Sermon Text: Hebrews 2:1–4
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
On the Goodness of Steak, Sex, & Everything Else
If you have been with us for the last three weeks in Hebrews, for chapter 1, then you know that the primary aim of the book is to conquer the Christian Church by the glory of Jesus in order that they might go—mastered by him, in awe of him, confident in him, worshiping him—and conquer the world in evangelism and discipleship. The book warns a Church called to the nations against shrinking back to the shadows of the Old Covenant.
And so in the first chapter of the book, the author piles up these massively glorious titles on Jesus:
He is God’s fullest, final revelation—perfect, potent divine speech.
He is the very Son of God.
He is the heir of all things.
He is the One through whom the world was created.
He is the great upholder of the Universe by the word of his power.
He is the radiance, the effulgence of the glory of God.
He is the exact imprint of the nature of God.
He is the great and final High Priest, purifier of mankind.
He is seated on the throne, ruling the cosmos.
He is the firstborn from the dead.
He is, in fact, God.
The point the author labors to make is the massive and cosmic supremacy of Jesus: He is no mere angel. He is no mere prophet, priest, or king. He is God.
And now in chapter 2, what the author of Hebrews would immediately do is head off any notion that what we are doing in talking about this Jesus is some kind of exercise in academic theology. We are not opening this letter and this book this morning to memorize some religious data to pass a theology test at the end of the sermon.
No, hearing about who Jesus is; learning about him; properly identifying his nature and attributes is not enough. We are here that we might know him—that we might know him and obey him and love him and be known by him.
Jesus is not a theological, philosophical concept; he is the Lord, and what he wants is you—heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so we come to the first application in the book here in chapter 2: In light of Jesus massive glory, don’t abandon him for anything.
Let’s get the text in front of us, Hebrews 2:1–4, and then ask for the Lord’s help before we get to work.
“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 and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”
-Hebrews 2:1–4
Drift From What?
The single most important job we have in understanding this text is to identify what it is we are being warned not to drift from. Let me reread verse 1, and this time I’ll insert some commentary:
“Therefore [meaning, in light of the utter supremacy of Jesus over all powers and principalities in Heaven and on Earth established in chapter 1] we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard [Here’s the key part: We need to know what it is that the author means by “what we have heard,” since it is that message that we are being called to pay close attention to, not to drift from.] lest we drift away from it.”
-Hebrews 2:1 (with commentary)
What is that message that we are apparently prone to drift from? It’s the gospel. This becomes clear in verse 3, where the author calls this message “a great salvation,” and contrasts it with the Law given through Moses in the Old Covenant. Look at verses 2–3,
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?
There are two messages being contrasted here. One is the Law given through Moses, which is what the author of Hebrews means by “…the message declared by angels.” This is exactly what the first Christian martyr, Stephen, calls the Law of Moses in Acts 7:53.
The other message is the gospel of Christ: The message that Christ came preaching and accomplishing, which we will get specific about in just a moment. But first, see the point the author of Hebrews is making in comparing these two message, Moses and Christ:
If rejecting Moses led to just retribution—if an Israelite who scoffed at that message was liable to just judgment—how much more would we be liable to judgment if we drift from or scoff at the greater message of the gospel?
This is what’s called an a fortiori, or a “how-much-more” argument. It’s like what Jesus says in the gospels, “If it is lawful to save an animal from a pit on the Sabbath, how much more would it be lawful to rescue a person on the Sabbath?”
His basic point is that the salvation of Christ, the gospel of the Kingdom preached and accomplished by Jesus Christ, is far greater than the shadows and types of that gospel found in the Old Testament, therefore don’t you dare shrink back from Christ to Moses, to the Temple, etc.
Don’t Drift From The Gospel
Don’t drift from the gospel of the Kingdom. What is that gospel? There are 3 parts of the gospel that we’ve already seen in Hebrews: Grace, Kingdom, and Warning:
1. It is a gospel of salvation by grace.
The message we are warned not to shrink from or drift from, this great salvation, is a salvation of grace.
What does that mean?
The first thing grace means is that God would kick the legs out from under any of us who think we are good enough for God. The first word of the gospel of Jesus is not an affirmation of us, but a condemnation. The gospel begins by saying:
You are not enough.
You are not good enough.
Your works are not holy enough.
Your best try wasn’t close.
You can’t do this.
You don’t have it in you.
This is what it means when the angel tells Joseph, “…you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus’ very name means “God saves,” because that is what the gospel is: God saving sinners who can’t save themselves.
That shame you feel in the pit of your stomach when you lie, when you gossip about your friend, when you look at pornography, when you feel that stab of jealousy—that shame is a gift, meant to drive you to realize that you are not good.
Our culture teaches us to spend so much time trying to convince ourselves that we are enough, that we are good enough, because we know, deeply and truly, that we just aren’t. If we were, we wouldn’t have to talk about it so much. Our only hope is the hope of Colossians 2:13–14:
“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
-Colossians 2:13–14
Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin, that is—his very flesh was reckoned as your record of debt. When the nails passed through his hands and feet on that cross, they pass through the record of your debt. And he did that so that he could, in an act of totally free grace, give you his record of righteousness.
2. It is a gospel of Kingdom.
As we saw in chapter 1, this great salvation is not just about forgiving and reconciling us to God—but doing that in order that we might live under the reign of God as King.
As the author of Hebrews quoted last week from Psalm 110:1, when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, he did so to sit down at the right hand of the Majesty on High, where the Father tells him, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
Part of why we dare not shrink from the gospel is because to do so is to make ourselves a part of that enemy host which is being put under the feet of Christ. There is no neutrality. You cannot abandon Christ and join anything other than the Kingdom of Darkness. As C.S. Lewis and as Van Til remind us, the whole universe—every square inch of it and every second in it—is claimed by Satan and counterclaimed by Christ. There is only one true Lord, and you are either for him or against him.
3. It is a gospel of warning.
The gospel is a promise of both salvation and of judgment: “How shall we escape if we neglect this great salvation?” The answer is plain: You don’t.
As did the Old Covenant, God’s covenant of grace includes a warning of judgment. The warning is that if God has given his Son and you still refuse him, you still obstinately insist on justifying yourself, being your own God, your own Saviour—then you are doing a grievous thing.
In Old Covenant Israel, there were many who were born of Abraham but not truly of Abraham by faith. In the New, there are many who will claim membership in Christ’s church, who are likewise not sons of Christ and sons of Abraham by faith—hence this warning!
Three Witnesses Called
So the message we are to cling to and pay close attention to is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, whenever someone has a claim that God has spoken—as Jesus does in preaching this gospel—we ought to say, “Prove it.”
Muhammad said God spoke to him in the year 610 establishing Islam. Charles Taze Russell claimed to know the deeper truths of the Bible in the late 1800s, and so founded the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Joseph Smith claimed to receive a revelation from God in the Spring of 1820, and so began the Mormon church.
Jesus came, preaching this great gospel of the Kingdom, claiming not only speak for God, but to actually be God—and we should respond, “Prove it.” That’s what the author of Hebrews does in verses 3–4 with this gospel message. He provides three witnesses of the message of Christ, in fulfillment of the requirements of the Law of Moses for establishing truth.
1. The prophetic Word of Christ.
Verse 3,
“It was declared at first by the Lord.”
-Hebrews 2:3b
The first witness is the Logos, the divine speech of God, Jesus himself. Jesus is both God’s messenger and God’s message. And so he is the first witness.
2. The confirming word of the Apostles.
Verse 3 again,
“…it was attested to us by those who heard.”
-Hebrews 2:3b
As Paul tells Festus and King Agrippa in Acts 26, these things were not done in a corner. The Apostles confirm the message of Christ as eyewitness of Christ. Jesus did not come like a private angel to a man in a cave in the Middle East or a grove of trees in Western New York. No, he came and he spoke in crowds and walked across seas and healed lepers and rebuked false shepherds and faced public execution as an enemy of state. And he was buried and rose and appeared to the 12 and to hundreds and to Paul, as one untimely born. Thomas put his hands in his side. We do not follow cleverly devised myths.
Christianity is not first a philosophy. It is not first a series of un-embodied, “spiritual” teachings. Before it is anything else, Christianity is the claim that the God who made the world entered that world and was crucified by his own creations in order to save that creation from slavery to sin and death.
Finally, witness number three:
3. The confirming works of the Spirit.
Verse 4,
“…while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”
-Hebrews 2:4
The Jesus who healed the sick and opened blind eyes also sent the Holy Spirit to empower his Church with an explosion of miraculous signs—healing the lame, speaking in foreign tongues, prophesying.
God confirmed his great work of redemption and the massive transition it brought between the Old Covenant shadows and New Covenant substance with the signs the prophets foretold, prophets like Joel, as Peter quoted at Pentecost,
“But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:
“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes,
the great and magnificent day.And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
-Acts 2:14–21
Heed Not The Whisp’ring Idols
And so Hebrews 2:1–4 has a single, massively important word to you and to me: Don’t drift from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Don’t drift from the gospel of that Kingdom for any other kingdom. It is a true word, its truth confirmed by these great witnesses.
For the immediate audience of the book of Hebrews, the kingdom they were tempted to shrink back to was obvious: Jerusalem. They were tempted to shrink back into the shadows of familiar Temple worship, to the Levitical priesthood, to the blood of bulls and goats.
And so the author of Hebrews will warn again and again in this book: The point of all of that was Christ and his Kingdom! Don’t shrink back and find yourself destroyed with the Temple in a few short years, when the armies of Titus wash over it like a flood.
And to you, Refuge, I would confirm this warning: Don’t let your gaze stop at the Temple and at ethnic Israel and the like, even as you read the Old Testament, but let your gaze pass through those things to the Reality they preach—to Christ and him crucified, risen, and reigning.
But we can’t stop there, can we? Because we are men and women like the Jewish Christians in 64, 65, 66 AD. We have the same flesh, the same basic temptations—we are made of the same stuff.
And so the very mechanics of the heart at work in tempting them to drift back to Jerusalem are at work in us to tempt us to drift towards other idols.
So we need to keep going in our application of this warning, right? We need to press further and ask, “What lies might I believe that would lure me away from Christ? What false messiahs might I follow? What flimsy promises might they make to me that I would be tempted by?”
This is tricky. It’s tricky because, as John Calvin rightly said, our hearts are perpetual idol factories—we can take any good thing and deify it and then bow down to it.
And so the question isn’t trying to search the world to find an idol to apply this to that we might be tempted to worship, but rather just which one we should talk about, seeing as there are so many? We can worship the sun, stars and moon. We can worship sex, money, and power. We can worship family, career, and security.
We can worship food or fitness. We can be conservative idolaters and worship the US as idolatrous patriotic nationalists. Or we can be liberal idolaters—worship at the altar of sneering cynicism, fail to be thankful for our country and the gifts God has given us through it.
Idolatry’s Script
So what to do? What I’d like to do is point out a pattern, a script, that all of those idols tend to follow, so that we can notice the voice of idolatry from whatever mouth it is speaking from. Here it is, this is what an idol sounds like:
First, it will say something like, “You lack [blank]. If you just had [blank], you would be satisfied.”
Then, it reasons, “If God were really good, he would already have given you [blank]. Therefore your lack of [blank] proves that he is an inadequate Messiah.”
So the hook is baited, and now you swallow it and the hook is set to reel you in: “So go out and get [blank]. You deserve it. You need it. Nothing will be right until you have it.”
How do we fight? How do we obey Hebrews 2:1–4, and not neglect and drift away from God to his competitors?
The Script of Faith
Here’s the script of faith:
We say to the whispers of idolatry, “God is the author and the giver of every good and perfect gift. If [blank] is good, it is good because God made it good.”
We start here, because one of the powers of idolatry is to make us believe that there are these disconnected “goods” out there, good things that are good, but not connected to God. That’s ridiculous! Why is family good? Why is sex good? Why is music, food, fitness, skiing, Ramen noodles, and ribeye steak good?
Because God is good! Because every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, as James teaches us. We begin fighting the temptations of idolatry by refusing to believe the subtext of idolatry that our God is a miser, a crank, that he is somehow withholding good things from us.
Then, we point at the most magnificently good thing he has already given us. We say, “God is no miser. He has already given me the most astonishingly magnificent gift he could give: Himself.”
We remember the greatness of our salvation, which is not only that God has forgiven us our sin in Christ, but that he has given us himself in Christ!
What is a ribeye steak compared to the God who made the world? What is good sex with my spouse, red wine with dinner, a great song, or a beautiful fall landscape compared to this incredible God who flung out all of these and ten-thousand more good things from nothing? From his imagination?
Then, we deal the death blow to idolatry like this: We tell it,
“Therefore, I can trust that his sovereign withholding of [blank] from me is not stinginess, but rather a part of his love for me. He has already given himself; what good thing would he possibly withhold?”
And what we are doing there is refusing to believe the lie that God would just love to give us [blank], but that he must not be powerful enough to do so. No! He upholds the universe by the Word of his power! He could give you anything. So if he loves me and is for me and he very well could, why hasn’t he given me [blank]? Listen: Because he loves you.
If God gave himself, and if in giving himself he has promised to give us every good thing in his power, then our lack of [blank] is no longer a problem to fix, but a gift to receive.
Let’s get specific, and let’s get practical, and we’ll leave it at this.
Teenagers in the room, and young single people, you who greatly desire the good things that come with a spouse—marriage, sex, kids. When you hear this whisper, “If only you had marriage. If only you could have sex. If you could, then you would be satisfied. If God were really good, he would give them to you. He is a miser. God and get it yourself if he won’t give it.”
Say, “Sex is only good, marriage is only good, because God is good. And he is so good that he has given me himself. What is sex compared to the God who made sex?” And so fight the good fight of the faith.
And for the men in the room, when you hear the whisper, “Why does nobody respect me? Why doesn’t my wife honor me? Why don’t my kids listen? Why doesn’t my boss appreciate me? I’m so frustrated, because I know I deserve respect, and if I could just get it, if people would just see me and all I’m doing for everyone, I would be satisfied.”
You say, “Respect is good, and I want to so pursue obedience to Christ that I would be a respectable man, but I am not owed anything. God owed me judgment, and he gave me himself. So I will not be enslaved by foolish pride.”
And last one, moms when you hear that whisper, “If you could just have some alone time, some time without everyone wanting stuff from you, if you could just have that 45 minutes to sit down and rest, then you would be satisfied. You deserve it. You are owed this.”
By faith, you say, “Even this heavy, weighty, tiring fruit—kids and home and husband—is a gift of God. He who called me to it will supply the strength and the rest I need. I will not be mastered by comfort or worship the alone time my flesh says I am owed.”
And what all of this fight of faith frees you to do, on every level, is to pursue those lesser things—sex or respect or security or comfort or alone time or money or spouse or kids—not as gods to lure you from Christ and kill you, but as gifts from a good Father that he is free to either give you or not give you.
So when you don’t get the gift, you can rest in faith: “God isn’t withholding from me; he is no miser.”
And when you do get the gift, you can be guarded in gratitude: “God is the one who gave this to me. He is the good Author of this good gift.”
Therefore, pay close attention to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let your ears be open to the voice of Christ in such a way that when the whispering of idols falls on your ears, aiming to lure you from Christ, you stand, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel you heard. Let’s pray.