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- Herausgeber: Crossway
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
The book of Hebrews was written to magnify the greatness of our Savior and the importance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In nineteen sermons, late pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones unfolds the riches and beauties of the gospel message found throughout this unique book of the Bible. Using examples and illustrations that remain relevant today, he seamlessly connects the truths found in the book of Hebrews to the whole scope of God's Word as he exhorts us to hold fast to our salvation and live according to the truth of the gospel.
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“Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of God’s special gifts to the church in the twentieth century.”
Mark Dever, senior pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC; president, 9Marks
“Lloyd-Jones’s preaching was based on deep reading and scholarship, yet it was accessible to everyone—it stirred the affections and changed the heart.”
Timothy Keller, pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City; best-selling author, The Reason for God
“I regarded Martyn Lloyd-Jones with admiration and affection during the years that we were both preaching in London, so I am delighted that his unique ministry is to be more widely available in the United States.”
John Stott, the late rector emeritus, All Souls Church, London
“Lloyd-Jones was a titan of Christian ministry, and it thrills me to see his influence accelerating today for the benefit of the church around the world.”
R. C. Sproul, chairman, Ligonier Ministries; copastor, St. Andrew’s Chapel, Sanford, Florida
“Without question the finest biblical expositor of the twentieth century. In fact, when the final chapter of church history is written, I believe he will stand as one of the greatest preachers of all time.”
John MacArthur, pastor, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California
“The preaching and subsequent writing of Lloyd-Jones have been and continue to be a huge source of inspiration in my own life and ministry.”
Alistair Begg, senior pastor, Parkside Church, Cleveland, Ohio
“I loved to hear Lloyd-Jones for the sheer quality of his biblical expositions and his stance for evangelical Christianity.”
I. Howard Marshall, professor emeritus, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
A Merciful and Faithful High Priest
Other Crossway Books by Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Acts
The Assurance of Our Salvation
The Cross
Experiencing the New Birth
God the Father, God the Son
The Gospel in Genesis
Great Doctrines of the Bible
The Kingdom of God
Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled
Life in Christ
Living Water
Out of the Depths
Revival
Seeking the Face of God
Setting Our Affections upon Glory
True Happiness
Truth Unchanged, Unchanging
Walking with God Day by Day
Why Does God Allow War?
Studies in the Book of Acts
Authentic Christianity
Courageous Christianity
Victorious Christianity
Glorious Christianity
Triumphant Christianity
Compelling Christianity
A Merciful and Faithful High Priest
Studies in the Book of Hebrews
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
A Merciful and Faithful High Priest: Studies in the Book of Hebrews
Copyright © 2017 by Elizabeth Catherwood and Ann Beatt
Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.
Cover design: Crystal Courtney
First printing 2017
Printed in the United States of America
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-5802-3ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-5805-4PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-5803-0Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-5804-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lloyd-Jones, David Martyn, author.
Title: A merciful and faithful high priest: studies in the Book of Hebrews / Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
Description: Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016058601 (print) | LCCN 2017014116 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433558030 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433558047 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433558054 (epub) | ISBN 9781433558023 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433558054 (ePub)
Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Hebrews–Meditations. | Bible. Hebrews–Sermons.
Classification: LCC BS2775.54 (ebook) | LCC BS2775.54 .L56 2017 (print) | DDC 227/.8706–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058601
Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
2022-03-02 02:12:34 PM
Contents
1 Salvation—The Greatest Need (Heb. 2:1–4)
2 God’s Only Way of Escape (Heb. 2:1–4)
3 The Authority of the Gospel (Heb. 2:1–4)
4 Why Salvation Is Great (Heb. 2:1–4)
5 The Purpose of His Coming (Heb. 2:1–4)
6 His Death for Us (Heb. 2:8b–9b)
7 Two Views, Two Destinies (Heb. 2:8b–9a)
8 Not Ashamed of His Brethren (Heb. 2:9)
9 So Great Salvation (Heb. 2:10)
10 The Brethren (Heb. 2:11)
11 Fully God, Fully Man (Heb. 2:14)
12 Our Faithful, Unchanging High Priest (Heb. 2:17–18)
13 Full Maturity (Heb. 6:1–3)
14 The Pattern (Hebrews 8:1–5)
15 God’s Own People (Heb. 9:1–4)
16 Avoiding the Judgment to Come (Heb. 11:7)
17 If God Be for Us . . . (Heb. 11:8)
18 The Two Views (Heb. 11:13)
19 Unashamed of Their God (Heb. 11:16)
1
Salvation—The Greatest Need
Hebrews 2:1–4
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers [various] miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
These four verses typically illustrate the way in which the Bible everywhere addresses us and comes to us. There is a note of urgency, a note of solemnity, and a note of profound seriousness that is characteristically found throughout the Bible. You can read it for instance in the gospels; you will find it as you read through the book of the Acts of the Apostles with its records of the preaching of the apostles and the first Christian preachers, and you will find exactly the same note in all the various epistles that are gathered together in the New Testament. This is the idea: “Flee from the wrath to come” (Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7). John the Baptist, the first preacher in the New Testament, started on that note, warning the people, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did exactly the same thing. “The kingdom of God is at hand: repent” (Mark 1:15), “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15; Mark 4:9; Luke 8:8)—those were his words; that was the spirit of his message. There is a note of desperate urgency, of profound seriousness, and even of solemnity. And as you go on to Acts you hear Peter on the day of Pentecost. This was the first sermon given, in a sense, under the auspices of the Christian church as we know her, and this is what he said: “Save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:40). And that was his note as he continued to preach.
Turn to the preaching of the apostle Paul, and you will find the same thing. Take, for instance, his famous sermon at Athens. He told those people that “God . . . commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained” (Acts 17:30–31), and all the way through his ministry you will find this self-same note. We see this in all the epistles, and the author of Hebrews puts it in a particularly powerful form in 2:1–4. People are urged and pleaded with and exhorted to pay attention to these things, to give earnest heed to them.
Now the author was addressing Christian people—all the epistles are written to Christians, to members of churches—and yet he urges them to give earnest heed to the things they have heard. Their problem was that they did believe the gospel, but they were living in a difficult world. They were suffering persecution, they were experiencing famine and all sorts of things, and some of them were beginning to waver. They had not lost their faith, but some of them were being shaken, and the author exhorts them not to slip away from the things they have heard and believed, not to be negligent of them. His message, I repeat, was primarily addressed to Hebrew Christians, but it is a fair deduction to say that if it was important for those believers to hold on to these things, how much more important is it for those who have not believed. If those who have believed are liable to forsake it, if that is a possibility, what is the predicament of those who have never believed? So everything that this man urges upon believers is even more crucial in the case of those who are not believers, those who have not become Christians.
The gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of the book of Hebrews, calls upon the world to give earnest heed to what it has to say. The world is not merely to give it a quick glance or read a casual article about it or have an occasional discussion about it or on special days or occasions listen to what the church has to say. Earnest heed means undivided attention. There is a very good illustration of this in the sixteenth chapter of the book of Acts where we read about the apostle Paul preaching the gospel for the first time in Europe. A woman named Lydia heard Paul’s witness, “whose heart the Lord opened, [so] that she attended unto [heeded] the things which were spoken of [by] Paul” (Acts 16:14). She paid attention or considered or studied; she did not just sit and listen and then go away and forget it all. She paid earnest heed, realizing the vital importance of the gospel message.
Another way the author puts this exhortation is that we must be careful not to drift away from it. He probably had in mind a ship that is moored just outside a harbor. It is being carried away unawares by the tide, drifting past the harbor where it was intending to go, and that is a very sad and serious thing. It is possible, according to the Scriptures, for us to do that with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that has happened to many men or women. Some have come face-to-face with the gospel; they have felt an interest in it; they have, as it were, been at the entry into the harbor. They simply had to go a little further, and they would have arrived in the port. But alas, for some reason or another, they have not committed themselves, they have not accepted it, and they have allowed themselves to drift past it. What a horrible thing it is to be in sight of the haven only to drift past! The author of Hebrews warns these people against that danger, and that is the warning of the gospel throughout the Scriptures. Our Lord spoke of this in a famous parable, the parable of the sower. He said a man can listen to the gospel—like seed that is being sown in the ground—but the birds come and take it away, and nothing happens—he is drifting past. I cannot imagine anything more terrible to a soul than that he should come face-to-face with the gospel of Christ and should even have felt something of its power but then drift past never to see it again. The author warns against that danger, and throughout his letter he again and again offers that warning.
The third way in which he puts it is, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” He says this because we are so occupied with other things that we do not pay attention to it. We know it is there, but we “neglect” it. Many people in this world know something about the gospel; they know in their heart of hearts it is right and true, and they propose someday to pay attention to it and deal with it and listen seriously to what it has to say. They know something about heaven and hell and God and sin; they are aware of certain propositions, certain statements of the truth, but they neglect it all. Men and women are absorbed so much in other things that the gospel does not receive their time or attention; they neglect the truth.
The Bible everywhere exhorts us to avoid those three fatal possibilities; it appeals to us to listen to the gospel and give it earnest heed, but the world is doing the exact opposite. The world does not see why it should listen to the gospel, though it pays great attention to many other things. I am thinking now not only of thoughtless people but also of thoughtful people. Many men and women are desperately and seriously concerned about the present state of the world. They know what has already happened, they see certain portents and indications with regard to what is likely to happen, and they are afraid of the future. Philosophers and thinkers and leaders of thought have grappled with all this. But when we come to them with the gospel they say, “I am not going to listen to that; it is irrelevant.” The gospel does not seem to have anything to say to them, and they do not see why they should listen to it. Thus vast numbers of men and women in this perishing world are refusing to do the very thing that this author appeals to them to do.
Why should we listen to the gospel? Why should not the doors of every church be shut? Why should not the Christian church be abolished? How do we justify ourselves in this modern world in standing before mankind to make the unique claim that we have the only answer to man’s problem? Why should anybody listen to this gospel? I want to show you that in these four verses this man gives us the three main general reasons for listening to it. The three reasons for listening to the gospel are also the three themes of the epistle to the Hebrews. So these four verses are in and of itself a kind of summary of the entire epistle.
What are those reasons? The first reason for listening to the gospel is the source of the gospel, or the authority of the gospel—the authority with which the message comes to us because of the source of the message. His second reason is the dangerous and alarming condition and position of all men and women who do not believe the gospel and who do not heed it. And his third and last reason is the nature or character of the gospel.
Before we consider these three reasons why everybody should give the gospel careful consideration, let us make perfectly certain that we are agreed as to what we are talking about. It is no use saying, “I must give earnest heed to it” unless we are agreed as to what it is. Before we come to these tremendous arguments for not neglecting the gospel or drifting away, we must be absolutely clear that we know what we are considering, and unfortunately this is not something that can be assumed today. We are sufficiently aware of the methods and the devices of Satan to know that when the Devil knows he has failed in his claim to keep a man altogether, he next encourages him to consider the gospel in a wrong way. Large numbers of people in the world have never given the gospel a thought, and they do not propose to do so. They say they have no use for it whatsoever; it is entirely outside their lives. The Devil keeps them under his control in that way.
Other people have a sense of failure or disappointment in life. They may have a sense of great loneliness in this world or perhaps are assaulted by some other trouble. But these people are beginning to think and to turn in the direction of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ and the church. At this point the Devil will do everything he can to persuade them that they are basing their thoughts on the right thing when their thoughts are actually based on something far removed from that; he will encourage in them a false interest in religion. This is always the danger in a time of crisis, when things are difficult and hard and troublesome in this world. It always happens at a time when men and women tend to become frantic and are prepared to clutch at anything that seems to give them hope and deliver them out of their troubles. Therefore I say it is something of which we have to be very careful at this present time, and, thank God, the New Testament itself warns us about this and teaches us and enables us to confront it. Many people in the world believe things about God and Christ and yet do not believe what the author of Hebrews calls “the things which we have heard” (2:1). Many people think they are true believers in God and in Christ, but we can tell very clearly from the pages of the New Testament that there is no value in their belief in God. This is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a soul.
Other people are not entirely wrong about these matters, but they grab hold of certain aspects of the truth that particularly appeal to them and regard that as the whole truth. They tend to equate Christianity with a certain aspect or view of Christianity. They maintain certain presuppositions and certain ideas in their mind about the gospel; they extract a part of the gospel and say that is the whole.
Let me illustrate this with a few examples. Many people in the world are searching for happiness. For various reasons they have been made unhappy, and they have been trying the various things that offer to make men and women happy. Then they come to the Bible and to the church and to the gospel of Jesus Christ seeking happiness. As they listen to the gospel, they are concentrating on that one goal or desire, and they find certain verses in the Bible that seem to offer happiness; they clutch at them and listen to nothing else, and they feel happy, and often they fondly imagine they have therefore become Christians. But they are not Christians at all. What I mean is this: Many cults and agencies in the world offer people happiness. Christian Science, for example, claims to go by the Scriptures and calls itself Christian. But when you examine its beliefs and put them side by side with the gospel you find you are looking at two entirely different things, yet they call themselves Christians. You see, they have got hold of a theory, a philosophy, a form of psychology that certainly makes them feel happier, and because it uses certain phrases of the Bible they believe their experience is truly Christian.
Others do the same thing in a more or less completely psychological manner. A great deal of psychological treatment is going on in the world using Christian terms but not preaching the Christian gospel. A psychologist with his theory can come to the New Testament and pick out certain phrases that suit his patient and then give his own teaching, which is not the teaching of the New Testament though he uses Christian terminology. Men and women may then imagine they have thus become Christians. There is also so-called science of thought and similar things. It uses Christian terminology when it suits it, but it ignores fundamental postulates of the gospel that was preached to these Hebrew believers.
That is the kind of danger I am elaborating upon. A search for happiness can lead people to extract some things from the true Christian gospel but ignore the rest.
The same thing happens to many people who are seeking to lose their sense of worry. They have become anxious and burdened, and they may be on the verge of a nervous or a mental breakdown. All they want is to be delivered from that. So they come to the teaching that offers them deliverance. Such teaching uses certain Christian terms, and they accept what they hear. But the question is, have they become Christians? I remind you again that many agencies in the world can make us feel much happier and deliver us from worry and still leave us in a non-Christian position.
Or consider the large numbers of people who are seeking comfort and consolation. There are many broken hearts in this world. They feel they have lost everything that made life worth living, and they long for comfort, for happiness, for fellowship. That is why many of them go to separatists and various other agencies. Even the gospel of Christ can be presented as just something that comforts people and no more; some deal directly with that particular need and do not mention the other things.
Many people are interested in the question of guidance. Life is bewildering and perplexing today, and the great question that is confronting us all is, what am I to do, which of these two courses am I to follow, what am I to make of my life? The problem of guidance is a real problem to all of us in this life and world. The Bible has a great deal to say about guidance. So these people come to the Bible, and they pick out everything they can find about guidance, and they say, “This is the thing I want,” and they think they have found the Christian way of living and of guidance. But when you listen to them or read their books you will often find that the whole gospel seems to them to be just a question of guidance; nothing else is mentioned at all. They say nothing about the sacrifice on the cross; it seems to be unnecessary. They see Christianity merely as a way of being guided in life.
Others are immensely interested in physical healing of the body. We all, as the result of sin in this world, are subject to illness and disease; sin has brought that in, and we all face it. There is perhaps nothing more universal in all of life than this longing and craving for healing and physical health. But danger comes in with this, as with everything else, when some people think the gospel is nothing but the way to produce healing. They talk about nothing else, and you are given the idea that the gospel of Jesus Christ is simply the way and the mechanism for being healed. That view too is psychology clothed with Christian terminology, masquerading as the gospel. But it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Others say they want to be “in tune with the Infinite”; they want to feel they are at one with the heart of the universe, and they come to the Bible because it suggests it can do that for them, and they extract that out of it but nothing more. Indeed I would say that many in this world are genuinely concerned about believing in God; that is the greatest ambition in their lives. They say they want to know God, and many of them are practicing mysticism, and they grab onto whatever in the Bible encourages them in this mysticism. They are wearily trudging the mystic way in an attempt to find God, but they ignore some of the fundamental elements of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They sometimes refer to him as the greatest mystic of all, the greatest pioneer in the realm of religious thinking.
Finally there are those whose one great absorbing interest in life is how to live a good life. They are highly moral people, and they are seriously concerned about moral and ethical questions. They say they are not interested in the destiny of their souls after they go out of this world. What they are concerned about is how to live in this world, how to be worthy of the name of man, how to uplift the race, how to live a moral and ethical life. Of course, the Bible has a great deal to say about this, and they take out all they want and ignore the rest.
I have considered all this at length not only because I want to be practical but because I know myself, my own heart, my own tendency by nature to do the very thing I’ve been talking about. I know so many who are doing this and who get temporary satisfaction and then find they have nothing, and it is the things we have been discussing that are keeping them from the gospel of Christ. People who think they have found satisfaction are obviously not going to seek any longer. Those who feel they have arrived are no longer going to travel. I want to show you that all the things I have been mentioning in and of themselves make up the wrong approach. The gospel of Jesus Christ gives happiness, it delivers us from worry, it administers comfort, it gives guidance, it teaches that the body can be healed miraculously, it puts us into touch with the Infinite, it helps us to know God, and it enables us to live a godly, moral, ethical life. But it does all that after it has done something else. All blessings follow in the Christian life from something else that has gone before, and what I want to assert with all the dogmatism I can command is this: If you think you will have the Christian blessing without having this other thing first, you are deluding yourself, you are a dupe of Satan, the god of this world who has turned himself into an angel of light and is deceiving you. The blessings of the gospel follow belief in the gospel’s central message.
“Therefore,” says the author of Hebrews, “we ought to give the more earnest heed”—to what?—“to the things which we have heard” (2:1)—and not to anything else. The people to whom the epistle to the Hebrews was written were to give more earnest heed, they were to beware of slipping away, they were to beware of neglecting the specific things they had already heard. The gospel of Jesus Christ is perfectly clear; it is not something vague or nebulous or indefinite. The gospel is the particular message that was first of all preached by Christ himself and then preached by the apostles, and it has been preached throughout the running centuries. That is the specific message that we find in the Bible.
This must be preached as a whole. I have no right to take parts and ignore the rest. I either preach the gospel or I do not preach the gospel. The apostle Paul in bidding farewell to the elders of the church at Ephesus reminded them he had not failed to deliver unto them “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), and any man who preaches without delivering the whole counsel of God is a false prophet. What the author of Hebrews means by “the things which we have heard” (2:1) is the whole gospel of Jesus Christ in its entirety—not only healing, not only ethics, not only comfort, but the whole message, the essence of this particular message that is found in the New Testament.
I say there is no question at all as to what this message is. The apostle Paul had to define it in his letter to the church at Corinth, and he said that what he preached to them was what all the other apostles were preaching. He says in essence, “I have no private message for you. I preach to you that which was delivered unto me, which is according to the Scripture and which is preached by my other brethren.” There was no contradiction between these men; there was no uncertainty and no hesitation. Read the book of Acts and you will find this same central, essential message. And what is the message? In its essence it is the message of what is called salvation. “How shall we escape,” says the author of Hebrews, “if we neglect so great salvation?” (2:3).
The first question, therefore, that we have to consider is how to be right with God for time and for eternity and how can that take place. You may have a broken, heavy heart. Some dear one was killed perhaps in the last war [World War II] or in the first war [World War I], or you have lost some dear one quite apart from war altogether, and your heart is bleeding. But that is not your first or even your greatest problem. Your most important problem is that you have a soul within you that is immortal, that you have to die, and that after your death you will face God in the judgment and your eternal destiny will be pronounced. I say therefore to you, your most urgent need is to consider your own condition before God.
You may have a body that is diseased, and you long for health. But even before the question of your physical health, you must consider the question of your soul, your spiritual health. That is where we go wrong. The Devil makes us put secondary things first, and as a result we never come to the first. Actually bereavement and sorrow have sometimes been the greatest blessing that have entered a man’s life. There are people in this world who came to know God in Christ because someone very dear to them had died. While this dear one was alive they never thought about these things; they enjoyed one another, and they lived for one another, and God was neglected. They never gave God a thought. Many are living like that, and then a dear one is taken away by death, and the surviving loved ones’ souls are at last awake, and eventually they find God in Christ. Bereavement and sorrow awakened their souls. Thomas Chalmers was one of the greatest preachers in Scotland in the nineteenth century. He was always a very able man and a great preacher; he had a scientific mind and used to preach marvelous scientific sermons. He had a great ministry in Scotland for ten years and then was stricken down by an illness that kept him in his sick chamber for nearly twelve months. It was then that he began to realize that he not only had never preached the gospel of Christ truly, but he had never truly believed it himself. He was talking about God and about Christ in his sermons, yes, but in his helpless condition he saw that he had never known Christ as his personal Savior. His illness was the means used by God to bring Thomas Chalmers to the light and to the full knowledge of the truth. So he thanked God for the illness that laid him aside, and afterward he went and preached the gospel in a new way and with a new power and was greatly used by God.
Nothing is more dangerous than to put secondary matters in the first position. We can test ourselves very easily about this. If you would like to know whether you have been deluded by Satan and whether you are holding on to something that is not really the gospel, although it uses Christian terminology, there is a simple way in which you can do so. Do you really know that you are a lost, hopeless, helpless, desperate sinner? You may have received guidance from the Holy Bible, extraordinary things may have happened to you, but if you have not seen yourself as a condemned sinner in the sight of God, you are not a Christian whatever else you may be.
Let me ask you another question. In your scheme of things is the Lord Jesus Christ absolutely central and essential? Would it be right to say that you have no system at all apart from him? I do not mean simply that he is a great teacher or that he lived a perfect life and set a great and glorious example. I mean, is he central in the sense that there is nothing without him? According to the things the Hebrews had heard, Christ was in that position. You may, I say again, have received wonderful guidance, extraordinary things may have happened to you, but many have experienced that kind of thing and yet do not claim to be Christians at all. I was reading the autobiography of a famous actor in this country [England] who never pretended to be a Christian. He said the turning point in his life was when he had a marvelous bit of guidance one afternoon. Strange things happen in this world. Shakespeare’s Hamlet said truly, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” You may likewise have experienced wonderful healing for your physical body. You may have been crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, and now you can run and leap and walk. But if you want to know whether you are a true Christian and whether your healing was truly the result of knowing Jesus Christ, I ask you to face two questions: Have you seen yourself as a hopeless lost sinner in the sight of a holy God? Is the Lord Jesus Christ essential to you to deliver you from the wrath of God and to reconcile you to God?
Let me put it still more specifically in a third question. Is the death on the cross absolutely vital to you? Paul said to the Corinthians, “I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). If you would come within the scope of the things we have heard, the death of Christ on the cross will be to you central, vital, absolute. You say you realize that if he had not died on the cross you would have no hope of having your sins forgiven, no hope of seeing God, no hope of heaven; you know you would be destined for hell and eternal misery. These are the things that are central and vital and essential. These are the things that were preached in the book of Acts. Read the sermon that Peter preached on the day of Pentecost. Isn’t this the truth he preached, isn’t it what Paul preached, isn’t it the argument of every one of the New Testament epistles—the blood of Christ, his death on the cross, to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness? These men put this message in the forefront in spite of everything. Why? Because they had no gospel apart from it. Are you interested in these things?
I say again solemnly, before you begin to consider your happiness, before you begin to long to be delivered from worry, before you yearn for comfort for your broken heart, before you want guidance, before you seek healing for your body, before you want to get in tune with the Infinite, face the fact of your spiritual state. All of us we are in a passing, transient world. The Isaac Watts hymn “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” puts it like this: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” You are at this moment a living soul going on inevitably to a final day, and as you do so, salvation is your first need, the need of knowing God, knowing he has forgiven you, knowing that he is your Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. Prepare for your latter end. Make certain that you are ready to die, that you are ready to meet God, that you know Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came into the world to reconcile you to God by dying for your sins and by rising again to justify you. I promise you if you get to know God like that, you can take your other problems one by one to him with confidence, and he will never say nay. But God forbid that anyone should find temporary satisfaction for lesser needs without having first of all satisfied the need of the soul for Jesus Christ and him crucified. Amen.
2
God’s Only Way of Escape
Hebrews 2:1–4
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers [various] miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
We are living in an age when it is somewhat unusual for people to meet together to consider the gospel. It is not as common now as it was a hundred years ago for people to gather together on Sundays to hear the preaching of the Christian message. Many regard such a practice as an anachronism. They see very little point or purpose in it, and they regard those of us who do so as rather strange. What is our exact reason for doing so? We need to know this not only so we can have an answer to give to others who ask us why we do it, but also so we will know for our own good.
These days comparatively few persons go to church, but it is also possible for some to go for the wrong reason, because they have not considered why they do so. We must know exactly why we pay earnest heed to these things. The author of Hebrews was primarily addressing Christian people who were in danger of slipping past these things and becoming neglectful of them, but what he says to them is equally true of unbelievers. He makes this earnest, solemn appeal to them to give earnest heed and attention to these things, to be very careful that they do not allow life, as it were, to carry them in its current so that they drift past the haven and find themselves, at the end, lost. He warns them of the terrible possibility of neglecting these things, not perhaps willfully, but by being too preoccupied with other matters. Life is so full and so attractive and enticing, and there is so much to be done, that many people’s agenda is so full that they do not think about these things. So this man warns us against all that, and he is not content only with warning us, he gives us reasons for doing so; he tells us why the gospel should be considered.
First of all he tells us, as we have seen, to make quite sure that what we are considering really is the gospel and not something else. We must give earnest heed to the things we have heard, the things that were preached at the beginning. Again the great reason why we should all listen to this gospel is the source from which it comes, the authority behind it. We saw that though it is only natural that we are anxious for our problems to be solved, before we begin to consider other things, even perfectly legitimate things, we must first face the problem that applies to the whole of mankind—our predicament and position as human beings. We must earnestly consider what the gospel really is and that it is a record of something that has happened in history. The gospel is a message from God; it asks us to face something that happened in this world historically concerning the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The next great reason given by the writer for our earnest attention is the dangerous, we could even say desperate, position and condition of all who do not believe the gospel. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (2:3). It is a great characteristic of the Bible always to emphasize the danger of the position of all those who do not know God and who are not Christians. Many people think of the gospel of Jesus Christ primarily as a noble and wonderful view of life and a teaching concerning life. They think about it, therefore, as something that we can contemplate as we consider various philosophies and views of life. They realize that they ought to make some sort of contribution in this world; they want to live life in the best way possible. So they consider the gospel as a way of life in the same way as they consider other views and teachings, and thus they think it has to be taken up and applied to life and put into practice. That is their idea of the gospel, so they take it up and call themselves Christians. They have no idea of it as a message that addresses them directly. They have never been aware of any sense of urgency or of any great need in themselves. They have never felt there is anything about them that makes it necessary for the gospel to say to them, “Flee from the wrath to come” (see Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7). They have never thought of the gospel like that. They think it is just a very noble and uplifting teaching with respect to life that any decent person will take up and put into practice.
The real trouble with people like that is that they have never really seen themselves and their lives as they are in this world. They have a view of life that has sometimes been described as a spectator view. They consider the disease of mankind objectively, from the outside, whereas in reality they themselves are the patients. They have never realized that something needs to be done about themselves because they only consider these other aspects, and that is why such people, when they read words like “How shall we escape” (2:3) really do not know what they mean. They say they know, of course, but they don’t. Some people live a very profligate life; they see some need to escape from that, but they cannot see they are in any danger, and they do not understand this idea of escape. The real trouble with people like that is that they have never seen themselves in terms of their relationship to God.
Some have an active objection to this kind of teaching and preaching. They say, “This ‘how shall we escape’ idea is insulting and selfish.” Or people say, “I have no use for the sort of gospel that emphasizes this; telling someone to be sure their soul is saved is so self-centered.” The whole teaching seems to be repugnant to these people. They say, “You are proudly saying of yourself that you are not going to hell and that you are going to heaven. That is so terribly selfish and arrogant.”
The thing is, those who have this objection to a personal salvation do not seem to have the same objection to the various things they look for so constantly and readily in life—food and drink and safeguarding the future. They do not regard any of that as being selfish and self-centered. Or if they were suddenly taken ill with a terrible pain in their side and they sent for the doctor because they thought the thing might kill them, they would be amazed if the doctor told them they had no right to be concerned about themselves—why didn’t they ignore the pain, why all this concentration on self? According to these people, it is all right for someone to be concerned about the salvation of their body for a few years, but it is terribly selfish for them to be concerned about the eternal destiny of their immortal soul. How foolish we can be! Such people have never realized the truth about themselves. A person who is in a house that is on fire does not stop to philosophize about whether they will be saved; they just dive out of a window to save their lives. If men and women only realized their true predicament in regard to their eternal destiny, they would not speak in the way we have described.
Let’s consider another objection. Some feel that this whole idea of warning and fear is insulting to the modern man and the modern mind. We boast today that the preaching of hell and of judgment and of punishment belongs to the past. We modern-day people are never happier than when we are contrasting ourselves with everybody who has gone before us. We are so advanced, we are so superior! Of course, we do not pay much attention to things like world wars or atomic bombs that blast people out of existence. We are better than those in previous centuries, we say; we must be because each century is bound to be better than the previous one. And one of the ways in which we express this extraordinary superiority of modern man is that we no longer preach hell and the wrath of God and the fear of judgment. We do not ask such a question as “How shall we escape?” (2:3); we have outgrown that sort of thing!
Let us be straight with one another. What does our [twentieth] century have to do with this question? What difference does scientific knowledge make? We are not discussing scientific things that can be seen and touched and handled; we are discussing unseen things in the realm of the soul and the spirit and God, a God who does not change, who is everlastingly the same, and about whom we know nothing apart from what we have in the Bible. It is fatuous for men and women to think that because they are modern-day people they cannot believe this sort of doctrine.
I am not interested in frightening or alarming anybody. There is no need to try to frighten people at a time like this; the facts are doing that themselves. Yet sometimes doctors sort of have to frighten people into having an operation or taking a vacation or undergoing certain treatment. They give them the facts, but they do not listen. The doctor has a deeper understanding of the seriousness of the situation, and he makes his point again, but the patient shakes his head. At last the doctor has to bring pressure in order to save them from the disease that he knows can be cured. The doctor has to frighten the patient not because he likes alarming the man but because he knows the facts and is concerned about the patient’s good. I say again, in the presence of God, my Maker and Judge, that I have no more interest in frightening people than just that. This idea that our forefathers, some of the greatest saints and preachers the world has ever known, men such as Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and other giants of the past, enjoyed alarming people is an insult to their memory. Those men knew the truth, and it was their concern about souls that made them preach as they did. I fear that the condemnation that some of us who are preachers today will have to face is that we never held before the people what really is coming to meet them. We were so afraid of being called offensive, we were so afraid of being called out-of-date, we were so afraid of being condemned because we were preaching hellfire and trying to frighten people, that we did not present the truth. If I may use the language of the apostle Paul, “knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11).
That brings me to the last reason we must consider: some feel that this teaching is entirely incompatible with the doctrine of the love of God. They say they cannot reconcile the idea of eternal punishment and the wrath of God with the love of God. They say the two things surely seem to be quite impossible, and their idea is that the love of God is somehow or another going to secure salvation for all. There are two groups at this point. Some believe that this salvation for all will be achieved the moment everybody dies. Their view is that it does not matter how people live in this world or whether they believe or not—the love of God will put them right, and they will go to heaven. Others are afraid to say that, so they say that ultimately everybody will have a second chance. The love of God makes that an absolute necessity, they believe, so when the impenitent and those outside of Christ die, they will have another chance, so that eventually all, by the love of God, will be saved.
What is the teaching of the Scriptures on this? Much time and energy could be saved in our discussion about these things if we only realized that the first question to settle is this one: On what am I basing my case? What is my authority for the view that I hold? If we are not agreed at this point, the whole discussion will be futile. It comes down to this: Either I believe the Bible or I believe human ideas. There is no other alternative. I am either going to take my view of life and eternity and everything else from God’s Book or I am going to say, “What I believe is this” or “Professor So-and-so says this or that, and I base my whole position upon that.” I want to remind you of what the Bible has to say about this particular subject. You do not have to mine it out of the depths; it is right there on the surface. I do not hesitate to go so far as to say that no message is found more prominently in the Bible from beginning to end than just this: “How shall we escape?” (2:3). The Bible is a book of warning. Let me remind you of the biblical teaching.
In a sense we are bound to start with the idea of man because this statement in Hebrews elicits two positions that men and women take with regard to the gospel and with regard to this question of escape. The first is the biblical view that tells us that man is a responsible being. This book tells us that man is a special creation of God and that God made man in his own image. He made him on his own pattern, if you like, and placed certain things that belong to himself into man, putting him quite apart from the rest of creation. He made men and women in such a way that he can address them, he can converse with them, an exchange can take place between them and God. Men and women are accountable to God, they live their lives under God, and they are meant for God. That is the biblical view of man.
Of course, this view is very different from the prevailing view today. We frequently hear that man has somehow or another worked his way up from primitive slime. He is not a special creation, but just an animal that has developed a little more than the other animals. Man essentially is just an animal with no end and object, no ultimate purpose in view. He lives his brief life in this world and then dies exactly like the animals or the flowers die. In a sense because of his development he has a certain amount of responsibility, but that is only for the sake of society, only for the sake of life while he is in this world. When he dies that is the end. He is not accountable in an eternal sense; he will not have to stand at the end of time and render an account. There is nothing of that in the modern view.
But the biblical view is very different. Man, according to the Bible, is a great person, a great creature, if you like, and he is altogether different from the animals. This makes him superior; he is the lord of creation. You find this later on in the second chapter of Hebrews: “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him?” That is what the Bible says about man. He is not just a sort of developed beast that shuffles himself across the stage of life, then shuffles off it again. Not at all! He has a destiny. He has come from the hand of God, and he is going back to God.
Clearly this is very important, and I would ask you very solemnly, what is your view of yourself and of your life in this world? The Bible asks us to give earnest heed to that; it asks us to realize the truth about us. I am not concerned to show you which of these two views pays a compliment to man and which insults him. I am not concerned to show you the curious way in which modern man contradicts himself, boasting on one hand about his great superiority and turning himself almost into a god, and then on the other hand describing himself as a beast that comes and dies and that is the end. I am simply asking you to meditate seriously about the biblical view of you, which tells you that though you may not know it, you are a responsible, accountable being and that as you go through life in this world, your every action is known and is recorded, and you will have to give an explanation for all of it. You will have to face and answer the Supreme Being who is addressing you and who has spoken to you and has even sent his Son to speak to you. You will have to give your response to God.
