Hebrews 2:1-4 (Lest We Drift- Jeff Kliewer)

Me, in case you didn't know what they were expecting. So, good news from the Menirees. So, let's go and join together in praise to our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's stand.

And worship. Christ alone, he is my light, my strength, this drive, attempt of driving sea. Worship. Christ alone, our hope is found. When we are weak, you make us stronger. It's by your blood that we are redeemed.

We declare that you are God and God. Jesus' blood, do not trust. Darkness hides. He shall come with trumpet sound. He shall come. Follow you anywhere, Lord Jesus.

We thank you so much that you rescued us and we pledge our lives to you. We say that we will follow you anywhere and we mean that, God. We're also aware that we are prone to wander. We feel that. There's times we will wander away from you.

We thank you that you welcome us back. You draw us back. You are the good shepherd that goes after the sheep. But Lord, this morning, we pray that we would be kept on the straight and narrow. We pray that we would be kept close by your side, not wandering, not drifting.

Lord, we pray that you would help us to pay more careful attention as we ought in Jesus' name. Amen. The explorer Edward Perry, a long time ago, sought out for the North Pole. He had a group, his band of brothers, that sought to go as far north as they could.

And so, at the start of the day, they took their coordinates. And at that time, they would use the stars to figure out exactly at what point they were beginning. And they were able to look into the distance and mark the direction north and begin their day's trek.

So, going through the frozen tundra, crossing over hills, and all kinds of just painful trudging. For the course of an entire day, they were exhausted. Can you imagine just hour after hour after hour in the snow?

Just painfully moving forward. So, finally, the day was over. All the guys are slapping five. Good job, guys. Good work. Come on. Way to go. We're gonna make it. They took their soundings. They looked at the stars.

And the guy who tracked gave them some bad news. He said, we're farther south than when we first began. And yet, they had been heading north. They were sure, and they had been heading north. How could this be?

Well, it turns out, the explorer Edward Perry recounts what had happened. They were on an ice drift. And little did they know that though they did travel north for the course of a day, the ice drift had been moving south.

And they lost more ground than they covered. This is the nature of the Christian life at times. Even when we're moving forward, even when we're here, every Sunday morning, we still are prone to drift.

Especially when we live in a culture where the entire culture is drifting so drastically, it almost is just the water we swim in. How many of you have ever been to Long Beach Island where they mark off in the water a post or just on the on the shore, a post to say where you can swim and where you can't.

There's just a certain, you know, 100 yards or something where you're allowed to swim. I guess because in the other parts it's more dangerous or there's no lifeguard. Well, what you'll find if you're ever swimming at LBI is that the current moves you more quickly than you imagine.

You swim and you ride the waves a couple times and before you know it, you're pushed outside of the marker. Has that ever happened to you? You don't even realize that you're drifting until just a few minutes later you're outside of the boundaries.

This is a danger within the Christian life. How many of you have ever woken up in the morning and said, hey, I think today's the last day that I'll be a Christian. Maybe I'll be a Buddhist or a Hare Krishna or go follow Muhammad.

Pretty much nobody ever thinks like that. But the real danger is to drift by not paying careful attention. I know when I was a teenager, they used to have those little pew envelopes. Remember those where it said offering on it and there was a little pencil in the back of the seat?

Well, that was a perfect opportunity. As a teenager, I could just doodle. So I'd grab the pew envelope and the pencil and I'd be drawing basketballs and basketball hoops. And before long, I'm just lost in the world of my own thought.

And I have no idea what that preacher is saying up there. And I don't want to hear an amen. This is where y 'all can be quiet. But we all can experience, we all can relate to that experience. So come with me now to Hebrews chapter 2.

We're just doing verses 1 to 4 today. The main idea is, well, this is the first of five warnings in the book of Hebrews. There are five solemn, serious warnings given to Christians or people who are identifying as Christians and gathering in the church.

And the warnings are to not drift away or fall away or to apostatize. Because at this time, there were many Jewish background Christians, Jewish background believers, who were being tempted to leave Christianity.

Persecution was beginning in the Roman Empire. It's probably shortly after when Paul was beheaded in Rome and then Peter was crucified upside down. So you can imagine why there's a reason to turn away from Christianity.

Judaism was recognized by the Roman Empire as a legitimate religion, but Christianity was not. And so Christians were blamed for things. They were accused of being cannibals because they would eat the body and blood of Jesus.

They were accused of orgies and things like that because of the love feast. So this was the reputation of the Christians. It was complete slander. And so the Christians were very much persecuted at this time in the city of Rome.

So many of them are drifting. Some of them are turning away from Christ altogether. Let's read it first and we'll just look at these four verses. 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.

Very interesting verses there. Let's look at them word by word here. The first word is therefore. What is that therefore? It's to draw our attention to what's already been said and make an application of that.

So the writer here is not just an academic, and the point of Scripture is just not academics. My job as a preacher is not just to give you, just unload as much information as I can, to study all week and just burst out information and you take notes.

That's not my job. My job is to try to impress upon you the gravity of God's word, to communicate the truth, and urge you to live by it, to apply it. So this is what the author is doing here. He spent the whole first chapter saying how great Jesus is.

Who is this Jesus? He's the radiance of God's glory. Everything was made through Him. It's going to Him. He is the glorious one. And then the comparison to angels and all those seven passages from the Old Testament are quoted to compare Jesus to angels in order to say, listen, the Jews esteemed angels very highly and they looked to angels and they thought about angels.

So use that as a reference point to say that Jesus is so much greater than them. Now apply that to your life. How does it apply? Well, you must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it.

There is a danger of drifting away. Can a Christian lose salvation? The ones who are truly born again, who have the Holy Spirit and are marked by the seal are kept, but very often people identify as Christians without having the new birth.

This is a somber warning not given to them. Understand this is not the preacher saying, hey, you pagan out there in Rome, you worshiper of an idol, that's not going to save you. There's other places where the Bible does that.

Notice the word we, look in the text. Who must pay careful attention here? We, all of us who gather. There have been times in my life growing up where I began to drift. I came to saving faith when I was young, but there were times as a college guy, I always kept going to church, but there were times where I was hanging on by a thread.

Basketball had become so important to me and other things in my life that Christ was sort of put on the back burner. I'll tell you this, if instead of coming back full swing to Christ in college, if I had turned my back and followed what my professors were saying and almost all the other students on campus, if I had rejected Christ and chosen this different worldview, even though I was raised in a Christian home, I would be lost.

Now it would show I went out from us because I was never of us, first John, but the point is from my perspective growing up in a Christian home, drifting, there was the real potential. I need to press this hard because I've seen it too many times.

There is the real potential that I would have just have been with the church, but not truly of it. This is a warning here. Do you see it? We must pay more careful attention, closer attention, lest we drift away from it.

And the dire warning comes next. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? The word for pay closer attention, prosokyne, and the word for drift away, periomen. I can't even pronounce that one.

These are Greek words that have like a maritime usage for ships at sea, traveling by boat. To pay close attention relates to putting down an anchor in the harbor and being steadfast there. To drift by, you picture a boat that just, you know, the guy behind the wheel, he gets distracted.

He's talking to the other sailors. Before long, he just sailed right by the harbor he was supposed to go into. He just drifted by, not intentionally, just drifting by. The word actually means flow by in Greek.

I know this has never happened to you, but listen, I was in the pew for 38 years, and I've only been in a pulpit for four years. So it hasn't been very long since I was in the pew. So I remember how this goes.

You are genuinely listening to me right now, especially because you're thinking about how you're listening to me. But here's what happens. Some thought comes into your mind, and you check out. You don't have to admit it, because I know I used to do the same thing.

You start to think about the meeting after church, or the football game after the meeting after church, or what you plan to do this week, or how hard a certain situation is, and before long, your mind drifts away.

Do you see what the text is telling you? And then eventually you come back in, and you go back out. Isn't that how you listen to sermons? You don't have to admit it. Maybe it was just me. This is just a confession.

But see, we're told here, pay much closer attention. That word prosekyne means to fasten your mind around, like a boat intentionally going into the harbor and putting the anchor down. You have to not let the ideas just flow by through your head.

You have to actively listen. You have to put your mind around it. That's the concept here. Pay more close attention. Animals operate by instinct, right? They just do whatever they feel. But humans have the capacity to discipline our minds to hear and to understand.

We must force ourselves to do that, because this is God's Word. It's life and death matter here. We could turn to Proverbs 420, where it says, my son, be attentive to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings.

We need to be told, pay attention. Your teachers ever say that when you were in class? Some of you probably heard that a lot. Pay attention. Well, we need to be told that, and Proverbs 420 says that, and it goes on to say in Proverbs 4, because these words are life to you.

This is life or death. You need to hear, lest you wander from it. Now, nobody ever intended to drift. We never set our mind to do that. It's just the natural course. It's the water in which we swim. But when persecution comes, it's very important that you've put down anchor, that your anchor is strong behind the veil, that you have anchored your ship, and you're rooted so that when the waves start kicking and the hurricane comes, you're not lost at sea.

Will that come to America? I don't know. It seems like it will in a matter of time, maybe four years or eight years or 20 years from now, or maybe the Lord comes back and raptures us out before persecution hits.

But we don't know that. Persecution could come this week. It came to Romania. I tell you what, the reason that nobody thought that Hitler could be up to what he was is because Germans all assumed we are just far too civilized for this.

It can't be. Now, there's a concentration camp, and there's rumors of what's happening in there, but the average German citizen says, no, that can't be. That can't be coming. But it was. They thought that they were too civilized for that.

Now, I pray it doesn't come to America, but in Romania, in the Eastern Bloc, as communism took over Russia and then moved all through Eastern Europe, Romania became a communist country. So what came of the church?

It was a refining time. Those who had been paying careful attention held on to the word, and they began to meet underground, even though the government wanted them gone. Others who had been gathering with the church capitulated to culture.

They became communists too. They began to inform the government. They sold out. Some remained pure in persecution. Others drifted. Which one would you be? It depends on how you pay attention to his word.

Which one would you be? Well, Richard Wurmbrand was a pastor, and he preached Christ, and he went to jail. And then there was a woman who the communist government had heard about her faith, and they were about to close in on her until they learned that she was about to get married.

So they waited for her wedding day, and as she dressed as a bride to go marry at the altar, the groom was waiting for her. The communist authorities rushed into the building, and they slapped chains on her in her wedding dress.

Women, can you imagine? You want to know what she did? Right in their faces, she kissed the chains, and she thanked God that she was counted worthy to suffer for her savior, and the communist jaws dropped.

They couldn't believe that she wasn't freaking out, as they intended to humiliate her. She went to jail. She was in jail for five years for her faith, but when she got out, that groom was waiting for her, and they were married, and they persevered in the faith.

Richard Wurmbrand was in that prison, and before long, one of the men from that church was thrown in jail. And when he got there, he was in the cell with nothing, barely scraps to eat, but what bothered him the most is he had six children without a provider, without a protector, vulnerable, a wife left behind.

And Wurmbrand saw it, and he realized, man, you're here with me because I preached the gospel to you. And he said, brother, do you regret it? Here's the words of this prisoner back to his pastor together in jail.

He said, I have no words to express my thankfulness that you have brought me to the wonderful Savior. I would not have it any other way. You see, these were brothers and sisters in Christ who had been paying close attention.

They saw the Savior. They saw that Jesus is worth more than anything in this world, that Jesus who protects them in the prison will protect those six children at home, that a wedding can wait because you're looking to the wedding supper of the Lamb, the great day, the coming of the Lord.

These are people whose eyes are fixed not on the things of this earth but on the kingdom come. Pay that kind of attention because you never know when persecution hits. You never know when you get that diagnosis and everything changes.

Many people crumble under the weight of persecution and suffering, but those who have had their mind set on Christ, had been training their mind to love him through the word. They were building up a fortitude that couldn't be broken.

See, these moments matter. These moments in church, these ordinary Sundays, these are the moments that matter. And it says, pay much closer attention. You got to know yourself. I know myself. I am prone to wander.

Pastors are prone to wander. All of us are prone to fall. You have to know yourself. If you think you're standing strong, be careful lest you fall. Verse two, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Okay, the comparison here is the Old Testament and then us. Look at the history of Israel. They wandered and they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness and every person died in the promised land. And again and again, the remnant held on, but by and large, the people wandered and God judged them.

Now, an interesting question here. It says, every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. Then why is it that Habakkuk was complaining that the unrighteous never seemed to be judged?

Why is it that the wicked prosper all the time? It doesn't seem like God was punishing the wicked. The just retribution spoken of here, it's a hard word to say, just retribution, speaks not just to the earthly consequences of sin, although everybody dies, so we can notice that, it speaks to final judgment.

And Habakkuk learned this lesson that God, in time, although he withholds judgment for a time, in time, he will judge every wicked act. The Christian worldview understands this about God. Here's how we see the world.

There's a God who made everything and there's coming a day when he will judge the world by a man, Jesus Christ. And so we can rest in that, focus on Christ, his final judgment, and trust him with things of this earth.

Now, this actually is a little bit of an aside, but I think it's important because of the cultural moment in which we live. A worldview that doesn't believe in God and final judgment is fixated on the things of this earth and demands a kind of justice that can never happen in this world.

It may look to the sins of other people and seek to judge every motive of an individual's heart. Witness the whole concept of white fragility and systemic racism and implicit bias and all of the sins of the heart that people seek to judge.

Now, I'm not going to go long down this rabbit trail, I just want to make this point. People do not have access to the sins of another person's heart. To try to look into somebody's heart and ascribe racism or sexism or some phobia or some other ism or whatever it is, that venture is a failed concept.

Many of the things that we see as unjust in this world, unless an outward offense can be proven by biblical due process, those things need to be left for final judgment. This is very important. As Christians, we can live within the outward expression of people's lives.

We cannot see the sins of another person's heart, and so we trust God to be the final judge. But those who seek to establish justice by correcting things that they see in other people's hearts, not just their outward actions, are seeking something that the Bible does not ascribe.

What it says here in verse 2, do you see this? Every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. God is the judge. So much of the things of this earth that the world is concerned about needs to be left to God.

He alone will judge the hearts of men, but this is a two-edged sword. Because whereas we are to leave things to God and not impute guilt, impute racism or sexism or homophobia or whatever it is to other people, whereas we can't do that, God does judge the heart.

Hebrews 4 .12 says that his word is a sharp two-edged sword. It pierces even to dividing bone and marrow and the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This is so important because you and I must live our lives before God as men and women who will give account.

We will give account for every careless word we ever speak. We will also give account for every careless thought that runs through our undisciplined minds. Did you know that? When Jesus said to not commit adultery, he took it a step farther in the Sermon on the Mount and said, if you even look at a woman with lust in your heart, you violated the deeper meaning of thou shalt not commit adultery.

And he said it's not just about not murdering. If you even have hatred in your heart, you violated the deeper meaning of thou shalt not commit murder. You see how he pushes it to the heart? There's a day of reckoning for every person.

But the good news is, and we need some good news, the just retribution for our wickedness, our sinful hearts, and our outward behaviors, all of that has been laid on our substitute Christ Jesus. He has taken that punishment for us.

And that's the good news. That is what is seen here in the verse. Verse three, a great salvation. If the Israelites kept wandering because it just didn't hold their attention, we have no such excuse. Because we have not only a great God, but a great Savior, a great salvation.

The New Testament revelation pictures him as greater than angels, greater than any created thing. It pictures him as the one who purified us from our sins. A great salvation that Christ came, and he died, and he rose, and he lives, and he reigns.

He is the Christ. We have him. He should capture our attention every day. And there's no excuse for leaving him behind. And none of us here would ever intend to do that. Nobody listening on YouTube right now would ever intend to do that, but some will.

When life doesn't work out, when it's harder than you expected, some depart. And this is why this warning is given. So halfway through verse three, it says, now we get to the message itself. It was grounded at first.

It was declared at first by the Lord. Okay, so the gospel came when Christ himself arrived on this earth. He is the gospel, Jesus in flesh. And he spoke the truth, nothing but truth. He gave us the word.

Now, how did the believers in Rome get that word? Did Jesus go to Rome? Did Jesus visit your house to tell you the good news? Well, read on. And it was attested to us by those who heard. So the apostles, Peter, who was crucified upside down in Rome, and Paul, who was beheaded in Rome, these heard directly from Christ and were chosen by Christ to bring the gospel to the world.

First of all, through their preaching, and then by overseeing the writing of the New Testament, and so it comes to us. The apostles deliver it to us. Now, interesting verse four, and we'll be done. A couple of big points here.

We're going to talk about miracles, signs, wonders, and the purpose noted in this verse regarding apostles. Look, God sent the gospel through the apostles, but he confirmed what they were saying by miracles.

Look at verse four. While God also bore witness by signs, and wonders, and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. You need to pay close attention now, because this is going to get a little bit complicated.

Not too bad. There are two camps in evangelicalism regarding verses like this. One is called cessationism. The other is continuationism. Cessationism says that all of the gifts of God, the miracles, the signs, and wonders stopped.

They ceased. That's why it's called cessation. Continuationists say, wait a minute, no. These things still happen today. God is still doing the signs and wonders. I want to show you a more nuanced position than that.

Okay? Notice in verse four. While God also bore witness by signs, and wonders, and various miracles. Signs, simeons. What is a sign? We've talked about this before. If you were driving down the street, and you saw a street sign, is that sign the street?

No, it's a sign that points to the reality of a street. So the sign says Hainesport Mount Laurel Road. It's something that points to a reality beyond itself, right? So a sign points to something. A wonder.

What's a wonder? Same thing as in English. The Greek carries this meaning. It's something that just kind of makes your jaw drop, right? That's a wonder. We have a brother here who was healed miraculously a few years ago, and I saw the pictures.

It literally made my jaw drop when I saw the x-ray of his head. Pre and post healing. And you say, wow, God did that. It's a wonder. Something that makes your jaw drop. Okay? And then the next word is various miracles.

It's something supernatural. You have the ordinary course as God created the world to function, but sometimes he jumps in and does something miraculous. A rare event that just has no explanation, but that it's supernatural.

Okay? The point of Hebrews 2 .4 is that these signs, these wonders, these miracles were authenticating the messengers. It says it was declared at first by the Lord, that's who, and it was attested to us by those who heard.

And God bears witness to this by giving them miracles. So when Paul goes to Cyprus, he can blind somebody as he's preaching the gospel. Or he goes to Malta and a snake is hanging from his hand, and he just shakes that thing off into the fire and keeps preaching.

And everybody says, okay, listen to this guy. Listen to him. Signs authenticated apostles. If you don't believe me, you can look up later. Second Corinthians 12 .12 says the same thing. The signs of an apostle were performed among you.

They were signs that show you that he's an apostle. That's how come he can do these miracles. So when the last apostle died, his name was John, in the 90s AD, there were no more apostles on earth. So I will no longer look to a man to be authenticated by a miracle.

You follow me? I still believe in miracles. I've seen it with my own eyes, but I'm not going to say that because Benny Hinn has done some miracle that I'm going to give more weight to what he says about the Bible than what I'm reading here.

Somebody's going to say, I just wish God would speak to me. What's your answer to that? Read your Bible. Well, then they say, no, no, I just wish that he would speak out loud. To which you say, read your Bible out loud.

Just read out loud. You're going to hear God speaking out loud. That's his word. You get the point? God gave us the apostolic word, the New Testament, and he corroborated it with all these miracles. And so we have the authoritative word confirmed by the things that he did.

I'm not looking for men to be validated anymore. However, notice in verse four, there is a separation between the first subset and the last. It says he bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles.

That's a group. Then there's another chi, another and, and then that preposition by sets apart and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. You see how gifts of the Spirit are separated by the word by as another subset.

He didn't just say by signs and wonders and miracles and gifts. He says, and by gifts. It sets it apart as slightly different than the first three. And that is because gifts of the Spirit appear again and again in the New Testament, not as corroboration or authentication of an apostle, but as something to be practiced.

You following me? Well, here's some more homework. You'll need to look up Romans 12. It's in your notes. First Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, first Peter 4. In all of these cases, this is the didactic teaching of an apostle to the church that's receiving that teaching with imperatives.

Meaning the apostle, whoever's writing, whether it's Paul and Ephesians or Peter and first Peter 4, whoever's writing is teaching the church how they're to continue practicing. And there are imperatives.

So you are to eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. In other words, these kinds of spiritual gifts do exist in the church today. It's just they don't corroborate the New Testament.

They don't become new revelation from God. They don't compete with sola scriptura. But when I stand in the pulpit, I don't just want to bring you head knowledge. I pray before I come up here, according to first Peter 4, that whoever speaks the word of God would speak as one speaking the oracles of God.

First Peter 4 passage. And when you serve, you're to serve as one who serves in the power that God supplies. First Peter 4. And the gifts of the spirit are manifold. First Corinthians 12. To one, he gives a gift of faith.

And man, I love being with somebody who has a gift of faith because they pray different. I think they're gifts of healings, plural, meaning God still heals today. And here's what the gift does. Your boy that you thought was going to die, he lives.

How's that for a gift? Praise God. Now, it doesn't mean that there's new revelation. It means he still heals. I heard of a prophecy that Jan Hus gave a hundred years before Martin Luther. As they were taking him to the stake, the last name Hus means goose in the Bohemian language that he spoke in Czechoslovakian or whatever.

And so as they took him to the stake, because he's a hundred years before the reformation, yet he's saying sola scriptura. He's speaking out against indulgences. He's preaching Christ in him alone, faith alone, and against the Roman Catholic church.

Because listen, the Roman Catholic church drifted. The Bishop of Rome was a true leader of the church, but over hundreds of years, even more than a thousand years, it had drifted to something unrecognizable.

And so Jan Hus came, Jan Hus preaching, and they killed him. But when they tied him up to the stake, his last name means goose. He said, today you cook the goose, but in a hundred years, a swan will rise.

And almost to the year, a hundred years later, Martin Luther nails the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. The year before, Erasmus translated the Greek New Testament. So now Luther's reading the New Testament and he says, wait, do penance, metanoia.

That doesn't mean do penance. That means repent. It means change the way you think, have a change of mind. And so Martin Luther's reading the Greek New Testament and the reformation is born. Do you see what happened?

Well, I think that Jan Hus spoke prophetically of Martin Luther. Now, I will not build any doctrine on that, and I don't even care if it's not true, because it doesn't make any influential difference on anything that I believe.

Do you see the point? I still think God does miraculous things, and I still want that fire in me, the gifting of the Spirit when I preach. I want to learn to pray and believe that God is going to heal.

I want a gift of faith. How about you? In closing, the point is here, we all tend to drift, but the Lord is calling us back to our first love. We need the Holy Spirit to fan into flame the gifts that are in us.

Maybe when you were younger as a Christian, you used to tell everybody you know about Jesus, but you haven't spoken of him to a friend or a family member in years now. You didn't mean to drift, but be honest that you've drifted from your first love.

I'm prone to drift from my first love, but I want to love him now more than I ever have before, and that's what this text is calling us to. Be careful that you don't drift. Pay closer attention. Fan into flame.

So, worship team will come up. I did find the words of a song I wanted to share. This is called First Love by Jonathan Helzer, H-E-L-S-E-R, First Love. He says, if oceans were filled with ink and the sky were a blank page, still I would run out of space to tell of all this love.

Forever will never be long enough to come to the end of an endless love. I pour out my songs like the oil from the widow's jar. If every leaf on the trees were the notes of a symphony, then every season would bring new songs.

The wind would sing. Forever will never be long enough to come to the end of an endless love. I pour out my songs like the oil from the widow's jar. It'll never run dry. I love that song because it calls me back to my first love.

When you see the wind blowing through the trees, every rattle is a song of praise. The Creator made these leaves to rattle for him, and he's made us to sing. When you come to him in song, do you do it from a heart that burns to love him?

Do you make up new songs? Do you wake up in the morning before the kids just so you have some time with them to sing? Come back to your first love. If you've drifted, this is a call to love him like never before.

Let's pray. So God, we thank you for this warning. You warn us because you love us. I pray that you would use this word to keep us from drifting. It's so easy to drift. Pray that you would fan into flames spiritual gifts among us, but we thank you for this word that you have given us that needs no improvement.

Help us to pay much closer attention to the glorious person and saving work of Jesus our Christ. In his name we pray. Amen. Let's stand and sing.

Come and rescue us. Has saved us. Called us blameless. Guides us now. What's to end our fathers with Christ. So we cry, Abba Father. No sufferings can fill our lives. We're confident. We're heirs with Christ.

So we cry, Abba Father. Who is able to keep you from.

Stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever.

Amen. Go in peace.