No Escape
…how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? (Hebrews 2:3, ESV)
I remember when I was in college hearing a series of sermons on Hebrews. The Lord used that series to impress on my mind the question above, asked by the writer to the Hebrews. If God’s revelation of himself in Christ and in Scripture is true and reliable, and if those who neglected that salvation both in Bible times and now received a just retribution from God, what makes us think we will escape the same end if we neglect God’s truth?
That thought provoked in me a greater seriousness about my Christian life and the study of the Scriptures. I did not want to be guilt of neglecting either one, and the two go together. Knowledge of Scripture—not just a proof text here or there, but a sense of the whole sweep of God’s redemptive work from Genesis to Revelation—is necessary as the foundation for cultivating a life of faith and obedience.
Do you neglect the Bible? Do you spend far more time on the internet, surfing or social networking (or reading Christian blogs!), than you do reading, memorizing, meditating on, and praying God’s word? Why? Do you spend far more time reading other books (even Christian ones) than you do the Bible? Why?
But someone will say, “I’ve already read the Bible. OK, I’ve already read a lot of it. Most of it. At least a lot of the New Testament. I already know what it says.”
Do you? Do you really?
Yes, a passage or verse may be familiar. But God may use that verse in your life in an entirely new way, not because the truth of the verse has changed, but because you are in a completely different place in life. You need to see the same truth in a new way, with a new application. New insight. New comfort. New clarity.
Do you neglect prayer? Do you neglect gathering with the saints for worship? Do you neglect such a great salvation as God has won for us in Christ and revealed to us in the Bible? Hebrews 2:1 reminds us the stakes are high: Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.
To neglect these things is to drift away, with its resultant consequences.
The alternative is to “devote yourself” to these things, “so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:15). We must all pay closer attention to what we have heard.
(posted 8/19/09)