because this, basically, is the content of all exhortation in this epistle. I remind you that the ways of interpreting these warning passages has to be correlated. Here are the five warning passages in this epistle: Hebrews 2:1-4; Hebrews 3:7-4:13, that’s the second warning passage; Hebrews 5:11-6:20, that’s the third warning passage; Hebrews 10:19-39 is the fourth warning passage; and Hebrews 12:15-29 is the fifth warning passage. Now these are five warning passages and you have to look at them all as you interpret one of them, otherwise you’re going to come out with an unbalanced interpretation of Scripture. So all five of these passages have to be consistently interpreted; you can’t go plunging into one, interpret it that way and plunging in another one and interpreting it that way. You’ve got to work all five of these together so you have a consistent presentation.
Now before we can interpret the passage we
have to deal with at least three different problems and the three different
problems are: first, who are the readers, we want to review that; who are the
readers that are being so warned. Obviously how we interpret is going to depend
on this. The best we could do by way of
introduction was to say that the most probable… we can’t be dogmatic, all we
can say is that the most probable audience that heard this was a synagogue
group of non-conformist Jews, probably in Rome.
The reason we don’t say it was
However, we can add something to that first introduction when we said who were the readers and we said they were non-conformist Jews in Rome; from what you have observed about the argumentation of chapter 1 what can you say about whether or not these people are believers or not. What have you noticed consistently happening in the method of argument that this author uses that can tip you off as to whether he’s talking to Christians or non-Christians? [someone answers] Well, the non-Christian Jew would have known his Old Testament, but there was something that this author is using over and over and over and over here in the argument that’s very closely related to that. [someone answers] Exactly, all his logic presupposes that the man Jesus is the Messiah of the Old Testament. See, he’s not even debating that here in this epistle. He takes that for granted. Now how could that have been taken for grated among non-Christian Jews when that was precisely the point at issue between the Jew who was a non-Christian and the Jew who was a Christian. The issue was: was Jesus or was He not the Messiah. Well if this man consistently, at point after point after point after point after point in his epistle presupposes that Jesus is the Messiah, then obviously it’s safe to conclude that his audience was largely Christian. So therefore we can say something more, we can say that by far the majority were believers. The probability of them being a believer, anybody being a believer who heard this was just as high as any one of you tonight sitting here is a believer.
Now again let’s review the situation of these readers. This is the second thing; we look at the reader, we look at the situation. What is the situation, why is the author all shook up to give this powerful warning? Well, let’s look at some of the verses here. First in Hebrews 2:3 he says we can neglect this salvation; obviously they were neglecting it. In other words, they were believers who were neglecting Bible doctrine. At one time they were real hot on it but now they’re not. Further evidence, Hebrews 5:11, “Of whom,” he’s talking about Melchizedek, “we have many things to say and hard to be uttered, seeing you’re dull of hearing.” So these are believers who at one time were avid students of the Word of God and have since slacked off and goofed around. Sound familiar. So that’s one point that we can say about the situation; we are dealing with goof-offs.
A second item of observation is Hebrews
10:25 which indicates they were lone rangers so they were goof-offs, we want to
use precise theological terminology tonight, and they were lone rangers.
Then another these people… so we can tell right away that first they had this attitude toward Scripture; they know it but so what, you know, big deal. And then the lone ranger type, I’m not going to take time, it’s more important to, say we’re in Rome, go to the coliseum and enjoy themselves at the great tournaments and so forth than it was to meet together as believers. Then the other item of interest is 12:1, that indicates they were fagged out as far as their mental attitude was concerned, they were just experiencing a bad case of give-up-itis. “Let us way aside every weight, and the sin that does so easily beset,” see that verse? Notice Hebrews 12:11, “No chastening seems to be joyous,…” verse 12, “Therefore, lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, so obviously the third observation is their mental attitude is zilch. Now a lot of us should feel very at home with these kinds of believers and this epistle is, of course, written just for us. Okay.
But these believers, though their attitude was bad and they developed this autonomous concept of Christian fellowship, the go-it-alone type thing, at one time these people were tremendous. If you look at Hebrews 12:4 they obviously are encountering some kind of persecution because he says “you have not yet resisted unto blood,” in other words, the persecution that they’re facing is strong but it is not lethal, they haven’t had to be martyred for Jesus Christ but apparently there was almost, probably they had their property taken away from them, they might have had all social relationships and privileges revoked, they probably had a number of things that we consider necessities of life removed.
Hebrews
Now let’s look at their problem; they
became Christians at some point in their life, maybe through Jews that had gone
to
After a series of pressures, they were able to take it for a while, and now they’re giving up and Hebrews 2:1 is written to this kind of a person. And this is proper sound Biblical exhortation. “Therefore, we ought to give,” now the word “therefore” means that there’s an interruption of the passage. The word in the Greek means “on account of this,” rather than the usual word for “therefore” it means “because of this.” So what follows is something that directly relates to the superiority of Jesus Christ over angels. Now we’re not going to get tonight exactly into the area of why this… what’s this got to do with Christ’s superiority over angels, but keep that in mind, that the “therefore” relates it necessarily to the specific points of chapter 1.
Incidentally, learn to do this in your Bible reading, and those of you who are signed up for the Greek course, this is one of the things, even though you may not want to go and become great proficient Greek students, the little Greek that you’ve got is going to help you a lot in one area of your Bible and that is it’s going to teach you to identify these connectives. The first thing when you get to know a little Greek and you can master a little bit of the vocabulary is watch the Greek text; you may not be able to translate the whole thing but get the Greek text and you can follow a little bit; you watch where these connectives are and this is one of these words, a conjunction, connectives, inferential particles and so on, because these are the things that help you understand the logic of the argument. So if you know your Greek you know immediately that’s what’s going to happen in the next four verses is directly based on chapter 1. So this should you help you interpret it. If you’re coming out with an interpretation of the first verses of chapter 2 that doesn’t at all relate to what went on in chapter 1 you know something happened; that’s not what the author meant.
“Therefore, we ought to,” now the Greek has two words that occur in this kind of a thing. One is dei, and this is the word which “it is necessary,” it has another word, opheilei, opheilei means ought to. The first word means it is absolutely necessary, just like… an illustration, if you want to survive you have to breathe, there’s no ifs, there’s not buts, there’s no excuses, it is necessary. The second word isn’t like that; when you see the second word in the Greek that means you ought to do this, it’s the right thing to do but you’re not going to get bombed out if you don’t. Now dei is the one that’s used here; it’s the strongest expression of necessity in the Greek language; it is absolutely emphatically and dogmatically necessary to do whatever he’s going to tell you to do. You don’t have any choices in the matter; it’s not whether you like it or whether you don’t like it, this is the way it is. God has made the universe this way and that’s it, period. It is absolutely necessary; it’s a present tense which means this is a state of affairs that goes on and on and on.
Now, we are going to be introduced to a doctrine which, like total depravity has a name and it’s called the perseverance of the saints and you know it by its more familiar title, eternal security. But I will give you the full title: perseverance of the saints. The doctrine of perseverance of the saints is one of the themes that comes up over and over and over in this epistle so we’ll have lots of opportunity to review it but let’s go through it; four points, so we understand the idea. Then when we understand the idea you’ll be familiar to pick it up when you see it in the narratives.
First, there is a false view of the perseverance of the saints and it goes something like this; here’s the human viewpoint distortion of eternal security: that at regeneration I’m sort of like a bowl and God takes His grace and He pours into this bowl all the energy that I need to last in the Christian life, so that at regeneration I receive sufficient energy to carry me through the rest of my Christian life. In other words, God gives the energy to me, now I use it the way I choose to use it. Now that is a false concept of eternal security, that I get kind of all filled up with energy and this keeps me saved and this empowers me from now until the time I die. It’s false because it results in an autonomous attitude. By an autonomous attitude we mean that well, God gave all the energy I need, we’ll see you round God in forty years when I drop dead. That’s the autonomous concept of eternal security. It’s wrong, it’s satanic and its anti-Biblical.
What is the true concept of perseverance of the saints. To see the true concept of perseverance of the saints let’s draw ourselves a little chart of true faith and false faith. The perseverance of the saints is concerned to point out to the believer what true faith is versus what false faith is. Some synonyms for true faith would be submissive attitude versus the false faith, an autonomous attitude. Another synonym for true faith would be a grace orientation; a false attitude would be a works orientation. So whatever synonyms you prefer, true, grace oriented, submissive attitude, that’s the concept and those are the synonyms have to do with these two areas. Now by all means I’m not going to give you all the difference between true and false faith. Just to get the idea across I’m going to give you three, three difference on this chart and by looking at this it’ll kind of give you an idea why the author of Hebrews is doing what he’s doing here in verse 1.
False faith is always centered in earthly experience. It’s obsessed with an experience that I’ve had. Oh, when I accepted Christ I got this creepy feeling in my right big toe and as I’ve become a Christian, now I get it in my right knee and so forth, this kind of thing, an obsession with an experience on this earth. [someone asks a question] It could, it could even include legitimate experiences that you’re treating illegitimately. For example, you might have had a fantastic conversion experience which was perfectly bona fide but what’s happening is the false faith roots on that thing and you’re obsessed with this thing so five years from now you’re still talking about that wonderful conversion experience that you had, nothing new, just the last five years you’ve been looking back to that one thing. Now that’s what we mean by an obsession with some earthly experience.
In contrast to that the author of Hebrews is going to insist that true faith, submissive faith, is an obsession with a heavenly priest. That’s why he keeps saying “look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith; be occupied with the priest after the order of Melchizedek. Why is he doing this? Because what kind of experiences are these believers having right now? Too bad experiences; that’s exactly why they’re in trouble, because they’ve insisted on cherishing a few earthly experiences and all the emotions have drained away in the face of pressure and now there’s nothing left, the emotion is gone, all the memories are fogged up because of the immediate problem that’s in front of their face and so they’re slowly fading away and the fading away is because falsely they have placed their faith in an earthly experience. So over and over you’ll see, he says stop it, stop it, “look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith,” come to the throne of grace, and he’s always up, because remember how the epistle started? Where is Christ? At the Father’s right hand.
Now let me give you a subtle amplification of this where it comes out. If you are more concerned with Jesus Christ in your heart than you are with Jesus Christ at the Father’s right hand, you too have fallen into the pit of the false faith. The concept of an obsession, even with Christ in your heart, is a Roman Catholic fossil that has persisted in certain Protestant areas. There is nothing evangelical about it. Any Roman Catholic priest or nun could agree with you perfectly that Christ is in your heart. A Catholic would have no problem whatever with that concept. Martin Luther and John Calvin would vomit at the concept. Now the Reformation was fought over that; Martin Luther and Calvin went into a position where they essentially jeopardized their whole life for this point, that it isn’t Christ in your heart that counts, it’s Christ at the Father’s right hand that counts.
Now why is this? Are we denying that there’s a new nature, that there’s a Christ-like nature in the individual? No, not at all, but in this epistle you look and see where the emphasis on Christ is. Christ is never spoken of as in the heart. He is spoken of at the Father’s right hand. The concepts of evangelism that we have about inviting Christ into the heart are essentially Roman Catholic evangelistic processes, nothing more, any Roman Catholic can go along with that fine, but Luther and Calvin would not. They would say that’s just part of apostate Romanism, we will have nothing to do with it. So true and false faith is where it’s centered; is it centered in experience on this earth, in my heart, outside, in the church, this, that, anywhere, or is it centered above, in the One, the King who is sitting on His throne, reigning. Where is the center, the orientation, the objective of the faith?
The next level of the chart is that true faith is seriously affected by personal sin. True faith will always be seriously affected by personal sin. False faith will not be seriously affected by personal sin. I’ll explain that in a moment. True faith is seriously affected by personal sin; false faith is not seriously affected by personal sin. What do I mean by “seriously affected?” I mean that the true faith washes out; when you commit personal sin and you’re operating in true faith, you suddenly become aware that you can no longer have confidence before God until you do something about it. You notice the loss of that faith; true faith will just phase right out upon the awareness of personal sin, whereas a false faith, because it wasn’t really ultimately concerned with what the heavenly priest thought about it doesn’t bother too much. So if you still have “confidence,” (quote, end quote) and you can engage in all sorts of known personal sin and it doesn’t bother you I question if what you’re calling confidence has anything to do with what the Bible calls confidence. See, this is why he says, “Therefore, we have boldness to come before the throne of mercy,” what’s he talking about there? Because there’s atonement and the true faith is obsessed with the fact that before I can come to God I’ve got to have atonement, I’ve get to get a cover for my sin. And true faith will always be obsessed with that, whether I can come into God’s presence covered. False faith could give a damn, it’s just a human work-up confidence, positive thinking and so on, that kind of thing.
Now another contrast between true and false faith and that is that true faith always thinks of God’s grace throughout life, whereas false faith will always think of (quote) “my part,” what I’ve done for the Lord, I did this and I did that, etc. etc. etc. Whereas the true faith always is very deeply aware that it was God’s grace in the first place, that made it possible, that sustained me, that was the basis of God giving me the power to enable me to do certain things, and so forth. Now true faith here isn’t turning you into a passive robot, there’s still responsibility there but the idea is that grace under girds every moment of your life. It’s not the concept that God goes glug, glug, glug, glug and pours a bunch of grace in you at the time that you become a Christian and you walk around with this vessel and you might have a slow leak or something but somehow it lasts until you die. Instead of that the idea is that your walking abound and He’s constantly dripping grace down on you, like this. Now that’s the concept of true faith, where the grace is a continuing thing moment by moment instead of I’ve got it all wrapped up in a package, bye-bye Santa Claus, I’m leaving. Completely different.
Now this is why there are certain themes in this epistle that you won’t appreciate until you understand this. That’s why this author is so obsessed with Christ’s priesthood, that goes on and on and on and on. Why is he obsessed with that if God just kind of pours a lot of grace in and we go our own way and say bye? We wouldn’t have to be obsessed with Christ’s moment by moment by moment priesthood for us. Okay, so that’s the second point, true and false faith under the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.
The third point under perseverance of the saints and this is vital to understand the perspective of our writer. The New Testament writers are never, apparently, given any insight to tell who has true faith and who has false faith. The New Testament authors are never given special insight and I’ll show you this in a moment but get the principle first. Peter and Paul, when the come into a church, they don’t walk through the pews and say hey, you’re a Christian in fellowship, you’re a Christian out of it, you’re not a Christian, you’re a Christian that’s out of it, you’re a Christian, they don’t conduct a person by person inspection. Rather, instead of doing something like that, the apostles, when they approach believers, a congregation of believers, they address them in certain ways.
Now I’m going to show you a series of verses. Turn to John 15:5-6 and 1 John 2. “I am the vine,” now Jesus Christ is talking about this and you have to be careful you don’t read things in here; this is one of these passages that you get in trouble if you read it too fast, because believers that really loved Paul tend to think John uses his vocabulary just the way Paul does, but John is John and Paul is Paul and they have their own individual ways of expressing things. So don’t read Pauline concepts into what John is trying to teach you; this is John, not Paul. So your idea of positional truth and so on, which is very Pauline, is not necessarily to be found in John. John will teach the same doctrine but he does it in a different vocabulary. Now be careful of this; some Christians grow up under one teacher or something and you have to watch it if you’ve been only here at LBC, you’ve become a Christian and so on, you’ve only heard me teach. It’d be very healthy for you to hear somebody else teach the same stuff with a different vocabulary because Christians get obsessed with the fact that doctrine can only be taught in certain vocabularies with the result they read the New Testament wrong. Paul does not teach doctrine in John’s vocabulary and John does not teach doctrine in Paul’s vocabulary. They are two different men with two different vocabularies but they’re talking about the same truth.
Now let’s watch in John 15:5, John’s vocabulary, incidentally, is very close to
Jesus and you can’t tell where they separate.
“I am the vine,” Jesus says, “and you are the branches. He that stays” or “remains in me,” it’s meno in the Greek, “he that remains in
Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me you can do
nothing. [6] If a man does not remain in
Me, he is cast forth as a ranch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast
them into the fire, and they are burned.”
Now what’s this talking about?
It’s talking about, obviously, two categories of people. In verse 5 they remain and in verse 6 they
don’t remain and in verse 6 they’re cast into the fire which is usually a
picture of eternal judgment. Well,
fortunately, if you’re open to the possibility that John might teach in a
slightly different vocabulary than Paul, he explains himself in 1 John
I 1 John
Another passage where this comes up in
Colossians
Another passage is 2 Peter 2:20, a very famous one and very clearly unbelievers involved. This is one of those passages that I’m thankful Peter said it, I didn’t, so when you get mad at some gross pictures here it’s not Clough. “For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. [21] For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. [22] But it is happened unto them according to true proverb, The dog has returned to his vomit again; and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”
Now how we know that that’s not a believer that’s phasing out there? Because of the proverb in verse 22, what is the dog that returns to its vomit. Ever see a dog do that? Vomit all over the place and he comes up and eats it again. Well, that’s a good graphic picture of the unbeliever who hears about God’s righteousness, and it influences him, that’s common grace working in his life, and his life does seem to change for a while, and then, like a dog goes back and eats it up he goes right back and chews it all over again, the stuff that he left behind, and in verse 22, “the sow,” picture of the pig, is always a picture of an unbeliever, not a policeman in the Bible, a “pig” is an unbeliever.
So point three, the New Testament writers, when they approach a group of professing believers do not go through and say you are a believer, you are a believer, you are a believer, you are a believer, they just come out and say okay, now this is the word, everybody here knows the word, and those of you who have never bowed your knee to Jesus Christ in the privacy of your own heart and you’ve just put on a big façade and a phony front, it’ll be obvious after a while; you’re not fooling us, you’re not fooling God. You may fool us for a little while but you’re not going to fool us ultimately because it’s going to become very clear, when the pressure hits or something, you’re going to phase right out, so that’s the third point about the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.
Point four, the purpose of warning passages. There are two purposes to warning passages in God’s Word. One, to warn unbelievers who think they are believers, and to challenge them to measure their life by the standards of the Word of God, to break away from trying to impress people with how spiritual they are, with how moral they are, with how ethical they are, and just submit to God’s Word. So first is to warn unbelievers about surface profession of faith.
The second purpose of warning passages is to warn believers who are endangering their lives with a very similar kind of neutralism. See, both of these purposes involve sort of this neutralism that I started with tonight. Revelation in a fallen world is either judgmental or gracious; so when you air exposed to God’s Word, when you are exposed to the truth, when you know what God’s Word is telling you, you can’t be the same again. God’s Word is going to change you somewhat; it’s going to force you down road or it’s going to force you down another and that’s what these passages are saying, is that the more the heat builds up, the more the Holy Spirit makes known to you the will of God, you may try to stay in the middle and stay in the middle and stay in the middle and be neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, but finally the pressure is going to become too great and you’re going to split and go one way or the other, but you cannot forever remain neutral.
And you see it, you’ll see it here if you come to this congregation regularly; you’ll see people come in here and for four or five weeks they really think it’s a big deal and so on, and then they phase out and you never see them again, they’re trotting off to something else. Well, that’s what the Bible’s talking about, people like that who try to remain neutral and what happens is the pressure of life forces them one way or the other. They’ve got to go this way. Now this is probably the most frustrating, angering situation you can ever get yourself into. It is the most frustrating thing because as many people have expressed to me in counseling, is I wish there was some way I could get rid of my problem without… you know, getting with this God stuff. Well, see what’s happened is they’ve come down to the crossroad and the road is split and it doesn’t go straight down anymore, it goes this way or it goes that way and there’s no third option. So the exhortation of Hebrews is using the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints to force the believers to see that the road splits.
Now let’s look very quickly at Hebrews 1:1 so at least we can say we did something in Hebrews. “Therefore it is absolutely necessary to give the more earnest heed,” now this is just a simple way of saying pay attention, “it is absolutely necessary,” you don’t even have an option here is what he’s saying, you don’t have an option, it’s not whether you ought to, want to, feel like it or anything else, it is absolutely necessary for you to pay attention. Now you notice the word “more” in there, that’s a comparative adverb and it is comparing the things we have heard, that is the New Testament truth, with Old Testament truth. And we’re going to explain that more, we’ll just note it going by; the “more” is explaining your attitude toward the New Testament versus your attitude to the Old Testament, and we won’t mention anything more about that right now because next week we’ll do verses 2-4.
“It is necessary to pay attention,” present tense, this means not just once, not just twice, but over and over and over and over and over, habitual learned behavior patterns, of “constantly paying close attention” to what? “to things which we have heard,” what are the things that they have heard? Well, he tells you in verse 3, “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,” in other words, New Testament doctrine. “It is absolutely necessary that we continue,” over and over and over and over and over “to pay attention” to New Testament doctrine, “lest at any time we should let them slip.” Now the verb that is used here is a verb that is used of a boat coming down a river with a very strong current to it, and suppose you had some sort of docking facility here along the bank. And this boat is carried by the current by the place where it is supposed to dock. That’s the verb, it means to slip by the place where you dock. And it’s in the aorist tense, in contrast to the present. See, the present tense looks like this; constantly, constantly, constantly: aorist tense is a point in time. In other words, you must constantly over and over pay attention to what the New Testament says or there is going to come a time in your life where you’re going to slip by something and wind up in a big mess, and it’s all over. In other words, you’re going to go by this point, and when the boat’s gone by the docking place the boat is in trouble, it’s out here in the current and it’s got no place to dock. And that’s what it’s saying, if you don’t constantly watch the bank so that you can pull off at the right place you’re going to go by it and when you’ve gone by it you are in trouble, and that is the warning.
Now what are some case situations to illustrate this? Let’s give a case illustration for the unbeliever because there may have been a dozen or so unbelievers that heard Hebrews and they might have been there secretly professing Christ and not really meaning it, and what he’s saying here is look, unbeliever, you can trot in here and you can hear the Word of God and you can be very comfortable in the pew and enjoy the fellowship with other people and so forth, the social relationships but look, the current of life is taking your boat right by and the docking facility is the point you die. And one day you’re going to go by it and you are in trouble, real trouble, because you have goofed off and goofed off and goofed and goofed off and put it off and put it off and put it off and put it off with your pseudo neutrality until life forces you… life forces you, circumstances force you into a very bad situation. So here’s the person negative volition, negative volition , negative volition , negative volition , negative volition , negative volition and now bang, even if, theoretically, they were to go on positive volition it’s too late over here because they’re dead.
Now this is what Hebrews is talking about, after death there’s the judgment. They’ve gone by; it’s a very, very horrible feeling. If you’ve ever been in a boat and had this happen to you, you can kind of relive it a little bit, the sickening feeling that you’re stuck out there at the mercy of the current, and you’ve shot your wad as far as that’s concerned, there’s no place to go back; nothing, it’s an irreversible thing.
Now let’s give some examples about
believers, because obviously “if we ought,” or “if it’s necessary for us to
give the more earnest heed” and “us” are the readers or the listeners to this
man, and we’ve already deduced most of “us” are believers, then how does this
apply to the believers? Well, one
historical application of this was the great persecutions of the Jews that came
in the great ghetto areas of the ancient world.
Finally when Titus destroyed
Some other illustrations; category two and three type suffering, that is suffering by rebellion against God’s grace, suffering by identification with others who are being disciplined in the various divine institutions. You can go by in the Christian life and have a goof-off attitude, negative volition to the Word of God, negative volition to the Word, negative volition to the Word, negative volition to the Word, out of fellowship, and all of a sudden bang, you wind up in a bad marriage. And you wind up over here and you’re stuck because that marriage is unto death and you just slipped right by the dock and you’re in trouble. Oh, why did God let this happen to me? Well where were you when all this was going on? On negative volition, and so you got stuck. That is an example.
You may be a business man and you’re no negative volition because you think the Bible is something for your wife and kids and no man bothers with these kinds of things, even though of course there were no women authors of Scripture, they were all men, but that doesn’t impress you, so you have this negative attitude and finally you wind up in a bad business contract with somebody that you can’t get out of. Why’d God let this happen to me? Well, same reason, negative volition to the Word of God and you just slipped out, in a moment of time when you signed your name you were stuck. That’s slipping by, and it didn’t have to happen; God would have told you, He would have warned you if you’d been applying Biblical principles. But no, you had better ideas.
You can get involved in the same kind of thing on habitual carnality; you can go down the stream of life on negative volition, negative volition, negative volition, negative volition, and say well gee, I can get away with carnality, so let’s try some more, have a real happy time while I’m doing it. And so you decide, you don’t see any evidence of God’s discipline so you decide to raise a little more hell, and then suddenly you drift by the place and now wham, you get hit with something. You get hit with all sorts of psychological problems, you get hit with physical problems or something, and it just happened all of a sudden. Now actually it didn’t happen all of a sudden, you were approaching the dock and you saw it coming, you saw it coming, you saw it coming, and bang, you were by, it’s too late now.
Now that’s the principle of Hebrews 2:1. “Therefore,” believers, “it is absolutely necessary for us to constantly pay attention to what we have heard, lest at any time we’re going to slip by the place of safety.” And the “any time” means it can happen at any time, no preferred time, any time this can happen; that’s why the present tense is used to pay attention.
Father, we thank You….