God's Warning To Us
Hebrews 2:1-3 We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.
The world "therefore" in the above passage shows that this warning to pay more careful attention to what we've heard, comes because of what had been speaking about just prior to this. Let's take a quick look at what was being discussed in chapter 1 then:
Hebrews 1:1-4 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.
As you can plainly see from these first four verses, chapter one is about Jesus and just how powerful He is and how superior to anyone and anything He is. Now we know that the author is telling the Hebrews that because Jesus is so powerful, because He is God, we had better pay attention to what He says and what He asks of us. He then says that if we don't pay careful attention that we may very well drift away.
Who exactly is being spoken to here? Is he talking to others who are mature in Christ, or to baby Christians or someone in between, or perhaps those who aren't saved? To find the answer to that we have to look ahead a bit further:
Hebrews 5:11-6:3 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.
From these passages we can see that he is speaking to people who are born again and apparently have been saved for quite some time. In fact, they've been saved for so long, he says they should already be teachers themselves!
How many times have you read those passages and assumed that they were being spoken to someone other then yourself? I know that for a very long time I did. I for sure was not a teacher and had no desire to be one! I just wanted to learn for myself. Besides, Paul said that teaching was a gift, and I knew I certainly didn't have that gift! Yet here, (and in many other places as well) it is quite obvious that he is speaking to a general audience of believers; the same audience you might find in any church today. In other words, he is speaking to me, and to you, and to every single person who has been saved who is not yet mature in Christ!
Furthermore, he is not happy with those of us who have been saved awhile and still are not mature in Christ; in fact, he is basically saying that they are being lazy and immature!
He even tells us what is considered to be the basics of our faith which would be the things that even a baby Christian should know. He says going beyond those things, is when you begin to push onward toward maturity in Christ. Let me share the part of the passage again that shows just what the basics are:
Hebrews 6:1-2 Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
So these are the things that everyone should know quite well:
1. the elementary teachings of Christ; or the basic principals of Christianity, which would include the fact that He is God, he came to earth and lived among us and died for our sins and rose again, and that He is coming back. It would include knowing that we are saved by faith in Christ alone and not by works.
2. repentance from acts that lead to death, or repentance of sin and for this particular audience especially it would include repentance of thinking that following the legalistic rules of Judaism would get them into heaven;
3. faith in God; again stressing that we are saved by faith and not by works
4. instruction about baptism,
So all these various areas are considered the basics. What is beyond those is where the author wants us to go. He actually says:
This then is what he wanted to teach them yet couldn't because they were still all muddled up in their understanding of the basics. This then is the reason for his warning to them. Here they were, born again and yet not bearing fruit! He was angry and upset that they could be so lazy when Jesus had given His life for them! In fact, the second passage I posted, is part of his third warning to them! All in all he gave them 5 warnings in this letter. I should say he gave "us" 5 warnings in this letter. To get us back on track however, let me re-post the original warning we were speaking of:
Basically what is being said to us here is that if God exacted punishment for violations of His law in the first covenant, then he will also exact punishment for violations in his new covenant. Now that's certainly NOT something we hear preached about in most churches today!
Yet this is exactly what we are being told we need most to learn and he calls it a:
"teaching about righteousness" in Heb 5:13. Is he talking about us going to hell? No, absolutely not! We can know that because throughout this letter, he is constantly saying "we" and not "you". Since we know for sure that he was saved, we can then safely assume that he is speaking to other believers that are really saved. In the above passages we can see that he is pretty vague about what the penalties will be, but we are told more about this in other places.
What I'd like to concentrate on for this week is the fact that we HAVE been warned. We have been warned by the Lord to pay attention to His Word and to do what He commands. We have been warned that if we do not do this that there will be consequences and that they won't be pleasant ones. He is telling us here that there is MUCH more to being a Christian then simply being born again and showing up for church on Sunday. He is telling each and every one of us that the Lord requires some things of us.
Does this mean the gift of salvation is not free? Not at all! It IS free! The only way I can think of to explain it is the way I used in another recent study. Suppose I give you a gift of a big box of Lego's. Now the gift is really a gift; you do not have to do anything to get it, nor do you have to pay for it. It's yours and I will never take it back from you. So, you accept the gift, and in this scenario we'll say that the acceptance of the gift is you opening the box of Lego's so you can see them. Now you have a choice.
1. you can sit there and stare at those legos as long as you want to and they are not going to do anything more then lay there. If you get bored looking at them, you can stuff the box in your closet and never open it again if you so choose. Those legos will still always be yours and no one will take them away. Or
2. You can reach inside the box, take some legos out and start building something magnificent with them. If you do that, it will be "work" and there will be parts of that "work" that you will enjoy and parts that may seen boring, and other parts that may seem exciting at times, and even times when it's frustrating because they are not doing what you want. Regardless of that, they will always belong to you and no one will ever take them away.
The people who are being spoken to in this letter are like the person in my first example. They are saved but they have never done anything with it. God wants us to be like the person in my second example. He wants us to bear fruit for Him. That is why we have been saved. The only way we can bear fruit however is if we use our legos!
This has already become longer then I intended so tomorrow we'll look at this some more and also hopefully begin looking at what the Lord would have us do to be the people He called us to be and to avoid the punishment that will surely come if we don't use our legos.
