Hebrews 2:1-4

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

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Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance

Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance Tellin' me to dance, takin' a chance There can be a tendency for someone to get tired with a conversation, and instead of sticking with it over a longer period of time.

Like I said, the conversation we had before about the Sabbath observance.

If we were to have that same conversation by letter, and it took two weeks for what

I said to get to you, and maybe a week for you to think on it and write back.

I see a response in three weeks, and your response is, hey, what was that passage that you were talking about?

And so I write again. So we're like six months deep into the conversation before we even got started.

You can think through things. You have to have a level of commitment to that conversation, that longevity of thought where you're thinking about it.

When the letter's gone, and you get to think through things a lot more. Now today, you go on to a comment thread, or you get involved in a video debate or something, and you get to talking with somebody and say you don't want to do it anymore.

So you quit, and you go somewhere else. But then you have to start over at the beginning, and you only get so far before you quit, and you go somewhere else.

And so while it's a great tool to get information out there, and a lot of people are doing some good stuff, and you can find their recordings, and you can find their videos and whatever.

It does kind of breed a sort of shallowness where you only go so far.

I'm a member of this one Facebook group. I don't know. Whenever I talk to my wife about it,

I'm like, I'm in that dumpster fire Facebook group. It just turns into a dumpster fire just about every post.

And people will say some of the worst, the big, terrible, terrible theology going on.

And so you just simply challenge them with Scripture, and all of a sudden 15 people jump in, and everybody is saying something weird.

And it's like, guys, what are y 'all even talking about? Have we read the Bible? It would be much better for us in some instances to go slower, to take time to think these things through, to have our feet held to the fire.

Because here's the thing. When you're talking to people you don't know, you can be bolder than when you're talking to people that you do know.

And if you're talking to people that you do know, that you see on a regular basis, you're going to temper your speech a little bit more.

And not only that, you're going to develop a relationship to where, say I think you're wrong, and it matters.

Say I think you're a heretic or something, I'm going to hold your feet to the fire a lot more. And since you already have a relationship with me, you're not going to try to weasel out of it.

You're going to work to preserve that relationship. We may come to a point where we have to kick you to the curb or whatever.

But for a point, we're going to have some serious, deep, meaningful conversation, which you don't get in online interaction.

So in the meantime, I would suggest keep on going.

Learn. How do we screw this up? How can we do it better? But we should really focus on the bulk of our interaction with people that we're having interaction with on a regular basis.

And that would be people in the local church. Well, that really makes sense, everything that you're talking about.

Because I'm thinking about the qualifications of a pastor, and the qualifications more point towards their character.

Sure. And so, to me that speaks to something similar to what you were talking about.

It's going to be more important to how we handle ourselves in our relationship with other people online, more than being right.

Yep. And so I think that speaks volumes. And people are so easily to call somebody else a heretic, but you're talking about having a relationship with somebody.

And calling somebody that you refer to as a friend a heretic because of their beliefs, you're going to hold their feet to the fire, but yet you're not going to leave.

Right. And when you do that online, which when you were bringing that up,

I was thinking this needs to be a rule in these Facebook groups. Unless you personally know the other person, you shouldn't call them a heretic.

Well, here's the thing. You only know what they've revealed themselves to be through whatever medium that you're going through.

Right. So you don't know the other conversations that someone's had. You don't know if they're working with their pastor on something, and they're just working something out over here.

Maybe they just had a bad day, and they don't even believe what they're saying, but they're just spouting it off or whatever.

There could be a whole bunch of different stuff that you just don't know about. That Facebook personality or that TikTok personality or whoever that you see online, that social media presence may not be that person.

Sure, Facebook Dan might be a heretic, but real life

Dan may not be. Maybe he said some stupid stuff online. It's been known to happen. People say stupid stuff online all the time.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Another way to put it or think about the stipulations or the rules, if you don't have the capability of walking with that person, refrain from calling them a heretic.

If you're not close enough with them to walk through this with them, to continue to talk through this with them personally,

I think it would alleviate so much stuff that's happening right now on Facebook where everybody's going after each other.

It's been so interesting, these movements that happen. You see them at a distance.

I could start naming the different movements that I've seen over my lifetime because of the

Internet, because of these means of communication that we have. Everybody will jump on board and jump on the bandwagon with this movement.

But then the leaders of that movement will begin to show some of their true colors, what they believe, all their heretics.

Let's jump over here to this bandwagon. And the same thing happens there. Then they'll jump on this bandwagon.

And that's why having those slower conversations is oftentimes a better thing because you get to take your time.

You get to figure stuff out because people want you to jump in and respond now. Hey, I don't know now.

I need to think this through. I haven't researched everything. I haven't looked in. I haven't talked to this person. I haven't seen what they've said here.

I haven't called them up and asked them questions, wrote them an email. I don't know. I mean, to force each other to say, well, you need to respond and you need to respond now and you need to respond in the way that I want you to, is not being quick to listen and slow to speak.

That's right. It's forcing someone to be quick to speak. Now, you may be right about that person, but chill out.

Quit calling people buffoons and we got better stuff to do with our time. Exactly.

You may be right. Say, hey, you know, watch out. This may be dangerous, but yeah. Yeah. Well, and a lot of these folks will be calling you and I heretics right now just because we're talking about taking our time.

Oh, well. Yeah. Who are we? I grew up in the

South. We go slower down there. That's right. We think slower and talk slower.

Oh, yeah. Well, just to wrap up the conversation, the good part, and of course, we're not prophets.

We don't claim to be. But just looking at the picture, looking at the overall events that are taking place, and we look at the good and the bad, which, of course, the good is that we're able to have these discussions.

We're able to sharpen iron. We're able to learn from other people. So there's a lot of good that comes out of this.

But I think ultimately there's going to be an ultimate good that comes out of what's happening now with all the bad that's happening and how we're showing our true characters and how we treat one another.

We're going to look back, especially those of us holding the post -millennial perspective.

And we think we believe that God is moving in a certain direction. He's going somewhere.

And so when we look back and we look back at our great -great -grandchildren, whoever, they look back at our time period and they see what all went on at the beginning of the

Internet era, and they see all the debacles. They're going to laugh at us.

They're going to laugh at us. They'll see all the true character of some people and whatnot.

But they'll be able to say, look at the growing pains.

Look at where it brought us. God made this communication, these means of communication.

He made it. He allowed this to happen. He let them fight it out. He let them struggle through it.

And it was a means of bringing them together in theology. I know that one gentleman in that podcast, we shall not name, he's talking about he wishes there was another,

I think he's called it another church council, that will help nail down an overarching view from the church on eschatology.

More than just, I believe in pan -millennialism, it'll all pan out in the end.

He wants us to leave that mindset and say, let's get together and work on this.

But I think that's going to happen with this process that God is working in and through us in the end.

I think that's what's going on. Well, just so everybody knows where I stand on this, the pan -millennial position, we need to talk to our

Southern Baptist friends because that Baptist faith and message, it's official position on eschatology is the pan -millennial position.

It says God in his own time and his own way is going to come back and raise the dead, judge people.

It basically says it'll all pan out in the end. So looking at you Southern Baptists, let's tighten it up a little bit.

That's right. Hey, that's right. A lot of times that's purposeful.

I think so. I mean, the Baptist, especially the

Southern Baptist, they want to be as vague. They want to be known as people of the book.

But as far as nailing down doctrine, they want to be as vague as possible so that their camp can be as wide as possible.

Well, the book says stuff, we need to repeat it. That's right. Hebrews 2.

Well, and we're suffering from that as Southern Baptists because we want our camp to be as wide as possible so that we can have as much money coming in for the cooperative program.

But then where does that money go? And look who we've had in leadership.

Because we've not been faithful and firm on doctrine, we've got ourselves into a lot of trouble.

That can happen in any denomination. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's jump into these first four verses of Hebrews 2.

Let me read them really quickly. For this reason, we must pay attention or we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it.

For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us of those who heard.

God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the

Holy Spirit according to his own will. Now, we know in chapter one, the author of Hebrews here is showing us how

Jesus is much greater, much better than the angels. And from my understanding, as he transitions to this next section, it sounds like, of course, he has his audience in mind.

He's writing to a specific audience here in chapter one, but how he speaks to them changes in chapter two in this next section.

So what he's coming across to me is this is like an appeal to them. Sure. Yeah, he's appealing to them because he looks at the people that he cares for deeply and says, you're about to throw away everything.

Yeah. You may think that you're just missing a piece or maybe this doesn't fit.

So I'll keep the rest and lose this aspect. He's like, no, if you don't listen to what

Jesus says, you're neglecting the prophet of Deuteronomy. Basically, the prophet that was foretold, this is the prophet.

He's going to come, he's going to be one of your brothers. Listen to him in the wilderness. If you don't listen to him, you'll die. It's rough, but he's sitting there saying, hey, pay attention, pay close attention.

And he says so, so they don't drift away.

He understands that it can be easy to slip back into what they're familiar with, which, man, let's face it, that's anybody.

The Jews could do it. Pagans could do it. You and me in America could do it. We can slip back into what is comfortable to us.

And the thing is, if we slip back into what is comfortable to us and we start living our lives the way that we want to, what we do is we neglect

God. When we neglect God, we neglect Christ. We neglect the salvation that is provided by Christ because we're no longer treating him as God.

We're treating him as a genie, a self -help guide, a get -rich -quick scheme, a little emotional comfort for the soul.

But we're not treating him as God. We're not treating him as the one who has created the universe and has paid for the sins of sinners like us.

Right. So you might be able to say something more profound here than me. Oh, goodness.

Well, I was just looking at the first few words there in verse one.

For this reason, we must pay much closer attention. He's appealing to them.

He's pleading with them that they must pay much closer attention. Why? For this reason.

What's that reason? And I'm looking at the previous verse, and it says, are they not all,

I guess, speaking of angels, are they not all ministry spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?

And I'm thinking, there's no way for us to grasp how large the universe is.

And on top of that, all the gazillion things that are happening, that are going on in this vast universe that God's created.

And yet the one thing that God has his angels doing is being ministering spirits to those who are inheriting salvation.

This, of all the gazillion things that are happening in this universe, this is the one thing that he has them focused on.

So this one thing must be important. So we need to pay much closer attention.

Right. We need to pay attention. Well, if you remember all of the different verses that you run through, it's saying, this one is son.

This one is God. This one is powerful. He sits on the throne. These are not. These angels are not.

These angels are small and puny in comparison to our God. It goes on talking about him being king, the

Lord of the foundation of the earth. The earth will fall away.

He will not fall away. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a fistful for your feet. He didn't say that about the angels.

The angels are pathetic and puny in comparison to God. And yet those same angels that are in comparison to God, pathetic and puny, are there to minister for the salvation of those who are going to be saved.

And then it says this in verse two. What does that mean?

Well, it brings up the whole of the Old Testament. And you think, what happened at Pentecost?

The Holy Spirit came. Now, as great as the messages that came through the prophets were, they now heard through the

Holy Spirit. You think of the great messages that came to the

Old Testament prophets of Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, all the minor prophets.

They're giving the words of God. The angels came and ministered and spoke and made sure that the message of God got to them.

And that was great and wonderful. And that was absolutely what they needed at the time. And now here is

Christ himself. God come in the flesh and spoken to us. It's something greater.

It's something more. It's something higher. It's something that, since you were shaking in your boots when the angels showed up, when the angels were there saying, he's not here, he is risen.

Every time an angel showed up, don't be afraid. Here is God. Why are you going to treat that like it's nothing?

How are you going to let that slip by? You can't just let it drift on through because everything that those angels said happened.

The nation of Israel went off into Assyria, went off into Babylon. The nations of the world that were said to be about to fall, fell.

Why? Because God told these angels what to say. And now the one who gave the angels the message has come and spoken himself.

How, verse three, will we escape? Escape what? Escape judgment, the wrath of God, the penalty for our sins.

How can we be rid and free of our sins if we neglect so great a salvation as God himself has come and explained and given to us, as he has secured it for himself and given it to mankind?

I mean, it's incredible. It's not a third -party thing anymore.

It is God has come and spoken. His Holy Spirit is working in the world. His ministers, pastors, angels are still doing the work today.

All of them doing the work of bringing the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.

If we neglect that message, it's going to be worse for us than those who had neglected the message of the angels.

What was it said when Jesus was there talking to the Pharisees?

He said, it would be worse for you, or maybe it was somebody else, but anyway, he was saying, it's going to be worse for you on the day of judgment than Sodom and Gomorrah.

Let me ask you this question about verse two. So, verse two, part

A and part B are both sections, because it's in the past tense. So, are both sections pointing to Christ?

So, the word spoken through angels proved unalterable. So, that word, like you were talking about, and I agree with what you were saying, everything come to pass that come from God that was spoken to the messengers, to the angels, like this nation was going to fall.

But also, every prophecy of Christ came to fruition. So, it proved itself unalterable, unchangeable, unfailing.

And then the last part there, every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty.

So, is this speaking of the payment that was made on the cross? I don't think so.

Okay. Potentially. But I don't think so, because he's giving them a warning message from the angels.

If we neglect salvation, every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty.

It seems to me like that saying that, you know, well, I guess you could make a case for it.

He really is saying that all sin deserves to be punished. So, if you neglect Christ, that is what is awaiting you.

Yeah, that's kind of how I was looking at it. You know, here's this payment that has been made.

You neglect that payment. Right. Then you've neglected a great thing.

If you neglect Jesus Christ, what is sheep's blood going to do for you? Not a thing.

Right. Exactly. Did the coffee go cold?

It's not as good as hot. I drank out of the wrong cup. Give a shout out to my wife real quick.

I requested it. So, it was a gift that I asked for, but she didn't get it for me for Christmas.

This coffee mug here. It has a little disc tray that it sits in.

The bottom of it has electronic connector to it. So, the tray is like a warmer.

I got you. And so, it keeps the coffee at a certain temperature. Yep. And it'll keep it at a certain temperature until a little bit of the moisture goes away.

And it's extra strong too. That's right. I've done that before. So, for that very reason or this very reason is why

I requested it. So, later on in the podcast, I could have hot coffee. There you go.

And it is. It's still hot. There it is. So, let's see.

After it was first spoken to the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.

So, he's making a contrast between the word spoken by angels that was unalterable and sure, a real true word.

And now, Christ has shown up. And the people who were there walking with him told us to.

So, the Lord comes on the scene. Jesus comes on the scene. And he's revealing that he is the fulfillment of all these things.

And then he has his witnesses who observe it and then pass that along.

Right, right. But it don't stop there. Right. We have

God who testifies with them. And how do you do that?

Both by signs and wonders. And I was thinking there, of course, I don't know the Greek.

So, I'm just trying to make an educated guess. So, when it says signs and wonders, it's basically combining those two things together.

So, this event would be a sign and wonder. And this event would be a sign and wonder.

Is that how we should understand it? There is something in Greek.

And I cannot pronounce it for the life of me. But it starts with an H. And it has a

Y and A and M and a D in there. And an L, I think. I really don't know how to pronounce it.

I don't know. Like I said, I'd hurt myself if I said that thing correctly. However, what it does is this.

It's two nouns that are put together by the word and. And it's meant to be a single thing.

So, it's one thing that is listed as two things with the word and in between. I think that's what you have here. So, exactly what you just said, only a fancy word that I can't pronounce.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Not too fancy on my part. So, that was

God's means. Yeah. And I really find the last portion of that verse very interesting.

We'll get to that in just a second. But just think about it. This is God's means. And I think we need to struggle in today's modern

American church. Everybody needs to struggle with this.

God also testified them both according to his means. And first of all, he says signs and wonders.

And then by various miracles. Yep. And by gifts. So, these are two different things.

Miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit. How do those come?

So, I can see the signs and wonders. But specifically the gifts of the

Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are going to come from the Holy Spirit. But they come according to his own will.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was getting at. Yeah. Because we want to make up our own, you know.

If a church doesn't have a vision, it will perish. You know, we put that Old Testament passage. Without a vision, we'll perish.

But we need to think about God's means will accomplish his ends.

Sure. Now, I will say this. Both sides of the coin,

I think, fall off the coin a little bit too hard. You've got those who will go out there seeking signs and wonders and miracles.

And to the point of fabricating them. They run off in all sorts of weird stuff. Trying to suck the power out of A .W.

Tozer's grave and stuff. In California somewhere. Then, on the other hand, you have those people who are so dead set on God doing things his way.

They don't allow for God to do things his way. They so completely dry up anything that the

Spirit could be doing. That they just get cynical. No, that wasn't of God. That's always emotionalism.

That wasn't of God. These people are faking it. That wasn't of God. You don't know.

Maybe it was. Now, here's the thing. We have ways of knowing it. Usually, it goes back to what you said earlier as we started off.

With a slower conversation, it'd probably be better. Because God does do things in his time.

We know things by their fruit. And fruit doesn't just pop off as soon as a sprout hits. Sometimes you have to wait for the tree to grow.

Wait a year or two, even after the tree grows, before you get an apple. So, what is actually coming from something?

What we need to do is recognize that God does work sometimes in miracles. Every single believer

I know should believe in miracles. At least that Christ raises the dead. And the fact that they were raised spiritually from the dead in order to believe in the first place.

And that leads us to our belief of a physical resurrection of the dead later on. That and Bible verses.

Lots of them. But we shouldn't be so closed off to what

God is doing that he can't still do something miraculous. And at the same time, we can't go the other way and just expect something to happen because we're feeling it.

Or we're wanting it real bad. So, we should recognize that God being in control and being the almighty powerful spirit that he is, can do what he wants to.

We just need to kind of take a back seat, preach the gospel, and recognize stuff for what it is. And people don't always want to do that.

But think about the day of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost, people were speaking in tongues.

I didn't hear a single Baptist person over there, or Presbyterian, talking bad about it on the day of Pentecost.

Because on the day of Pentecost, they're all Pentecostal. Why? Because God was there working in his people.

He was calling people to repentance. He was proving the message of Jesus Christ through the message of Peter and the miraculous speaking in languages that Peter didn't know.

You think about Peter as he walks by and he looks at the guy laying on the ground and says, from faith,

I don't even know if he knew what he was doing at the time. But he went by and he told this guy, gold and silver have

I none, but what I have I give to you, get up and walk. And this is

Peter. He's a fisherman. Who is Peter? Peter that denied Jesus three times said to this dude, get up and walk.

And the dude got up and walked. A miracle. The little boy fell out of the window.

Paul went down there, brought him back. Paul got bit on the hand with a snake, venomous snake.

Nothing happened to him. You think of Peter who got let out of prison by the angels. All of these things proving that God, the

God that they were talking about is who he says he is. So as we preach the gospel, it may not be anything like that, but we should expect weird stuff to start happening around us.

I don't know what that's going to look like. We may not ever even know what it is, but we should expect some weird stuff to happen around us.

If nothing else, we should expect to see dead men come to life as they hear the word of God and they come to believe.

Yeah. Now, I know that sounds weird for a Presbyterian to say, but I'm not under care of the

Presbytery yet. They can get me next week and who knows, they may. So, well,

I mean, from my perspective, you know, looking at this text, I'm thinking about he's speaking to his audience.

So these things that he's saying to his audience are things that they should have the ability to be reflecting on.

So these signs and wonders, these various miracles, these gifts of the Holy Spirit are things that they would have witnessed.

Right. Or at least had a friend who saw it. Yeah. And so these are from God. You've witnessed them.

You've seen them. So the question is, and it's a good conversation to have, as a 21st century reader of this text, we're not the original audience who he was speaking to who saw these things happen, these things fulfilled from the

Old Testament. How do we, what do we take from this?

It goes back to a lot of things that you were talking about. I think the main thing that we take from it is this.

The main thing we take from it is not even in verse four. The main thing we take from it is in verse three.

How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Yeah. And that's really it.

Yeah. I mean, if we're so wrapped up in will God do this or God do that? Who cares?

Let God be God and let you recognize your sin, turn from it, trust in Christ and be saved.

Right. Right. I mean, really, that's where we ought to go with it. Because we know we're in one of two camps.

We're either blinded by our sin, blinded by our flesh, blinded by the fall.

We're either there in that position or we have, the bell has been lifted.

We've been enlightened by the Holy Spirit. We've been changed and saved by, redeemed by the Holy Spirit. And now we see the

Holy Spirit testifies to us and we're convinced of the truth. And so we will believe, we believe this because we have been changed by the

Holy Spirit. And that's a miracle in and of itself. And then another miracle that I think is neglected, because all these things that we mentioned, that we see in the

New Testament, were instantaneous, instantaneous miracles.

I mean, that happened, you know, a lady touched the hem of his robe and she was immediately healed.

He turns around and says, who touched me? Because he felt the power leave from him.

I mean, that was immediate. And all these other ones were immediate. Well, there was one guy who had to, you know, dip in the water seven times.

He did have a little process to go there. But to me, looking at it today, looking at it through our lens, one of the greatest miracles as far as evaluating the work of God is sustainability.

If it's the work of God, if it's the work of the Holy Spirit, there will be some sustainability.

There will be evidence. And that's why we don't lay hands on someone too quickly to be an elder.

That's why we speak to someone about church membership. We care about our church membership.

We don't do things too hastily because we believe in if the

Holy Spirit did something, he's going to continue to do something. And we'll see that miracle of sustainability in somebody's life.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. Great. Excuse me.

We've gone over our 30 minutes. We'll go ahead and end there. And we want you all to experience that sustainability, excuse me, in your life.

The work of God, the work of the Holy Spirit is the only thing that will last.

The Bible speaks of the kingdom of Jesus being everlasting. It will not be destroyed. It will not end.

The work of the Holy Spirit will not end. This kingdom is forever.

And we will either be a part of it or we will be experiencing

God's wrath forever according to Scripture. And so we plead with all those who will listen to come to Christ, submit to the

King of this kingdom, Jesus Christ, the one who came and lived a sinless life, died on the cross, rose from the grave victoriously, sits at the right hand of the

Father, where he's been given all authority in heaven and on earth. And I said this on Friday night.

Jesus did all this not so that he could keep it to himself but so that he could give it freely.

And we would plead with you to repent of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ so that you can experience that miracle of salvation and live in this kingdom that's everlasting.

Dan, if you don't mind, will you close us in prayer? Sure. Dear Heavenly Father, God, we thank you for allowing us to talk about your word.

Thank you for your word and your spirit. We pray that you would sink this word deep into the hearts of everyone who hears it, that they would all not neglect your salvation but turn from their sins and look to you.

Thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys for joining us on the

Truth in Love podcast. We really appreciate it. Remember that Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ.

Go speak with the authority of Christ. And continue to go out there and share the gospel of Christ. We hope to see you real soon.

Peace.