The sermon text provided below is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

Amen. You may turn, if you would, in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews.
We’ll be reading from chapter 2, if you would remain standing for the reading of God’s Word.
We’re reading this evening Hebrews chapter 2 verses 1 through 4.
Hear the Word of God.
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 tested 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.
You may be seated. Let’s pray.
Our Father in Heaven, we would ask that you would give us your Spirit,
that these might not be dead words, but that we might be alive to their truth, to their value, to their beauty,
that they might be words that impact our lives, that change us,
that we might come and hear your words of life.
We ask that you would be with us this evening, that we might hear your truth and see its beauty.
For Jesus’ sake we pray this. Amen.
Well, the title of my message this evening is called Catching the Drift.
Now, often when people speak of catching someone’s drift,
they’re actually talking about whether you understand what they’re saying.
But here I’m thinking of, as we say in Presbytery, arresting the drift.
That is, catching the drift before you’ve gone too far.
Well, Callie and I love to go kayaking.
We often go on a river near our house in North Carolina called the Yadkin River,
and when launching the kayak out from the bank, we always have to make a choice.
Do we start out paddling against the current or simply begin by going with the current down the river?
The advantage of going against the current to start means that it’s easier on the way back home,
since you can just ride with the current.
But on the other hand, if we take the easy way downstream first,
we have to paddle back all the way against the current all the way home.
Now, the current in the Yadkin right there is very subtle.
From the bank, at first you can’t even tell that there is one.
But as soon as you get in the water, it becomes pretty obvious.
All we had to do was stop paddling.
The instant we stopped paddling, the boat would slowly turn sideways,
and within a few minutes we’d be completely turned around, drifting in the opposite direction.
So even though you couldn’t always tell from the bank,
there was a current all around us that wouldn’t let us stay still.
Unless we were actively paddling, the current would begin pulling us in the opposite direction.
Our passage this evening is talking about drifting.
Not drifting down a river, but drifting away from the faith.
So we’ll divide our time this evening by looking at three things.
Number one, the tendency to drift, to drifting, why we drift.
Number two, the danger of drifting, what happens when we drift.
Number three is the solution to drifting, how to keep from drifting.
So number one, the tendency to drifting, why we drift.
Have you ever caught yourself spending more time than you would like on social media?
I’ve come across a term recently called doom scrolling.
Have you heard of it?
It’s the ubiquitous practice of people on social media, video, or even news sites
to become glued to their phone or computer, continuing to scroll for a long time
and often inevitably finding increasingly depressing content.
We get sucked in.
Before we realize it, we’ve spent hours with very little helpful or good results to show for it.
See, we have to remember that we don’t live in a world that is friendly to our faith.
Now the Westminster Confession summarizes our three enemies as the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Having been involved throughout my life in various denominations, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Presbyterians,
I like to suggest sometimes that in general Pentecostals focus on the devil,
Baptists focus on the world, and Presbyterians focus on the flesh.
But the Bible teaches that we face all three of these enemies.
Now in terms of the flesh, we must remember that we have an enemy on the inside.
Paul uses the term flesh to refer to the sinful nature that we still have present within us even as believers.
While the Bible is clear that sin has no more power over those in Christ,
there is still a part of us that wants to sin because the presence of sin has not been fully removed.
Despite receiving a new nature that wants to love God and obey him, Christians don’t always do this.
Not yet.
And we should not discount the role that our sinful flesh, sinful nature plays in tempting us to drift away from the faith.
But we must also not forget that we have enemies on the outside.
Despite the fact that some Christians want to ascribe every temptation and difficulty in our lives only to antagonistic evil spirits,
we should not make the opposite mistake to think that every thought or temptation is due exclusively to our sinful flesh.
The devil is real. Not every temptation comes from your own lack of self-discipline.
Sometimes it really does come out of the blue, and it’s important to recognize that.
Beating yourself up for being tempted by the devil is not helpful or true.
Your sanctification is not just a battle between you, your old and new natures.
There are real evil spiritual forces out for your spiritual blood intent on taking you down and out.
But I think that the most subtle danger to drifting comes from not realizing how the values of an ungodly world are shaping us.
Many reformed Christians have rightly pushed back against those who want to say that all of culture is evil and should be rejected.
There’s much good and true even in a world marred by sin and a culture full of people that hate God.
Common grace that God gives means that God restrains evil,
and we need not condemn every idea coming from unbelievers as completely without merit.
Yet, in this, we need to be aware of the potential for drift.
There’s a current in this world.
There’s the danger out there of the creep of two kinds of cultural ideas.
One might not look like a threat. It seems right at first.
Or the others that are obviously wrong but repeated so loudly and so often that we eventually begin to accept part of the premise.
And this can happen with even the worst ideas.
It usually happens gradually.
But it’s more likely to happen the less deeply we’re studying scripture for ourselves.
But before we wall ourselves up in a Christian community,
consider that while the culture out there is the problem that we need to be wise to,
we should not think that simply walling ourselves up to be an isolated, private Christian community will protect us from the world.
Because the world out there finds its resonance within us.
In 1 John 2, the Apostle John sums up what he describes as the world.
He says in verse 16,
For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life,
is not from the Father, but is from the world.
So this should make us realize that this is not something people out there struggle with.
The desires of the flesh is, of course, bodily desires.
Comfortable seats, clothes, houses, cars, delicious foods, and all the rest.
Desires of the eyes.
Those things that look attractive.
Attractive cars, attractive people, attractive jewelry, and all the rest.
In English, lust has a negative connotation while desire is more neutral.
But there’s only one Greek word.
That’s why some translations say desire, while others might say lust.
See, the difference is not whether, the difference is in whether the desire is appropriate.
Same for pride.
While it can be good in some situations, like proud of your son or daughter, it can be bad in others.
What John is talking about by the pride of life is not the I’m proud of you son.
It’s the pride we take in our possessions, our positions, or our achievements.
When you’re proud of what kind of car you drive, proud that you only eat organic,
or maybe proud that you don’t buy into that nonsense,
or simply more preoccupied with your identity in terms of what you possess than who you are in Christ.
You’re drifting with the world.
All of these things arise from within communities of people who have not been fully purged of all sinful desires.
That includes Christians.
Since we all have remaining sin nature, there’s a part of us that resonates with the outside culture
and wants to drift towards those things.
No one drifts towards holiness and truth.
Our environment is flowing away from God.
If you try to sit still, if you’re not paying attention, you won’t just pick up where you left off.
You’ll wake up finding yourself a long way from home.
Drifting is clearly easy to do, and it’s happening all around us.
But what’s the danger of drifting?
That brings us to number two, which is the danger of drifting.
What happens when we drift?
This summer, when I would talk to unbelievers about sin on the boardwalk,
a lot of them shared a similar idea about sin.
Even for the ones who had been to Catholic school, the prevailing thought was,
since everybody sins, it’s not that big a deal.
I mean, nobody’s perfect.
If everyone does it, it can’t be that bad.
So maybe there’s a current in this world, but what’s the big deal?
What if I’m more comfortable drifting?
Will the best things in life come to those who wait?
To put it bluntly, the problem is that the current of this life is flowing straight to hell.
Look back at our text.
If we look in verse one, it says, don’t drift.
But then verse two and three say why.
Verse two, 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?
The writer makes a comparison and then lets you connect the dots.
In Hebrews, there’s a recurring theme of a contrast between the old and new covenants.
We’ve just seen the ways in which the new covenant is better than the old in chapter one.
In chapter one, we saw the old prophets versus the new son as the better means by which God speaks.
And then the old angels versus the new son as the better messenger of God.
But now Hebrews wants to remind us of the flip side of that coin.
If the old covenant had a strict, harsh punishment,
then the new covenant will have an even stricter and harsher punishment.
Now this is not the way we typically think about the old and new covenants,
but it’s something that Hebrews wants to highlight for us here.
And he’ll expand, the writer will expand more on this theme later.
Let’s make sure we understand what he means.
First, when we see the phrase, the message declared by angels,
we shouldn’t think of just a few scant references in the Old Testament when the angels directly spoke.
We should understand this phrase to be a synecdoche.
That is, speaking of a part of something to refer to the whole thing.
For instance, when we say boots on the ground,
what we mean is soldiers wearing those boots on the ground, not just a pile of boots.
The Bible does this with God’s law, which is sometimes a reference to the entire Scriptures,
not merely those portions of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,
which lay out particular commands.
And in Acts 7, Stephen refers to the law delivered by angels.
Angels delivered the law to Moses.
And so when Hebrews says the message declared by angels,
we should understand him to be talking about the whole Old Covenant.
Hebrews is reminding us of God’s commanded punishment for disobedience in the Old Testament.
God established a zero-tolerance policy for idolatry, murder, adultery, Sabbath-breaking, profaning his name, etc.
Once the charge had been clearly established, there were no plea deals or exemptions.
Judgment was certain.
Rather than suggesting that in the New Covenant, judgment is less harsh and less certain,
Hebrews assumes that a superior covenant carries more significant penalties.
It’s an argument from the lesser to the greater.
We can expect the New Covenant to be more comprehensive and with harsher punishments.
It’s a serious mistake to think that now that God spoke by his Son,
it’s a majestic Son that we can expect greater leniency against sin.
Hebrews clearly tells us to expect the opposite.
A part of the reason for this is the confirmation of the truth of the message.
Look at verses 2 through 4.
It was declared at first by the Lord, 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.
The Old Covenant was completely true and reliable.
You could rely on everything that was said, and it was provided through angels and prophets.
How much less excuse does anyone have to doubt the New Covenant?
Since it has been declared directly from God’s own mouth by his Son,
as well as confirmed by apostolic authoritative eyewitnesses, miracles, and spiritual gifts.
Now if you notice, the drifting that Hebrews is talking about here is warning against.
He describes it as neglect, neglect such a great salvation.
In this passage, he’s not warning against high-handed rebellion.
That is a problem, but that’s not what he’s talking about here.
He’s talking about a mindset that just doesn’t take the Bible’s message too seriously.
This might not be a conscious rejection of its truth, merely a lack of concern,
a distraction from, a deprioritizing of the Gospel in our lives.
We find this illustrated in a parable that Jesus tells in Mark 4.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record a parable that Jesus told about four soils
in which Gospel seed tries to grow.
The soils represent different kinds of people and how they hear.
The first doesn’t listen at all, and the seed never even germinates.
But for the other three, the seed begins to germinate.
In the rocky soil, the seed dies before it’s ripe because the soil was too shallow
and difficulties just kill it off.
But the third soil looks very promising.
The seed begins to germinate.
There’s no rocks in the way.
The only problem is there’s too many other plants eating up the nutrients,
taking up space, shading it from the sun.
The seed never makes it.
In Mark 4.18, Jesus explains that the thorny soil is they who hear the word.
But the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches,
and the desire for other things enter in and choke out the word,
and it proves unfruitful.
This is what the writer of Hebrews is anxious to warn us about.
Wake up! Don’t drift! Pay close attention.
Drifters won’t make it in the kingdom of heaven.
At this point, I also want to point out the second word in verse 1, we.
I’m sure all of us can think of people we have known who drifted away from what they heard.
There’s even a classy name given to it these days called deconversion.
Well-known proponents of Christianity suddenly turn their back on their faith and the church.
While it may look sudden, I guarantee you that if you were close to this person,
you would be able to trace a drift of neglecting the means of grace,
of finding the Bible less and less important,
and losing interest in Christ and the Gospel.
Drifters will wake up to find themselves far from home.
The reason that the writer of Hebrews says we is he wants you to look after,
look after those around you.
Don’t be content to pay close attention all by yourself.
The writer is calling his listeners to gather each other and not let them drift.
For some people, church is the last thing to go.
For others, it’s the first.
We need to be checking in with each other.
Don’t just ask how things are going at work.
How’s your Bible reading?
How can I pray for your faith?
How is your prayer life?
How’s your marriage?
How is your relationship with your kids?
Don’t just assume everything is fine.
Remember, the cost of drifting is too great to allow assumptions or feeling awkward
to let others drift without being called out.
So what’s the solution?
Well, number three.
The solution to drifting.
How to keep from drifting.
What is the solution to drifting?
Well, if you’re a sailor on a ship, you prevent drifting with an anchor.
Coming up in a few chapters, we’re going to see Hebrew talk about anchors for our soul.
But in this passage, we have our answer in verse one.
Pay attention.
Pay much closer attention to what?
To what we have heard.
Remember how chapter one began.
God spoke in these last days through his Son.
The previous means by which God spoke, the prophets and the angels,
they were meant to point away from themselves.
But when God speaks by his Son, he is meant to be the focus of our attention.
Our primary task as Christians is to focus on Jesus.
The fact is, the command to pay attention to Jesus should be the easiest command to obey in the world.
After all, he’s only the most majestic, glorious, fascinating, absorbing, and mesmerizing person to ever exist.
Not only in simply who he is, but also in what he has done.
He will be our subject of attention and source of delight for all of eternity,
starting at the moment of our salvation.
This is not a hard job.
Pay attention to the most fascinating person in the universe, unless we don’t want to.
The unbeliever wants nothing to do with Jesus,
and our remaining sin nature wants to look at anything except Jesus.
The natural man yawns in the face of glory.
He neglects the glorious salvation found in Jesus.
Turns out, even the most captivating subject can fail to capture the attention of someone who is distracted.
That’s why, whenever we want to pay attention to something, we make preparations.
Maybe you buy noise-canceling headphones to help drown out the world while you listen to your favorite album, audio book, or podcast.
Ever motion at people to be quiet while you’re on a phone call?
Maybe you arrange a cozy reading nook to curl up with your favorite book,
or buy the right game day snacks just before the game so you can focus on it.
Or maybe you drink caffeine to stay awake while studying.
The point is, whenever we’re committed to focusing on something, we make preparations.
We don’t just expect it to happen.
Yet, how many of us neglect preparation to pay attention to Jesus?
The first command that we get in the book of Hebrews is not to do something for God,
not to clean up our act, but to pay attention.
The first command in the book of Hebrews is not, work for Jesus, but look at Jesus.
Listen to Jesus.
As David says in Psalm 27 that we read earlier, verse 4,
One thing I have asked of the Lord, and that will I seek after,
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
All of our spiritual life, all of our spiritual life change happens from this foundation.
In 2 Corinthians 3, 18, Paul says,
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another,
for this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Spiritual transformation is what we need, and only God can give it,
and what he uses to do that is our gazing upon the sun.
That’s why Hebrews opens with an entire chapter setting forth the majestic son of God.
The Christian life is not primarily a collection of practices, but a subject of attention.
The Pharisees had reduced following God to a set of practices.
As a result, they lost sight of God.
Instead of keeping their attention on the giver of the law,
they let their attention drift to themselves.
They became preoccupied not with God,
but on how they were doing checking boxes for themselves,
and how well others thought of them.
And this is the very same drift that all of us must guard against.
Very likely you know the phrase, comparison is a trap.
It’s also a recipe for drifting.
When you’re constantly comparing yourself to others,
you’ll either feel terrible about yourself,
or you’ll feel like you’re not that bad.
In both cases, your frame of reference is gradually drifting away from God’s perfect holiness.
You can always find someone who’s worse at something than you are.
It’s like the game of telephone in which a message gets more and more garbled
the longer it’s passed along the line.
Our standard of holiness drifts further and further away from God’s standard of holiness
when we only compare ourselves to others.
So if beholding is how you and I change,
what happens when you and I behold the glory of the Lord,
when you and I pay much closer attention to what we have heard?
What does it look like to highly regard instead of neglect such a great salvation?
I want to spend a moment trying to help us do just that.
So I want to suggest to you two things.
First, when you look at Jesus,
when you look at God, you begin to see yourself as you are.
John Calvin began his work in the Institutes
with the observation that we cannot understand ourselves apart from God.
So the first thing that we see is our sin.
Just a few weeks ago, Pastor Jeff preached from Isaiah 6
where the prophet caught a glimpse of God in his temple.
The first thing he realized was he’s not that holy at all.
He could see that his heart wasn’t pure.
His hands weren’t clean.
He was a filthy, guilty law breaker.
But he also saw that his community was a filthy and guilty community.
He was a sinner in a family, in a community, in a village of sinners.
That meant he was done for.
In fact, that was the first thing he said.
Woe is me.
One of the first things that we saw from Hebrews chapter 1
is that the son hates wickedness more than anyone else in the universe.
So when you see yourself as a sinner,
someone who was thought and done and said
that which God hates with an absolute and eternal hatred,
you know that you’re done for.
Woe is me.
God’s love for absolutely pure and holy righteousness burns white-hot,
and out of it comes his white-hot hatred for sin.
But when you look at the son of God, you see something else.
You also see God’s atonement for your sin.
When you pay much closer attention to the son who,
after making purification for sin,
sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high,
you don’t just see God’s hatred against sin.
You also see the unbelievable grace, mercy, and compassion of God
for those that deserve his white-hot fury.
You see the glorified nail scars in the human hands and human feet
of the God-man himself,
and you remember that every drop of that white-hot fury of God
against you for your sin was fully and completely
poured out on the one person who should never have had to taste a drop of it.
You can see the breathtaking justice and mercy of God
rolled into one, the son of God,
the living one who literally went through hell
to save you from sin’s penalty,
died to break its power in your life,
and rose again to give you a perfect record of obedience
and fill you with the Holy Spirit as a new creation.
This transformation is so foundational and fundamental
that the Bible describes it this way in Galatians 2.20.
I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh,
I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
The life that I now live by faith in the Son of God.
Living by faith, we use the term so often we can forget what it means.
Faith is the instrument by which we receive salvation,
which is to say, hearing and seeing the life-transforming promise God offers
and believing it like your life depends on it,
because it absolutely does.
Faith has been described as the gaze of the soul.
So to live by faith means to pay much closer attention to what you have heard.
It’s the opposite of neglecting.
We’ve got the direct words of Jesus, the testimony of the apostles,
along with the wonders and miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit,
all urging us to look at God’s Son and not take our eyes off him.
Let him capture your full gaze and attention.
Don’t let the world, the flesh, or the devil make you drift away.
And of course, keep an eye on those around you.
Don’t let them drift away either.
This salvation is too great to be neglected.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you
that you have given us your Son,
that you have given us the one to show your love,
that you so loved the world, that you gave your Son
so that whoever believes on him might not perish and have eternal life.
Lord, we ask that you would give us eyes of faith
that we might do, as David said,
gaze upon your beauty,
and we would be captured and captivated by this.
Lord, we ask that you would do this.
We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.