The word of God that engages us this morning comes from our epistle lesson, and I’d like to read portions of it again.
1Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 3how 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, 4while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
5Now it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
7You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
8putting everything in subjection under his feet.”…
10For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering (Hebrews 2:1–7, 10).
Growing up, I heard this short story, and you might have also heard it. It’s a fairly common one, I think. You maybe you didn’t hear it the same way I heard it, but it goes something like this:
There’s a man, and there’s a flood coming. The flood hits him, and there’s some people still not too far away. And as the flood is hitting this house, a tree comes by that had fallen down is floating in the flood. And people shout at him and say, “Jump on the tree, so it can carry you away to safety.” He says, “No, no, I’m going to wait because God will save me.” And then they have to flee because the flood gets higher, and it’s higher in his house. On the second story, he sees a boat coming by, and the guy on the boat says, “Jump on the boat. I’ll row you to safety.” He says, “No, no, I’m going to wait. God is going to save me.” And then the flood gets higher, and he has to climb on his roof. Then a rescue helicopter comes and says, “Climb on the helicopter. We will carry you off to safety.” He says, “No, no, no, I’ll wait. God will rescue me.” Then eventually the flood gets too high, he’s carried away, and he dies. And luckily he’s a man of faith, and he goes to heaven. Before God, he says, “God, you know the flood came, and I waited and waited, and you never rescued me.” And God said, “Well, I sent a tree, and I sent a boat, and I sent a helicopter, and you ignore them all.” And there’s the punch line.
I start this way because it’s one of those things that warns us to always be on the lookout, always be looking for things that could potentially rescue us. You know in hindsight, I’m not even quite sure that’s a faith-based little story or parable, but nonetheless, that’s the gist of it. It’s a warning for us in life. And I start that way because the writer of this letter to Hebrews starts our reading this morning with a warning, a very serious warning. He warns his hearers not to neglect the message that they had received, not to put aside the gospel that leads to salvation. See, unlike the little short story that I began with, neglecting God’s word, neglecting our salvation, leads to eternal death. You know as a pastor, I must say that most of us don’t look for things to warn our people about. Usually that just creates unnecessary conflict, but usually if a pastor is warning about something, it’s something that they’re witnessing, something that they have seen in the people. So in some way nonspecific, these people have begun to neglect the message from God.
Without a certain way of knowing how they were neglecting the word, I typically see two different ways—and ways that people young, people old, faithful people, non-faithful people—we tend to neglect God’s word. The first way is to put it aside. As we don’t make God’s word an intentional part of our day-to-day life. In other words, we don’t often and frequently read our Bibles. And you see, it’s hard to give an excuse because there’s so many different ways that we can hear God’s word. It’s given to us audibly. Now there are different versions that are more readable. One thing a professor had us purchase for our class is a journaling Bible. There are ledgers on the sides where you can take notes. I love going back and seeing old questions that I used to have that maybe have been answered. In the very back different reading plan, so I don’t even have to choose day to day what I’m going to read. It’s already set off for me, and I don’t skip the parts that are less interesting than others. I read it all.
And yet, even with that, there are mornings where I get to my normal devotion time, and there’s an email or a phone call or child throwing a fit as we’re trying to get them ready for school. And my personal devotional life goes out the window. And we have a graceful God, so I try to show myself grace. And we should all experience God’s grace, and there’s always tomorrow.
But how often does Monday turn into Tuesday. And then Tuesday turn into Friday. And then on Friday it’s like, well, it’s the end of the week, it’s the weekend, and I’ll hear God’s word on Sunday. Often that’s the case, but sometimes even Sunday goes by the wayside. And then one Sunday turns into a month of Sundays, and a month of Sundays turns into a year of Sundays. Before you know it, you or somebody you know and love and care about is now personally and corporately far from being nurtured by God’s word. It may be for a little while our faith can be sustained, but before long neglecting God’s word removes us from Him in faith and presence. Before long, neglect turns into rejection, and that person can be lost very easily.
The other way I most often see God’s word neglected is slightly different, is simply when we neglect to share it with the people around us. First with each other, again in demonstrating God’s love and grace with our brothers and sisters in Christ but also outside, to those who don’t yet know Jesus, who haven’t heard His Gospel, who haven’t heard His message of love, mercy and forgiveness and salvation. And that can be for a variety of different reasons. It can be a fear of offending somebody. It can be the fear of rejection, but nonetheless, just for a moment, just imagine you’re walking by, and you see somebody on a park bench and their eyes are red and watery. And just maybe if I paused for a moment in my day and share the peace and comfort of the gospel with them, that their lives could be transformed, whether they’re a Christian or not. Too often I come up with an excuse not to. I simply walk past, and this moment that has been placed before me goes wasted. The message of salvation is yet again neglected.
Now, all that said, we do again have a loving and gracious, merciful and patient God, who is patient with us moment to moment, day in and day out. And even though we too often neglect His will for us in our lives and we turn to sin and we grab onto the different idols in our lives, He doesn’t neglect us. Instead, He’s incredibly mindful of who we are. And to drive this point home, the author of the letter to the Hebrews quotes Psalm eight, written by David. He says, “What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him.”
You see, when David was writing this psalm, Jesus had not yet been incarnate. And so inspired by God and His Holy Spirit to write this psalm, he was probably reflecting upon himself because again when King David became king, his first action of power and authority was to send a man to his death so that he could steal his wife. And yet God was still mindful of David, and still gave him blessings as the king of Israel.
But the author of the letter to the Hebrews sees the psalm in light of Jesus. So what is man that You were mindful of him and more importantly, the son of man that You care for him that, while Jesus was here walking earth and in His death, He was made a little lower than the angels, and yet He was crowned with glory and honor and everything was put subjective under His feet.
One of our professors at the seminary, he’s big into creation. I took a class with him called the Theology of Creation. He put two columns on the board: one was “heavenly things,” like God as in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and on the other side he put “creaturely things” and like Earth, animals and people. He said we have these two lists. We have heavenly things and we have created things. He said, “So where do we put the angels?” And I think naturally for most of us, just because of the way the story of Scripture reads, we would desire to put them in the heavenly things. Yet he reminded us that the angels were created, not of the same essence of God. They are also creatures, devout creatures that throughout history have been God’s messengers to us to bring about good news. In fact it was the angel Gabriel who brought about the good news to Mary that she was about to be pregnant and the Savior was about to be born. For Daniel and his friends, an angel protected them from burning in a furnace. And yet they are still creatures. And even more to the point, in all of creation, while they are powerful, while they are certainly again devout in how they serve God, angels are not the crown jewel of what God created. We are: humanity. It wasn’t for the sake of saving angels that God sent His Son Jesus into the world to die and suffer and to redeem; it was for the sake of us and the rest of humanity. In fact, when God had finished creating all things, He could have very simply told Adam what everything was, and yet it was God who brought things to Adam so that Adam could name them. And He gave Adam dominion before the fall. With us in mind that God sent Jesus into the world to take our place, to bear our sin, to be our Savior, and put everything in subjection beneath Him, even eternal death. It is by virtue of our baptism, by virtue of Jesus giving us the Holy Spirit, that we are now co-heirs and we get to share in this salvation and now look forward to eternal life. Even in the midst of a broken and sinful world, through the suffering of Jesus, through His death, we live forever.
And even now as we continually struggle, day in and day out, the Holy Spirit constantly follows us back to this place together to be the body of Christ individually in our daily lives, a reminder in our baptism, that each and every day, sin is forgiven. Even now, we are redeemed forever. Without Jesus, we’d be like that man stranded on his house, yet there would be no happy ending. We would simply be swept away forever. But in Christ, we live.
So as we leave today and we go back out into our normal lives and we go back to work to do the things we do, we have to be reminded that we can’t let this warning stray too far from us, not to neglect this message that we have received, to not neglect the salvation that has been won for us through Jesus. It is challenging because those things that become idols in our lives more importantly, especially for me, it’s always time. I have my job as the Director of Recruitment, and pastors, I think we’re the worst. We, I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to put us on a high pedestal of hard workers, but that’s just the reality. 50 hours and 60 hours come and go, and we don’t seem to mind that often. Too often, I need to be reminded to take breaks, and even enjoy vacation, most often for my wife, but that’s the other thing. I also have a family. I’m a father–a father of three young children, who also want my time.
And yet in the midst of all that, fulfilling those vocations could be a father to be a pastor, Director of Recruitment and a husband, I’m still called not to neglect this message, this gospel. Even for me, I need a constant reminder of what Jesus has accomplished in my life, in our lives together. And even more to the point, I can say boldly by virtue of us coming together that we are in fact saved. You know there are those billboards you see when you’re driving on a highway: if you die today, do you know where you are going? I feel confident for you and for me to say that if something happened, we would be just fine. When Jesus returns we’ll live forever. Fully secure in my faith and my salvation, I’m then called to worry for the person on the outside who doesn’t know Jesus, that if He were to return today would be lost forever. And so they are that metaphorical person standing on a roof, surrounded in a flood of sin with nowhere to go. If they don’t hear the gospel, if they don’t hear this message that we can never neglect, they’re lost.
And so, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, secure in our salvation, knowing that no matter what happens, nothing can tear us away from the Good News of Jesus and His love and grace and mercy for us, we’re then called to take this message, not to neglect it and not to put it underneath a cover, but to let it shine brightly into the world no matter what temporal consequences may be, no matter the distractions we may have in life, no matter what fears we have, that we may cause by doing it. When we see that person struggling, we’re called to be brave and courageous and to be loving, not to neglect them. Because our Lord didn’t neglect us. We’re called to take this Good News, this message of peace, comfort, and love to them in the same way that God persistently reaches out to us.
Now may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, Amen.
