Ever been part of a balloon launch? In grade school we wrote notes about ourselves and our school including a return address, tied them to balloons with a string, and let them go all at once on the playground one day. As the balloons rose and dispersed to the north and east that day I remember thinking how cool it would be to get a card back from someone in the next town or maybe even the next county from where we were in southwest Missouri. But I was amazed at how far a helium-filled balloon could travel when a couple of weeks later our teacher opened an envelope, pulled out a deflated red balloon and read a letter from a young person who’d found our balloon tangled in a fence near her home—in rural Ontario, Canada! I don’t recall the town, but Ontario ranges from about 750 to 1,500 miles from my hometown. I was blown away by how far that balloon was blown away, and all we had to do was let them go!
We also did a lot of canoeing when I was a kid. And some of the most fun parts of a canoe trip are the times when you aren’t in the canoe but when you pull the canoe up on the gravel bar by a nice deep swimming hole and go for a dip! Well I remember one time pulling our canoe up on the gravel bar only to realize a few minutes later while we were swimming that we didn’t pull it up far enough. Our canoe was gone! But where had it gone? Had someone stolen it? No. Did the fish swimming on the stringer tied to the side manage to pull the canoe away from shore and tug it back upstream to their home? No. The splashing of our swimming and the natural pushing of the current on the tail end of the canoe were enough to dislodge it from the gravel bar. And thankfully we looked up in time to see it gently drifting sideways downstream before it vanished around the creek bend.
The drifting helium balloon and unmanned canoe in these stories posed no danger to anyone. But that’s not true of all types of drifting. What if that balloon had been an improperly tethered hot air balloon with a couple of kids in it? What if that canoe had been a cargo ship accidentally left unmoored in a windy, stormy harbor? Now we can see how dangerous drifting can be. But even these aren’t the most dangerous forms of drift. Consider the drift of a soul—your own or that of a fellow church member. The greatest danger to those calling themselves Christians isn’t drugs, or drinking, debt, or divorce; those things are often symptoms of a deeper danger. Our greatest danger isn’t even the devil himself; it’s drifting away from the gospel, from the message of hope, the message of salvation!
It’s known as “The Letter to the Hebrews,” but without a greeting like those found in the other NT letters—no ‘I Paul, to the saints at _____,” no “Grace and peace to you,” etc.—many scholars classify Hebrews as a sermon—perhaps the earliest written Christian sermon. The urgent warning at the beginning of ch. 2 suggests that the author isn’t trying to instill right doctrine or to encourage a young leader like Timothy with personal discipline but rather is seeking to rescue a church from disaster! After exalting God’s Son in ch. 1—as Creator of the world, radiance of God’s glory, exact imprint of God’s nature, upholder of the universe, Purifier of sinners now reigning in power and Majesty in heaven, infinitely superior to all the prophets and angels by whom God had previously spoken to the fathers, God’s redeeming promise fulfilled, and as God’s final Word of salvation to man—in ch. 2 the preacher shines the light of the all-supreme Son on the church’s greatest threat: spiritual drift. “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”
Drift is today’s topic and theme because, according to the author of Hebrews 2, spiritual drift is a deadly threat to the church. By drift in v. 1 the author literally means “to slip away.” Spiritual drift isn’t a violent process; it’s gentle—as gentle as a child either consciously or unconsciously loosening his or her grip on a balloon string and letting it slip away. Spiritual drift isn’t abrupt; it’s gradual—as gradual as the gentle lapping of creek water against the side of a poorly grounded canoe loosening it from its place. ‘Drift’ in v. 1 is clarified by the word “neglect” in v. 3, “how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” Most English translations miss the sense of “neglect” here. In Greek it’s “having neglected.” The difference between “neglect” and “having neglected” is that to neglect something is an event, whereas ‘having neglected’ is a condition—in this case it’s a final condition. Unless it’s checked by continual repentance and returning to the gospel, spiritual drift in the life of a so-called Christian ends in the final state or condition of ‘having neglected’—or perhaps more powerfully stated, “having rejected”—the great salvation offered in the person and work of God’s Son. And, according to the author of Hebrews that final condition of neglect—the cumulative consequence of unchecked spiritual drift—proves that a so-called Christian was precisely that: a so-called Christian (i.e., no Christian at all), and thus worthy of inescapable and just retribution from God.
To what is the author referring in v. 2, “For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution…”? Turn with me to Acts 7. Stephen tells us in his pre-stoning-to-death sermon in Acts 7:37-38, “This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’ This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.” It’s a reference to the law—God’s standard of righteous conduct—given by an angel to Moses and through the prophet Moses to the Israelites. Stephen then says in Acts 7:39-42,
“Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us out from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ And they made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven…”
The “just retribution” for every transgression the author of Hebrews mentions in v. 2 indeed belonged to Israel for drifting from and neglecting God’s law. It also belonged to the hard-hearted Jews in Acts 7 who refused to believe in Jesus and stoned Stephen. But that’s just a set up! You see, the author’s point is that if the ancient Israelites—who only had a written law, who only had prophets foretelling Messiah’s coming, who never lived to encounter God’s Son personally—if they didn’t escape God’s just retribution for their negligence and drift, and if the Jews who killed Stephen who did encounter Jesus and yet refused to believe in Him won’t escape retribution, then there’s no possible way that people who have received eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ birth, life, miracles, teachings, death, and resurrection, not to mention the apostles’ miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in v. 4, and who claim to believe in and follow Jesus….there’s no possible way that such people will escape God’s retribution if they drift from the gospel they claim to have embraced.
What does this drift look like? It looks like laundry—dirty laundry. Let’s say you recently made a couple of new friends at a neighborhood block party. They’re not necessarily flashy or showy people; they dress about the same, and out in public they both seem like clean people. But it’s a Saturday afternoon and you don’t have much to do, and since you’re kind of an old-fashioned person you decide to go for a walk and just drop in on one of your new friends to visit a while. Now let’s say that unbeknownst to you they’re both out running errands. You knock on the first friend’s door, but there’s no answer. You hear some racket inside. Now you’re an especially nosy person, but the curtain in the window beside the door is pulled back, so you just lean over and take a quick peek to see if maybe they didn’t hear you knock. The noise is the churn of the washing machine and the low hum of the dryer. You see several baskets piled with laundry lined up and waiting to be sorted and washed, a few socks and a towel or two have spilled out onto the floor beside their basket. You can tell some of the laundry is pretty soiled. There’s another basket and a pile on the sofa some of which has been folded, some of which hasn’t yet.
So, since that friend isn’t home you mosey over to your other friend’s house just to say “hi.” Again you knock. Again no answer. Again a quick peek through the open curtain. This time you’re again greeted by dirty, soiled laundry, but there are no baskets in sight. The clothes are strewn about in piles of various size and location, the biggest of which happens to be all around and all over the washing machine, which by the way though it appears to be in working order you notice is silent, as is the dryer. You also notice several sock and underwear packages, and various tags for new clothing here and there among the piles, and you conclude that instead of doing laundry this person must just go out and buy new clothes once their others get dirty.
Now again, both of these people appear to be clean people in public, but which one really is? They both have dirty laundry at home, but is it the one whose dirty laundry is piling up to the rafters while the washing machine sits idle; or is it the one where the work of doing laundry appears underway and routine? Both homes contain dirty laundry, but while one home bears the marks of discipline and true cleanliness, the other shows signs of drift and neglect.
You may be able to mask spiritual drift and a neglect in public, but what would a quick peek into your soul reveal to your brothers and sisters in Christ? Would it reveal the marks of spiritual discipline, or of spiritual drift? And besides that, God sees us for what we really are all the time. We can’t fool Him!
We all have the dirty laundry of sin in our lives—daily! But the truly clean person—the true Christian, the person who has truly been cleansed and purified by the purifying work of God’s Son (mentioned in 1:3)—will be about the business, not of earning it but of proving their cleanness through the discipline of confession, and the discipline of frequent washing in the “washing machine” of God’s Word. A peek into that person’s life won’t reveal perfection, but it will reveal an ongoing process of spiritual purification.
This is the state of discipline to which the author of Hebrews wants his audience to return. Why? Because even though physically absent from them, the author has apparently heard that these disciples are beginning to look and live more like drifters. Why are they beginning to drift? Well, historically and from other biblical evidence we know that this was a time of persecution for Christians. Some of it came from the Romans, who saw Christian loyalty to Jesus as treason against the rule of Caesar. And some of it came from Jews who considered the Jesus-following Jews to be heretics and thus disloyal to true Judaism. So while the fire of persecution can have a refining effect on the faith of some, it can also have a wilting effect on the faith of others. Yet, just because some Christians’ faith may wilt for a time doesn’t mean it can’t grow strong again. If it can’t, Hebrews was written for no reason! and I’m preaching for no reason! and you’re here for no reason! If your faith were as strong as it needs to be, you wouldn’t be here. And if your life were as clean as it needs to be, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be with Jesus! But you’re here…in what only the naïve and misguided among us would see as a statement of self-sufficiency. You and I are here today in a statement self-INsufficiency! We’re here affirming that spiritual drift is real and that we don’t want to go there!
So, if persecution is why these Christians were beginning to drift from the truth of the gospel, then to what were they likely to drift? Well, just as gravity naturally pulls a car in neutral in the direction of least resistance, Christians under persecution are going to drift in the spiritual direction of least resistance (which also happens to be the direction of greatest acceptance). Athiesm wasn’t really a valid option for drifting Christians in those days of universal religion. So the two most natural directions of spiritual drift for ethnically Jewish, Greek-speaking Christians would be either to revert to the Judaism of their ancestors, or to yield to the cultural, linguistic influence of Greco-Roman polytheism. Those were the two most accepting/acceptable options for drifting Christians. The Romans would’ve preferred the Christians to worship their gods, but would’ve left them alone had they gone back to Judaism because at least Judaistic Jews didn’t believe that a Messiah had come to rival Roman power. And while the Jews would’ve preferred the Jewish Christians to return to ritualistic Judaism, they would’ve left them alone had they instead gone pagan, because at least they wouldn’t be poisoning others with the worship of that impostor, Jesus of Nazareth.
What’s your path of least resistance and/or greatest acceptance? Make no mistake, persecution is alive and well in America! But in America it doesn’t so much come from rival religions as it does from radical secularism. Drifting Christians in America will likely find the path of least resistance and greatest acceptance in the direction of self-actualization, self-indulgence, self-help, self-fulfillment, self-worship. Atheism is more of an option today than it was two-thousand years ago, but let’s be honest, whether it’s pagan polytheism, non-Christian monotheism, secular humanism, or scientific atheism, they’re all just versions of “Me-theism”! And all that any of them care about is that we just shut the heck up about Jesus! The Jews and Romans of Bible times wouldn’t have cared if the Christians had just been quiet about their beliefs. The secularists and atheists of our time are fine if we want to be Christians just as long as we leave the public square and hole up in our closets with our Bibles. But this is to drift as Christians, because it denies Christ and His command to make disciples ‘til the end of the age and to the ends of the earth. That can’t be done in a closet! God didn’t save us from His heavenly closet; He saved us on a cross…here…among us! Look at v. 5ff:
“For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
you made him for a little while lower than the angels;
You have crowned him with glory and honor,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.”
That’s from Psalm 8. It’s important to note that the Jews never interpreted Psalm 8 as a psalm about the Messiah. But this is one of those times where a New Testament author shows us how to properly interpret the Old Testament. And mark it down, when the New Testament speaks about the Old Testament, it is a trustworthy, God-inspired interpretation! The Jews saw Psalm 8 as a reference not to the Messiah as the “son of man” (a term Jesus often uses of Himself) but as a reference to mankind in his ideal created state—the state in which God made Adam and Eve to be the caretakers of creation, etc. But when they sinned, that ideal state was ruined.
Now Jesus has come, the ideal Son of Man. And the writer says in vv. 8-9,
“Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he (God the Father) left nothing outside his (God the Son’s) control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
God didn’t send His Son into the world to rescue us just so we could hole up in a closet until we die or He returns to take us to heaven. He sent His Son into the world not to make drifters but to make disciples—to make us joint heirs with Him of everything, jointly righteous, jointly reigning over creation, jointly elevated above the angels. It’s true, we don’t see everything subjected to Jesus yet. But we do see Him! How do we see Him? We see Him not with our eyes but with our ears! We see Him in what we’ve heard about Him. We see the incarnate Word in the inscripturated word that’s been spoken to us from God, by prophets, confirmed by angels, manifested in the appearing of the Son, attested to by the testimony of the apostles, and validated by miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit evident in the lives of those who have embraced that word by faith. We see Jesus ruling and reigning, with everything in subjection to Him, when we don’t drift from the glorious gospel of grace that we’ve heard and believed!
Want to dilly-dally around on the internet and dabble in porn? You’re drifting! Jesus tasted death for you; are you not willing to taste a little self-denial for Him? Dear married brothers and sisters: want to throw in the towel on your marriage to that imperfect Christian? You’re drifting from the gospel you’ve heard—it’s not a gospel of guilt and grievance; it’s a gospel of grace, a gospel of reconciliation between God and man, yes, but also between man and wife! You need to pause and pay much closer attention to what you’ve heard, lest you continue to drift from it, waste the gospel witness that even your imperfect marriage to that imperfect Christian spouse can have. Jesus tasted death for your spouse; are you unwilling to? Christian are you feeling the heat of secular persecution in the workplace or classroom: “Just shut up about Jesus and we’ll accept you…”? Don’t drift from the gospel you’ve heard, because the gospel you’ve heard and heeded you’re now called to herald! To go quiet is to deny it! To dumb it down is to drift and drown.
I never thought that little red balloon would drift all the way to Ontario, but it did. If you’re here today patting yourself on the back that you got to church again, thinking to yourself, “Yeah, there’s some things I could probably work on, but I can manage my drift…” then you’ve already drifted longer and further than you know. The laundry is piling up; the wrappers and tags for the “new spiritual clothes” that you show on Sunday and out in public are adding up, and you are in grave danger of having neglected the great salvation you claim to have embraced. Besides all that, forget about what people see for a minute; shouldn’t you care most about what God sees? Shouldn’t love for Him compel us to joyfully, willingly, gladly, diligently seek to wear the cleanness that Jesus paid for with His blood? If that desire isn’t there, you’ve either drifted very far from what you’ve heard, or perhaps have never heard the gospel savingly.