Pay Attention!

 Read Hebrews 2

Man, I am so broke that I can’t even pay attention.  That’s the tongue-in-cheek expression of these modern times.

Pay attention!

That’s how this chapter begins:  Pay Attention. People must have been checking their phones back then too. Their minds must have been wandering to places such as what’s for lunch or that trip to the beach. Maybe they were thinking ahead to Taco Tuesday.

Pay attention!

It’s not hey bruh. It’s not yo, yo, yo! It’s plain and simple pay attention.

Pay attention to what?

I gave you some Greek last week. Per my contract, I have to throw in 5 Greek words per year. But today, I give you a little Latin. It’s not that we use Latin much in our worship.

What Latin? Sine Qua Non.

Plain and simple, it’s: Without which, nothing.

Pay attention to this! If you miss this, you are spittin in the wind. OK, I am ready. Give it to me.

Read the Law of Moses sometimes with a focus on punishments and consequences. Sometimes the consequence is a punishment. There’s some mean stuff in there.

·       Kicked out of the group.

·       Parts of your house thrown away (mildew).

·       Dishonor.

·       The land will go the way of wickedness.

·       Death.

It’s sort of like signing one of those forms at the hospital before an operation where you acknowledge that everything doesn’t always go as planned. You may have side effects, discomfort, soreness, and let’s not leave out death.

Death! I’m just here for a simple procedure!

Many of God’s laws and directives include death as a consequence. Those without named consequences fall under the ubiquitous, the wages of sin is death.

If you have read Acts 15, you know that no person other than Jesus ever fulfilled the law. He said he came not to do away with the law but to fulfill it.  We know that he did exactly what he said he would do.

So what exactly is it to which I must give my full attention?  Without Christ you are already dead.

You have a preexisting condition that disqualifies you from living in God’s presence.  That condition is death. You are already dead. This terminal illness was brought on by sin, but there is no earthly cure.

Only Jesus can save you. He told us. His disciples told us. His holy word that we read daily tells us.  Without Jesus, we remain in our sins and have not only accepted but embraced our condition of death. We are content to live eternally without God.

That’s a terrible prospect. It’s been described as everything from a garbage dump that’s always burning to living in a fire that burns but does not consume us for all eternity.

Eternity is longer than you had COVID or the Flu or that the store was out of toilet paper. That’s a long time. You don’t want to miss this boat, this ark of salvation.

Pay attention! You can’t miss this boat. God doesn’t want you to miss this boat. I don’t want you to miss this boat. Do not miss the boat of salvation.

Salvation comes through Christ Jesus alone.

Obedience to the law won’t get you there. It never could. Sacrifices and offerings for our transgressions under the law only lasted for a year at best.

Christ was the perfect sacrifice—remember, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—and his atonement for our sins is forever. You do not want to miss out on forever.

Pay attention!

If you mess up everything else in your life, get this part right. JESUS IS LORD! Profess it. Believe it. Live it as the way that God has given you.

Everything else that promises God or eternity or calorie-free chocolate in the hereafter is a rabbit trail that leads to destruction.

Jesus is Lord! Salvation is in him alone. He fulfilled the law for us. His righteousness is imputed to us so we may stand before God Almighty and be in right standing with him.

Pay attention. Don’t miss this boat. Pay attention.

It’s not like this is a blind leap of faith. We have each been given a measure of faith from God. It’s faith, but we have been given the accounts of God’s signs and wonders, his word given through the prophets, and in what the author would call these most recent times, a message delivered by God himself in the person of Jesus.

It's not blind faith. We have been given eyes to see the things of God and receive his gift of grace by faith.

We are without excuse; yet, we make excuses all the time.

Don’t worry, this topic of faith gets its own chapter later on.

Jesus didn’t just pop in for a quick sacrifice. He set aside his status as God for a time in which he would live a fully human life. He was and is God and human. He knows us and what we go through.

Jesus became a little lower than the angels for a time. God has put him in his right place for eternity, but for a time, Jesus had to live like we live.

When I went to Africa to teach pastors and church leaders, our host would often interject this phrase into our recurring introductions. He or they have left their comfortable beds in America to bring you God’s word.

OK. My bed at home was more comfortable than the kids bed that I slept in. Plus, I get my own personal towel at home. It’s a home with heat, air, and running water.

And we have indoor plumbing. The toilet is something you can sit upon and not just a hole in the ground to aim at.

While we complain about highway construction ad nauseum; the roads here are twenty times better than in Western Africa or Uganda.

In these United States, we drive on the right. In western Kenya, they drive on whatever is left of the road. The bigger your vehicle, the more likely you are to get that 20-meter stretch of asphalt for your use.

I left the comfort of America and went to Africa on a mission from God, and the people there noticed what I had given up for a time.

Jesus stepped out of heaven to live as a man, fulfill the law, teach us how to live, die as a man to atone for our sins once and for all time, and be raised to life as a promise of life eternal for us, and sometimes we forget what he did for us.

Sometimes, we forget. Pay attention!

Sometimes we forget how great the sacrifice was and how great the gift of life is.

For those who have not believed and professed Jesus as Lord and Savior, they need to take care of that business today.  That’s the only day which we can impact.

Yesterday is gone. There is no time machine to go back and fix things.

Tomorrow is not promised. Eternity is promised in Christ whom we receive by faith. But life in these bodies is not promised beyond the moment that you now live, and that makes now the only decision time that matters.

The author makes it a point to put a little hierarchy to this so that we may understand the magnitude of the sacrifice and gift.

Jesus was made a little lower than the angels. We were made a little lower than the angels, though if you receive the full biblical witness, you know that a redeemed man is a little above the angels. We will judge the angels one day.

If you do not know Jesus as Lord, don’t end the day in the same lifeless condition.  Repent and believe! Are you paying attention?

But most who receive this message have professed Jesus is Lord.  Most have been baptized. Most read their Bibles and participate in some Bible study.

Most of this message has been for people who are not here. But not all of the message was for them.

We still fall short. What must we do?

You don’t have to do anything for your salvation. Christ did it all, but…

Always beware of what follows the but in a sentence. We too should remember what Christ has done for us. We should remember not only his sacrifice on the cross but also the fact that he stepped out of heaven and lived as a man. We should meditate upon that on a regular basis.

God thought you were worth enough to make the sacrifice for your sins himself—even a sacrifice that involved death on a cross. God thought you were worth enough to make you worthy of living in his presence.

But we are saved from our sins and death, must we do anything else? Christ did it all. Is there anything left for me to do?

Not for salvation. That’s a done deal, but how we live says a lot about whether we just want to escape the flames of hell or do we really want to live.

For the believer, escaping the flames of hell is an incidental benefit to living the full life that God intended. It’s something of a carrot or the stick approach, but the carrot is really being able to live as God designed you to live.

Are we paying attention yet?

If I consider all that God did for me by sending his Son into this world to live the human life and die for my sins, would I not take his yoke and learn from him—from the One who gave so much for my sin-governed life.

Would we not desire with all of our being to put his words into practice?

He fulfilled the law so that we could move forward through him, the one and only—the unique Son of God. We use the term one and only quite a bit, but the word monogenés (mon-og-en-ace') also means unique.  How was Jesus unique?

Nowhere else is there an account of one who lived with God as God who put his divine status aside to live and die as a man. He did this all for us.  That’s unique.

This second chapter of Hebrews asks us to remember his uniqueness. Remember what Jesus did for us. Nobody else did or could have done for us what Jesus did.

Don’t miss the boat on salvation by not taking this to heart.

Don’t miss the boat on abundant life by relegating this part as a minor detail in a big story.

Do profess Jesus is Lord.

Do take his yoke and learn from him.

Do put his words into practice.

Do pay attention.

It’s time for those of us who believe to live in the fullness of our salvation. It’s time to value our gift so much that we will be the best disciples that we can be.

Are we paying attention?

Amen.