All right, if you would return
to Hebrews chapter two. Someone has said that the book
of Hebrews could be entitled Better, Better. In this book, whoever it is that
wrote it is comparing the old covenant under which the Jews
operated in their relationship to God. He's comparing that with
the new covenant, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, called
in this book the everlasting gospel, the gospel that was determined,
laid out, planned, and in a very real sense carried out before
he created the world. For it is written regarding our
Lord Jesus Christ that he is the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. The world would go on a good
many years before he actually showed up in this world, and
that slaughter, that slaying of the sacrifice was carried
out in time and space. But in that spaceless and timeless
realm of God's eternal existence, Jesus Christ has been the Lamb
slain forever. Before there ever was a sinner,
there was a Savior. Before Adam fell in heaven, the
sacrifice was already done. That's why Adam's sin did not
bring about an immediate destruction of the universe. In God's realm of existence,
and it's a realm of existence to which we cannot approach,
we can barely even think about it because we can't think outside
the framework of time and space, but I guess we just call it out
there, out there, Christ is already sacrificed. Christ is already
risen from the dead. Christ is already seated at the
right hand of the Father. And we are already seated with
Him in the heavenly places. We are already in His presence
without fault, without spot, and full of joy. It's already
done up there, out there. And you and I are going through history
simply trying to catch up with heaven's realities. So before any man ever sinned
and provoked the anger of God, the substitute was already there,
the substitute had already died, his sacrifice had already been
accepted, and he was already glorified. Thus, our first parents, in their
great act of wickedness, did not bring about the immediate
and total destruction of the universe. This gospel, this everlasting
gospel, is called better called better because it has better
promises. Despite what people think, all
the promises of the Old Covenant concern this world. They really
do. There are no promises in the
Old Covenant that God made with the Jews, that covenant that
he delivered from Sinai, there are no promises concerning the
what goes on after we die. That's why that covenant could
be set aside having been fulfilled, because it was only a covenant
of time and space. And the time came when there
was no more space for it. Jesus Christ came and fulfilled
it. And in so doing, he made it obsolete. And he ratified a new covenant. So there's better promises in
this new covenant. Better requirements, none. Because friends, that's the only
kind of obligation we can keep. That hymn we sing, my hope is
in the Lord. I change the last stanza, not
because it's altogether wrong, but it's easily misused. As it
was originally written, it said, His grace has planned it all,
tis mine but to believe and recognize his work of love and Christ received. Well, one thing certainly, if
you don't believe, you have no part in it. If you don't recognize
that work of love, motivated by love, is really a work of
justice. And if you don't receive Christ, you'll have no part in
God's salvation. But it's not as though God merely
planned some things, that is, he developed a plan whereby we
could save ourselves It's not as though in the New Covenant
he came up with something that was much easier to do than the
Old Covenant, something that even we could do. After all,
we can believe, can't we? And we can recognize that work
of love and we can receive Christ. In the church that I was raised
in, that's what they believed. And therefore, God could do all
of this work up to and including the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
and then he could stand back and say, okay, now all you gotta
do is, well friends, that would be a very good system, except
for one thing. We were dead. What if the Lord had said, Lazarus,
if you'll just believe me, I'll give you life. Lazarus wouldn't even hurt him,
he was dead. Lazarus, I'm not going to require
that you unwrap your burial clothes. I'm not going to require that
you run out here, but could you just kind of wiggle your pinky
a little bit? And if you do, I'll give you
life. The disciples are going to sing
a song. And while we're singing this song, Lazarus, bow your
head and close your eyes. Do you wanna get saved? Friends,
I know that's a bit mocking. I guess it's because that's what
I was raised in. But the old covenant, excuse
me, the new covenant is not an easier covenant. It's a covenant
that requires nothing from us except that which it causes us
to do. It is God who works in you to
will and do of his good pleasure. Probably everybody here likes
Kermit the frog. Kermit has no power to do anything.
Put Kermit in a suitcase, carry him wherever you want. Open up
the suitcase. Say, all right, Kermit, speak.
Kermit can't speak. Flail your arms around like you
do once in a while. He can't do that. The only thing that
Kermit can do that provokes any appreciation on our behalf is
what the puppeteer makes him do. And the only thing you'll
ever do that lays hold of eternal life
is that which God works in you to do. He doesn't do that for
everybody. That's why you and I ought to
be so thankful to him. Because we could be this morning
somewhere else. We could be this morning at home
in bed looking at a day of worship. The time of worship is nothing
more than an opportunity to catch a few more winks and to get over
whatever it was we did for entertainment the night before. We could be
out for a round of golf, though today isn't a particularly good
day for that here. But you know what I mean, or worse yet, hey,
worst of all, we could be sitting in a church where the name of God is taken
in vain, not by cursing and swearing, but by using his name as a mere
point of entertainment and psychological feel-goodism, where they use words devoid of
any real meaning, where they've got music that would stir anybody
up, and people go away from there thinking, oh, I felt the Spirit,
and all they felt really was the excitement of a large crowd,
and good music, and religious cheerleaders. I don't consider myself to be
a very interesting person, and that's good for you. If you like
what I say, It's not because I said it. If you believe what
I say, it's not because I had some clever way of saying it
or any ability at being an entertaining or charismatic speaker. Oh, blessed be God, if you believe
what I've taught here all these years, it's because the Spirit
of God worked in spite of me and made you love what you never
would have otherwise loved. And this new covenant is better
because it's founded on a better surety, Jesus Christ. He is the surety of a better
covenant. He's the one that stood good
and stands good for all the obligations that the new covenant required. The new covenant does not require
me to die. The new covenant does not require
me to be righteous. The new covenant required Jesus
Christ to be righteous and Jesus Christ to die. And what we'll
celebrate here in a few minutes is a symbol of exactly that.
You ever notice that the two, in the two, The ceremonies that
our Lord left us to observe, neither one of them says much
anything about us at all. The Lord's table is all about
His body and blood. And baptism, while it does demonstrate
our alignment or our inclusion in Christ, what it's actually
picturing is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ And
we're saying, based upon His death, burial, and resurrection,
I boldly claim in the court of heaven that I am without guilt. So neither sacrament's really
about us. They're really, technically speaking, they're not sacraments
because they don't confer grace. They're ordinances, they're ceremonies,
that's it. But both of them point to Christ.
Better. And so he says in verse one,
he says, we must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what
we have heard so that we do not drift away. Rather, faith comes
by hearing. It doesn't come by seeing. Once in a while, I got to watch
one of those YouTube videos by some unbelieving person, probably
someone who declares himself to be an atheist, and they mock
what we believe because it involves things that they can't see. One was even saying, we have
no proof that Jesus ever existed. He said, now there's some evidence
that possibly some maniacal rabbi named Jesus existed. He was just
dripping with mockery and sarcasm. There's one proof that he had
no clue what the Lord was about. He said, our Lord's most important
message and the central thought of all of it was, take no thought
for tomorrow. I'm thinking, you know, I know
he said that, but I don't think that was his main point. Particularly
as this fellow understood it, because we went on to mock that
concept, said, oh, we're not supposed to make any plans for
tomorrow, we're not supposed to invest. No, these people like to grab
a little portion of scripture, take it out of its context, and
then mock it. But they aren't going to believe
unless they can see. but by the time they can see,
it'll be too late. I have no problem admitting,
confessing to this, I have absolutely no proof in the way that men
can't prove, none, that any of what I believe about God and
Christ is true. I've never seen him, not with
these eyes. I've never touched him. I've
never heard his voice with these ears. Here's the only thing that I
go on, what I have heard in the preaching of the gospel. And
if you say, why do you believe what someone preached from a
book that at best was written by mostly uneducated men about 2,000 years ago, describing
fantastical events for which there is no proof. And you can imagine, and I fully
understand why they say, if you really believe you have an everlasting
soul, why would you trust that everlasting soul to such a message
as that? You really believe that a man
who lived 2,000 years ago, and so far as any testimony of eyewitnesses
can declare, his life ended up with him on a cross? Treated
as the lowest of men. His cause destroyed. And you're going to trust your
supposed eternal soul to that? Yep. I do. I do. I do because for one thing I
realize nothing else is going to work. I've tried other things,
none of them work. And I do because God has created
such a mindset in me, I can't do anything else. Because there's
a part of me that would love to. There's a part of me that
fully identifies with the atheists on YouTube. There's a part of me that can
feel the power of their arguments. But there's another part of me,
made alive, by the Spirit of God. And as the scripture says, greater
is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And so far, for all the temptations,
for all the clever arguments of skeptics and outright unbelievers
and deniers, for all that, I still believe. Pay careful attention to what
we've heard so that we do not drift away. I don't fish much. I don't like
it, and I'm no good at it. And I found out you can go down
to the store and get all of it you want, and it doesn't take
any work at all. But some people enjoy it. And
I've been out on a boat fishing before. And if you start fishing
in a boat, and you just get all wrapped up in your fishing, you
might not notice the boats moving until after a while you look
up and you realize you weren't anywhere near where you started. And there's a such thing as spiritual
drift. We get so occupied with the world around us, so occupied
with trying to have an enjoyable life, and there's nothing wrong
with wanting an enjoyable life. But we're like that fisherman,
and one day we look up, and we're so far away from where we were. Shoreline isn't even recognizable
anymore. It says in verse two, for if
the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation
and disobedience received is just punishment, how shall we
escape if we ignore such a great salvation? Now here we have,
and this is so typical of anything that belongs to the doctrine
of the gospel, we have a mixture of that which might cause us
some fear. Mixed right in there with that
which gives us great confidence and boldness. He said, if the message spoken by angels,
and what is he talking about there? He's talking about the
law. And when it says it was spoken
by angels, Remember that that word actually, in its most generic
sense anyway, it just means a messenger. It's not necessarily referring
to one of those heavenly beings. Now, indeed, God delivered the
law to Moses. But Moses was that messenger.
along with a few others that he taught, and they delivered
that law. God never spoke to Israel directly. He always spoke through
the prophets. And so he talked about that covenant
delivered through angels. messengers. And if it was binding
and every violation and disobedience received, it's just punishment.
You want to know how severe the law was? There was that law about
the Sabbath day. You know generally when some
kind of new law is put in place, the Policemen, you know, they
usually say, well, for a couple of months, we're not going to
issue any tickets. We're just going to stop people and let them know the
new way, you know, and remind them we aren't going to lower
the boom until later on. Give them time to get used to
the new order of things. Our Lord gave the law concerning
the Sabbath day. And the next Sabbath day, some
guy went out and picked up some sticks so he could start a fire. Now did Moses or Aaron or any
of the others go over and say, now look, this is just what the
Lord meant, we can't be doing that, so you just set them sticks
down, we're gonna give you a warning ticket. No, they stoned him to death
according to the word of the law. That's how strict that law was. And he said, if that law delivered by a mediator, delivered
by messengers, result in just punishment for every infraction. How shall we escape if we ignore,
if we neglect so great salvation? You see, while the law strict, the gospel is even more strict. And while ignoring the law could
bring about the death of the body, ignoring the gospel brings
about the death of the soul. And the reason for this is not
that God was trying to make things harder because he actually didn't
make things any harder. It's simply because, and it's
how he describes this gospel, he calls it so great salvation. Now, Spurgeon put it this way. He said, for every sin under
the law, there is a remedy the gospel. For every transgression
of the law, there is a remedy in the gospel. But for the transgression of
the gospel, there is no remedy. Now what's a transgression of
the gospel? Well, there's only one way to transgress the gospel,
and that's to not believe it. It's the only way you transgress
the gospel. but the punishment due unto the
transgressors of the gospel. It's only right that we expect
that the consequences would be much more severe than under the
law, because the gospel is so much better than the law. The
law was a list of demands which, if you kept them, you had life. The gospel is a declaration that
all the demands have been kept live. The law is based on your
performance. This great salvation is based
upon Christ's obedience and observance of all that was given to him
to do. The law is made up of righteous
demands. The gospel is full of merciful
forgiveness for not meeting those demands. You know, it'd be one thing for
a man to stand before a judge guilty of murder and for him
to be condemned to death for it. That would be just. And that's
the way the law is. But imagine if that same man
came before the judge, and the judge says, you're guilty of
murder, but I'm going to let you go. And then that man turns around
and kills the judge's son. Wouldn't you consider that more
serious than his former murder? to have shown such spite to the
goodness of that judge who had let him go? And that's what he's
saying. If by spurning the law, the world
fell in on you, so to speak, what's going to happen if you
turn away from the grace and mercy of God in Christ Jesus? Oh, it's so great salvation.
First of all, it's great salvation because it really is salvation. It's not just betterment. Beware of those churches, those
religious organizations, where their blessings consist primarily
of the things that happen in your life. Yeah, I sure like
life to be better. But you know something? Life
ends the same for all of us. It ends. And no matter how happy you are
between birth and death, If you're born, someday you die. The gospel
does not change that. The gospel will not keep you
from getting sick. The gospel will not keep you
from being sad. The gospel will not keep you
from struggling with sin. The gospel will not spare you
from the many trials that are common to all men. The gospel
does not guarantee you a happier home. It does not guarantee you
a successful business. The gospel guarantees you eternal
life in Jesus Christ. But people are settling for the
second class blessings. They go to church. I remember
that there was a guy, and this is back in the 70s, when dinosaurs
roamed the earth. And one of the guys, one of those
big name preachers, his theme song was, something good's gonna
happen to you today. Really. Go and try to, go in
the hospital and find some terminal patient, tell them that. Breathe
in their last. Struggling. to stay alive. Oh, something good gonna happen
to you today. If they had strength, they'd smack you in the face. Now, if it's a believer and he
dies that day, something good did happen to him. He departed
this miserable life to be with Christ, which is far better. No, it's salvation. Salvation
from sin, salvation from that which brought us all our trouble. It's a great salvation because
it does not merely take us back to the position that Adam was
in. Adam lived in paradise, Adam fellowshiped with God, Adam was
innocent. And yet whatever state Adam was
in, he could fall from that state. We have been put in a condition
from which we cannot fall. Adam had to put up with the devil
coming to the garden. God's going to take the devil
and throw him in the lake of fire. We'll never see him again. Adam was, in many respects, left
to his own to preserve himself. And he failed. But it is written
in the gospel. Now unto him who is able to keep
you from falling and present you before the throne of his
glory full of joy. Now that sounds like a great
salvation. How shall we escape? Well if
we ignore that salvation there is no escape. People condemn the gospel because
it's narrow. Well, understand this, I'm not
the one that made it narrow. The one who performed the gospel
is the one that said it's narrow. He said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me. Well, you Christians think you're better than everybody
else. No, we don't. Not real Christians. We don't think we're
better than anybody else, but we think our Savior is. And you know something, the world
does not need a lot of ways into God's favor. It needs one way
that works. And that one way is Jesus Christ. Oh, what a great salvation. I don't have to examine many
ways and try to determine which one of them is the best out of
all these possible ways. I know there's only one. And
I've been told which one it is. I've been told it's narrow and
there's not many on it. But it leads to eternal life. And this salvation is even greater
than anything held out in the law, for it says that in verse
three, this salvation, which was first announced by the Lord,
was confirmed to us who heard him. God descended on Sinai,
spoke to Moses, and Moses took the message to the Jews. God
descended to Bethlehem. And he went about that whole
country, speaking face to face with people. And he taught those disciples,
and they wrote down what he taught. And you and I, we open up this
book, and we know it was written by the hands of men, but we also
know it was written under the inspiration of the Spirit, and
we read it, and this is God speaking to us. This gospel, according to Peter,
he said, if we did not follow some cleverly devised fable,
some wives' tale, He said, we were eyewitnesses of his glory. The world thinks the gospel's
foolishness. And I don't blame them. Because
if all you got to judge things by is what you can see, the gospel's
pretty foolish. Somebody who saves by dying, Somebody who is a man but claims
to be God? Come on, give me a break. A virgin
gave birth? Yeah, likely story. But it's simple. We know we're sinners, and anybody
that denies that's a fool. I mean, I just, I mean, we all
know it. And he said, you can get everybody to admit they're
sinners, but we learned this, we're nothing but sin. Jesus
Christ, who is nothing but righteousness. God in human flesh came and in
our place, lived the life we couldn't live. And he died the
death we dare not die. that we, who are children of
wrath by nature, would become sons of God by grace. That's a great salvation. How
could we possibly neglect that? Oh, may God keep our eyes firmly
upon that.