Your final warning!

2 For this reason, we must pay attention all the more to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away. 2 For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding[a] and every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, 3 how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? This salvation had its beginning when it was spoken of by the Lord, and it was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4 At the same time, God also testified by signs and wonders, various miracles, and distributions of gifts from the Holy Spirit according to his will.

Hebrews 2:1-4

That opening statement, “pay attention,” states for us right at the outset that what is about to be said is monumentally important. Ignore this, and you’re going to suffer the consequences.

When I studied chemistry and worked in the laboratories, I learned one of the golden rules: you always pour acid onto water using a glass rod so that it goes in slowly. If you were to pour water onto acid, you would have a violent reaction and most likely get burnt. We used a lot of sulfuric and nitric acid. Sulfuric acid eats through cement and harms metal. Can you imagine that acid shooting up into your face? If you didn’t have goggles—and many didn’t in those days—you could lose your sight. Pay attention. If you don’t, you’ll suffer the consequences.

The consequences here are much higher than in a laboratory. In the lab, you might burn your skin or lose your sight, but you would still have your life. Here, we are talking about your eternal life. If you don’t pay attention to what the Lord Jesus is saying—or what is being said to us concerning Him—you will suffer eternal consequences. These consequences are not spoken about much these days: the consequence of being separated from God for eternity and going to a place of eternal torment and suffering. I believe there is a hell. I believe it is literal. I believe that when God warns us of it, He is doing so out of His love because He doesn’t want us to go there. “Pay attention all the more to what you have heard, so that you will not drift away.” The consequences couldn’t be higher.

I want to unpack these verses under three headings:
1. The earnest warning that is issued.
2. The vital question that is asked.
3. The things that make this salvation so great.

The Earnest Warning

The earnest warning is there for us in verse one: “Pay attention.” A careful study of the book of Hebrews makes it clear that the writer—and we don’t know for certain if it was Paul; I happen to believe it wasn’t, but that’s a debate for another day—is writing to a mixed audience. He is writing to converted Gentiles, which was straightforward, but also to converted Jews. Because of the suffering that early Christians experienced, these Jewish believers were starting to consider turning back to their old ways in Judaism.

You have to think about what that meant. If you were a Jew, you worshipped on the Sabbath, the seventh day. You met in a synagogue and had rabbis who taught you. You had high priests who offered daily sacrifices to deal with your sins. There were feasts, ceremonies, and celebrations like Passover, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. You had the Old Testament, treasured in scrolls. If you’ve ever visited a synagogue, you’ll know they go behind a curtain to fetch the scrolls—they are often gold-laden, decorative, and beautiful.

Now, you become a Christian. You no longer worship on the seventh day. You don’t offer sacrifices. Suddenly, you don’t have priests in robes offering animal sacrifices day after day. The celebrations you’ve known are done away with. It all falls under the banner of the new covenant. This sounds okay to us, but we are far removed from those early Christians. For them, the change was sudden and radical. The result was that some started to consider turning back.

The writer turns their attention and says, “Pay attention so that… we will not drift away.” That word “drift away” means to go with the stream. Some were evidently leaving, others were considering it. It would be the easiest thing to follow the crowd out and forsake following the Lord Jesus Christ. Drifting happens easily. If you’re not paying attention, if you’re not anchored to the rock, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, then you will follow whatever other means is offered to you.

When he says, “Pay attention so that you don’t drift away,” he is saying your salvation is at stake. Pay attention so that you don’t forsake grace and go back to a works-based salvation. Drifting is almost imperceptible. If you don’t pay attention, you will drift. Don’t.

Let me flesh that out for us as Christians. The word of God says we should not keep company with the ungodly as our closest friends. Why not? Because, as 1 Corinthians says, “Bad company corrupts good character.” If you don’t pay attention, you will be influenced by bad company, and very soon you’ll be sounding like them, joking at the very things they joke at—which can sometimes be blasphemous. Pay attention so you won’t drift away.

But there’s another category. In Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 12, he says, “Don’t become lazy.” To become lazy is almost the same as drifting. It is to cease from expending energy. How easy is that? “What did you do today? Nothing. What are you going to do this afternoon? Nothing. And what are you going to do tomorrow? Nothing.” I wouldn’t want a life like that. I want to know where I’m going, who I’m going to, and when, because that gives structure to my day. I start my day with the Lord, looking at what He is saying to me and where He is urging me to go or who to speak to.

If you drift, the next thing is that you easily become lazy and stop prioritizing the things of God. If you study the letter to the Hebrews, you will find that drifting leads to laziness, and laziness leads to hardness of heart. You no longer have a conscience about the things you are forsaking. So the writer starts with, “Pay attention. Your life—your eternity—is at stake.”

The Vital Question

Secondly, he moves to a vital question in verse three: “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”

I remember where I was the day this question gripped me. I was in my office, reading my Bible in the late afternoon. As I read these words, “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” I like to write down what I’m thinking, so I can look back in a year and see how God has answered prayers and how I’ve grown. So I took my pen and wrote down, “Such a great salvation. What makes it so great?” I’ll unpack that in a moment.

But as I paid attention, my mind went back to those Jews thinking of returning to Judaism. Verses two and three hang together: “For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding, and every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” He wants us to see the greatness of our salvation against the backdrop of the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, people who sinned against God, who resisted His love and grace, who rebelled and disobeyed—every single one of them was punished, unless they repented. Peter captures this well in 2 Peter 2:4-6. He summarizes that God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into hell. He did not spare the ancient world, but protected Noah when he brought the flood. He reduced Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly. The point is, if He didn’t spare them, how dare we presume that if we do the same things, He will spare us? We dare not.

He is giving a warning and making an invitation: “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”

We might say, “I’ve been a Christian for 50 years. I know the whole word of God. I don’t fall into this category.” Or a new Christian might say, “I’m serving and following the Lord.” That may be true, but the word of God is also pretty narrow. Hebrews 10:26-29 says, “For if we deliberately go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment.” The writer goes back to the Old Testament, saying in effect that anyone who disregarded the law of Moses died without mercy. “How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled the Son of God?”

If you have come to faith, enjoying forgiveness, but now you go back to your sinning ways and start to treat sin as if it is nothing—thinking grace abounds so it doesn’t matter—and you deliberately go back to your sinful habits, the word of God says you are trampling, disrespecting, and disregarding Jesus Christ and the price He paid on the cross to deliver you from sin. When you do that, no mercy remains. We need to come back to that place where we have a high view of God and a high view of sin, where we hate it, avoid it, and do whatever we can to obey and honor the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Great Salvation

This brings us to the third point. In verses three and four, and really right through to verse 18, we see the elements that make this salvation so great. He uses a number of verbs to describe it.

**First, it was spoken by the Lord Himself.** This takes us to the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. The Gospels make it clear that Jesus preached the gospel. He is the gospel. He constantly invited sinners to turn from their sin and follow Him. Last week, Evan spoke about Jesus coming into the synagogue in Nazareth. He was given the scroll to read from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, and he has enabled me to proclaim good news to the poor.” Jesus said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” He was saying, “I am the one you’ve been waiting for.” Jesus came down to earth. God visited man. God has spoken in the person of Jesus. It’s not a man-made philosophy.

**Second, it was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.** This is one reason I don’t think Paul wrote this letter; he was a second-generation believer. He didn’t see Jesus in the flesh. This verse points to the eyewitnesses. The gospel was announced, and then it was confirmed by those who saw Jesus for themselves.
– It was confirmed when the Roman centurion at the cross, watching Jesus die, said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”
– It was confirmed by the early Christians who were willing to die for the truth. You don’t die for a lie. You don’t suffer for a lie.
– It was confirmed when people saw how Christians mourned. They didn’t grieve like those without hope. They grieved with hope, knowing their loved one was with the Lord.
– That’s why John can write in 1 John 1:1, “That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim to you.”

**Third, God attested to it with signs, wonders, and miracles.** God testified through these miraculous acts. Just look at Jesus’s ministry. Only God could interrupt a funeral procession, see a weeping mother, and say to her dead son, “Arise.” These miracles authenticated that Jesus was God come in the flesh.

Some might ask, “Why haven’t those signs continued? Why don’t you Baptists practice them?” The answer is simple. At that time, the New Testament wasn’t written. God needed to authenticate that the Spirit that was in Jesus was also in the apostles, continuing His ministry. Once the apostles wrote the Scripture—from Matthew to Revelation—that work was complete by the end of the first century. Those signs are no longer needed, because Scripture says we have everything we need for life and godliness in Jesus.

But don’t forget the miracle that is true of every child of God here this morning: the miracle of conversion. Do you know what it takes to open a spiritually blind eye? There was a time when the Bible meant nothing to me, when preaching went in one ear and out the other. Then one day, the Spirit of God opened my blind eye. I saw how sinful and deserving of hell I was, and I saw the beauty of Jesus. I was a shy child, but the Spirit wouldn’t let me go. Day after day, He worked in my heart until I got down by my bedside and cried out, “Oh God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That day, God changed everything. I realized how great a salvation I have.

Conclusion: The Full Scope of Our Salvation

If we were to continue in the following verses, we would see even more of its greatness:
– **Verse 7:** Jesus was made a little lower than the angels. The sinless God came down to save sinners.
– **Verse 8:** You crowned Him with glory and honor. We don’t see everything subject to Him yet, but the day is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
– **Verse 9:** He tasted death for everyone. There is one means of salvation: Jesus Christ alone (Acts 4:12).
– **Verse 10:** He is bringing many sons and daughters to glory, making the pioneer of our salvation perfect through suffering.
– **Verses 11-12:** He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have one Father. To my shame, I recall a time my alcoholic brother—looking like a street bum—visited my church. I didn’t recognize him, and when I did, I ushered him out because I didn’t want to be tarnished by him. Can you understand that Jesus sees us, sinners like that, and says, “Come in. I want to call you my brother, my sister”? That’s how great this salvation is. He stoops down, takes on human form, goes to the cross, dies in our place, and calls us His brothers.
– **Verses 15-17:** The angels can’t even fully understand this, as they don’t know salvation the way we do.
– **Verse 18:** He is able to help those who are being tempted. I don’t know what 2026 holds for anyone here, but this I know: no matter what comes, God is able to keep me from drifting, from laziness, from a hardened heart. He is able to keep me through every trial, temptation, and sorrow, and present me faultless before the throne of God.

So, what does this mean for us today?

Application for the unbeliever

You are being challenged to think about salvation. Are you saved? Have you surrendered your life to the Lord Jesus Christ? If you have not, pay attention, because the stakes are monumental. But there is an invitation: Come and receive this great salvation. How will you escape if you neglect it?

Application for the believer

As we go into 2026, make every effort not to drift, not to become lazy, not to silence the voice of God. Live with energy and gusto for the things of God. Give yourself to the Lord Jesus day by day. Ask Him for the grace to cope with whatever He sends your way, so that your life may be a witness that clings to God and shows that He is of ultimate value.

May God use this word to grow us in grace and in godliness.

Let’s pray.

Speak, Lord, in the stillness, while I wait on Thee. Touch my heart to listen in expectancy.
Father, grant that grace this morning. For those who don’t know You, may they rise up and seek You, and come to know You today as Lord and Savior. For those walking with You but going through trials, or those in danger of growing cold, may Your Spirit stir them today, turning the cold into a hot and radiant glow for Yourself.
O God, build Your church. Glorify Your name. Be the One who is exalted here alone this morning.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.