Do Not Neglect Salvation
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2 Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. 2 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, 3 how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation…? 
A rhetorical question is asked for effect. It makes its point by what it asks. It challenges us to think about the obvious answer and its implications. That is what the writer here is doing. He doesn’t actually answer what he asks. He doesn’t need to. He is changeling his audience by asking a question the answer to which is plainly obvious.

But before the author asks the question, he issues

1. A Warning to Heed – the Danger of Drifting from Truth

He reminds his readers of two vital things so that a third thing doesn’t happen. The third thing is the danger of not holding to the truth of the gospel one has professed. Putting the three together, we learn that the true believer in the Lord Jesus

→Hears the gospel and understands its truth
→Heeds the gospel and obeys its truth
→Holds to the Gospel and continues in its truth

Let’s consider these as follows:

→Hearing the Gospel and understanding its truth
The eternal significance of the gospel is understood by the person it presents and the outcome of my response to Him. The gospel is about the Son of God. He is God’s ultimate, absolute and final ‘message’ to humankind. God has spoken to the world by a Saviour, an Almighty Saviour and the most important and essential thing as far as God is concerned is, how have we responded to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ?
The opening verse of this book of Hebrews summarize the truth of the gospel:

1 ‘God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they’ (Heb 1:1-4).

These verses tell us that God has spoken, they tell us of the greatness of the Son through whom He has ultimately spoken and they tell us of the Son’s Cross and exaltation. It is in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ that we as sinners can have hope. It is through the greatness of His person and what He has accomplished by His Cross and Resurrection that sinful humanity can be reconciled to God. The first Adam failed by disobedience and brought sin into the world (Rom 5:12), the ‘last Adam’, Jesus Christ, came into the world to answer for that sin. We all, by birth belong to the fallen order of the first Adam, by the gospel we can share in the new order of redemption of the last Adam, the Son of God because He has ‘purged our sins’ and ‘sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high’.

→Heeding the Gospel and obeying its truth
The idea in the expression ‘give the more earnest heed’ is to pay careful attention. We need to be aware of the truth and we need to obey the gospel by repentance before God and believing in His Son. The Bible puts this in clear perspective:

“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).

When Jesus Himself preached and taught the people He appealed: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” He was calling for people not only to listen, but to heed the message. It is an urgent matter demanding our attention right now. Why? Because my eternal destiny is at stake and not one of us has any guarantee we’ll see tomorrow.

→Holding to the Gospel and continuing in its truth
The proof that a person is truly a Christian and a believer in the Lord Jesus is that they hold to, and live by the truth of the gospel. They hold to its truth and its truth holds them. They honour by life and lip the one who they claim to know as Lord and Saviour. The Christian life is one of submission, obedience and perseverance.

The warning here concerns the danger of drifting away from the Son, from the truth of the gospel – ‘lest we drift away’ or ‘so that we do not drift away from it’ (NASB). It’s not it drifting from me for the gospel doesn’t change, but me from it. How could this happen? Unbelief. If the truth I once believed no longer holds me, influences and guides me then my profession was just that, a profession without substance or reality.

The story is told of a young man who once acted as a guide at Niagara Falls. Not busy one day he moored his boat, as he thought, securely and a safe distance from the falls edge and then lay down for a rest only to be rocked to sleep on the constantly moving water. Unfortunately, while sleeping the boat’s rope loosened from its moorings and began to drift with the current. Others seeing his danger, as he headed toward the falls, shouted, but to no avail. He could not hear them. At one point the boat’s progress was briefly hindered by a protruding rock. The people shouted louder, the young man still remained oblivious. The boat soon drifted again. Finally, awakening mid the thunderous waters at the falls edge, it was all too hopelessly late. How tragic.

We are in danger in this present time, perhaps like never before. People are being lulled to sleep by the ‘current’ of the culture and unconsciously and deceptively loosened from the moorings of moral and spiritual truth and set adrift with a false and foolish sense of security while being carried on the unstable and insecure waters of man-made ‘truth’ ever moving faster and getting closer to the edge of disaster. We will yet learn personally and collectively that once the moorings of moral and spiritual truth are abandoned, we are headed in one direction to an inevitable outcome, the judgment of God.

But let us turn to the question.

2. A Question to Answer – Can I Escape the Judgment of God

Notice the

→Preface to the Question – Judgment under the Law
Angels were involved in the giving of the law at Mount Sinai: The Bible records:

“The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints: From his right hand went a fiery law for them” – Deut 33:2

And the first martyr of the church era, Stephen, reminded his Hebrew audience: “Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it” – Acts 7:53.

The point then in prefacing the question with this statement is to make a contrast between the law and the gospel. The Law, involving God’s angels and the gospel communicated through His Son. If transgressing and disobeying the law met with the just punishment it prescribed, how then will someone escape the judgment of God who treat the gospel and the Son of God as irrelevant? It’s a contrast of the lesser with the greater. Hence the question of v 3.

Notice too, the

→Nature of the Question – A Rhetorical Question
A question of this nature is intended to make a point more than seek an answer. It really is a warning not make this mistake it indicates. Neglect is to be ‘careless’ or ‘not to care’. Jesus once told a story about a king who made a wedding feast for his son and when everything was ready and the time arrived, sent his servants to call the invited guests. They refused to respond and on a second appeal from other servants, they simply paid no attention and went about their business, while others turned violent toward the servants. Rather insulting you will readily agree, I’m sure? Yet, that is how many respond to God and His offer of salvation. They couldn’t care less.

Not only do they not care about God or the gospel, they also think it doesn’t matter. If the Bible is true, and God is God, they’re wrong. It matters absolutely and eternally.

Then we note the

→Subject of the Question – So Great Salvation
God’s salvation is not only deliverance from sin, it is also the bestowal of all the blessings which Christ has paid for on the Cross and which God freely gives to all who believe Him.
It is so great salvation because

    ↘God has provided it – He is the source – John 3:16
    ↘The Son has secured it – At an infinite price – Hebrews 1:1-4
    ↘A Sinner can receive it – As the free gift of God – Ephesians 2:8-9
 
The federal penitentiary on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco bay was from 1934-1963 ‘a maximum-security, minimum-privilege facility’. It held over its lifetime some of the United States most notorious criminals such as Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and “Birdman” Robert Stroud.

Federal Officials claim that no inmates ever successfully escaped from ‘the Rock’. During its history, thirty six men made a total of fourteen escape attempts. Twenty three were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape and two drowned. The other five were never found and were presumed drowned.

Inmate, Frank Morris, along with two brothers, John and Clarence Anglin made their daring escape from the prison in 1962 after months of careful planning. Stealing what they needed and getting supplies from other prisoners, they improvised and worked over months to prepare their escape route. The night of escape finally came on June 11th 1962. After placing carefully made papier-mâché dummies of their heads with human hair which was supplied by Clarence Anglin who was a barber in the prison, they made their way through the air vents in their cells which they had worked on for months to widen replacing the originals with fake lookalike wall and grids. Behind these vents was an unguarded 3 foot wide utility corridor giving them access to an old removable roof vent through which they escaped the building. At the shore they inflated life jackets and a ‘dinghy’ made from fifty waterproof raincoats acquired in the preceding months in prison. Launching their presumably untested vessel they made their away across the treacherous waters of the San Francisco bay to freedom or did they? No one knows for sure for they were never seen or heard of again; they either drowned or escaped.

What a daring escape these men attempted. The writer of Hebrews asks: ‘How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation'? We won’t. No one, who neglects God’s great salvation, will ever escape His judgment nor will they ever escape from the place of punishment.

Don’t neglect God’s great salvation. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household” that is, if they believe too. (Acts 16:31).

AJC