Now, you'll find my text this
morning in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 3. In the first three verses of
chapter 2, the Apostle Paul presses the weightiness of this last
age, these last days, this gospel age in which we live. He presses
this hard upon the hearts of those who read this epistle. And he does this because it's
what is plainly called in the Scriptures the end of the world. This is it. This is it. Reading in various places, there
seems to be a significant a significance put on different ages. I'm not
a dispensationalist, but I do believe that there are dispensations
in the Bible that he calls our attention to. There was a story
preserved and a history of mankind written and preserved for all
men in the book of Genesis that takes man from the hand of God
in the garden through the fall. It's preserved, it's isolated,
it's set by itself, and it's referred to throughout Scripture.
There was a time, there was an age in which man was created
in innocence. He was good, and he was upright
before God, and God records it, records how he fell and the results
of the fall. There was a story preserved,
and there's a history. written of our first fathers
from the garden where man fell all the way up to the judgment
of God of this world, up to Noah. So many generations lived. And then after the flood, he
again gave us a brief history of things and pointed out certain
things to us and ages rolled by up until the calling out of
Abraham. And then if you At your leisure,
read through the genealogies in the book of Luke. Or in Matthew,
I'm sorry. And you get down to the end of
those genealogies, he says there's 14 generations from Abraham to
David. There's a significance. That's
what he's saying. There's 14 generations. There's
an age that took place from the calling out of Abraham to the
ascension of David to the throne of Israel. All of this period
of time tells a story. Tells a story. And there's 14
generations, he says, from David to the carrying away of Babylon.
From the time this king ascended and sat on the throne, just as
our Lord did and sat on His throne, until the time of the carrying
away, the destruction of Israel, the destruction of everything
that meant anything to us. The carrying away of their enemies.
There are 14 generations. And there are 14 generations
from the carrying away of Babylon until the coming of Christ. So
I see here ages and dispensations in the Bible that have been set
apart to teach us things. And in each of these times, the
Lord sets forth the gospel of His coming Redeemer. He sets
forth the way of faith and the awful consequences of ignoring
His mercy and His grace. I see it in every age. The age
in which we live is the last age. It is the age of the clearest
revelation of Christ of any age. This is the gospel age. God has
spoken in other ages. He tells us that back in Hebrews
1, verse 1, at sundry times, that means different times, and
in divers or various manners. He spake to our fathers through
the prophets. in all different kinds of ways.
He spoke through Abel. He spoke through certain men
just like He did through Abel and Seth and Noah. He spoke through
the way these men worshipped. He said in Hebrews 11, Abel offered
unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained
witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts. Now listen, and by it he being
dead yet speaketh. God spoke through those things,
through the type of worship, through those gifts, through
those things that Abel offered. And He spoke through the ark
of Noah. And He spoke through that flood of waters and by a
covenant of grace. And He said, as it was in the
days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man. And then God spoke through the
nation of Israel, the giving of the tabernacle, the temple,
the law, and the priesthood. But here in Hebrews 1, verse
2, He said, In these last days, you see that? In these last days
He has spoken unto us by His Son. By His Son. And He goes on to tell us that
His Son is greater than the angels, and greater than the law, and
greater than Moses, and greater than the priesthood, greater
than all the ages and days that came before Him. You see what
he's saying here in Hebrews chapter 1? Now let's read that first
verse in Hebrews chapter 2. Therefore, how many dispensations
and ages has God spoke and showed us the results of those who would
not listen, those who would not take Him at His testimony. Now
he said, therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed
to the things which we have heard. If God has taken it upon Himself
to speak in this last day by His Son, brother, we'd better sit up and
listen. That's what He's saying. We ought to give the more earnest
heed to the things which we have heard lest at any time we should
let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, And every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompensive reward. How shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken
by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him?
God also bearing them witnessed both with signs and wonders and
diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to his
own will. How shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation? How are we going to escape? I
want to give you three or four things this morning that I see
in this divinely inspired question. First of all, I see in this declaration
of God a fearful condition. A fearful condition. No matter
how you define escape, it implies bondage. I don't care how you
look at it. You can look at it in educational
terms. How's a man ever going to escape that ignorance that he's raised in if he neglects
to learn? He's just going to stagnate.
Well, you're a teacher. You know that. We have teachers in here.
You know exactly if that child comes and he looks and counts
the ceiling tile and looks out the window and ignores what he's
being taught, he's not going to escape his ignorance. He's
going to go on being ignorant until he's taught. He has to
be taught. You can apply it to man's ignorance.
You can apply it to his will. Why is man not willing? Why is
he not willing? Why won't he come to Christ? It's of grace. It's of mercy. It's of eternal life. There's
nothing painful in it. It's altogether a blessing of
God. Why won't men come? Why do they
fight it so? Because of their nature and bondage. They don't see it as a blessing.
They don't see it as the grace. They don't see it as the gift.
They don't see eternal life in it. All they see in it is opposition
and controversy. If I apply it to my life, then
I must be dead in trespasses and sins. He said this life is in His Son,
but I won't have His Son, so I must be dead in trespasses
and sins. And this is the place where folks
always begin to roll their eyes and look out the window, say
to themselves, here he goes again. We've heard it all before. Dead,
blind, and ruined. Blah, blah, blah. I've heard
it all before. That's the first way you can
neglect so great a salvation right there. That's it. That's the first way. You say
to yourself, I already know this. It's just repetition. I know,
I know. I'm not going to ask you to answer
me, but I want to see if you can answer this question truthfully
before God. You do your own asking. I'm putting this thing between
you and God. You understand what I'm saying?
I'm not expecting you to go like this or go like this. You ask
yourself this question and you answer it honestly before God. Have I ever been lost? Have I ever been lost? Now, brethren,
I'm going to tell you something. I can't come... Brother Winston
and I have talked about this so often. I can't come in a hundred
miles of telling you what I say. Brother, I can take you right
back to the day when I was lost. Lost. What does it mean to be
lost? Have I ever been lost? Have I
ever been lost? I know you're a good person compared
to other people and I know that you read your Bibles and say
your prayers got fixed ideas about God and salvation. And
I know you've got certain fundamental truths that you've picked up
along the way and that you've inherited from your parents and
your friends and others that you've met along the way. And
I'm not going to ask you this morning to throw those things
away. I'm just going to ask you to set them aside for a minute. Just lay them down for a minute
and listen to what I'm asking you. Have you ever been lost? Look with me over here at Romans
chapter 6 and let me show you something. In the first five
books of Romans, he establishes what the gospel is. He said,
I'm separated of God to preach this gospel. With everything
that in me is, I'm ready to preach this gospel to you. It's the
power of God unto salvation. And he goes on and on through
the book of Romans. Where are you with a lot of Scripture
except to say that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the gospel? He is the gospel. And He is to
be received by faith in the way in which God set Him forth. That's
what He says in Romans chapter 3. Whom God has set forth to
be a propitiation for our sins through faith in His blood. And
in the first five chapters, he tells us why we need Christ.
Sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so sin passed
upon all men, and death passed upon. By the death of Christ,
our sins have been put away. Those who put their trust in
Him receive Him by faith and look to Him as God has set Him
forth have a substitute who died in their room instead. And through
faith, they have an imputed righteousness. So that by faith they stand in
the presence of God, blameless and without fault, justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus.
Paul sets that aside. He sets it aside plainly, clearly,
so that all can understand it. But there's another problem.
I have in me a nature of sin. A nature of sin. Penalty of sin and the righteous
demands of the law must be satisfied and are satisfied in Christ Jesus,
but these two things do not change what we are, and what we are
must be changed. Now listen to what he says here
to the church at Rome, Romans 6, verse 15. What then? Being justified by
this faith, standing in the righteousness of Christ, standing justified
before Him. What then? Shall we sin because
we are not under the law but under grace? Is that what you
are saying, Paul? Is that what you are saying this
Gospel does? God forbid! You see that? God forbid! Verse 16, Romans chapter 6. Know
you not that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey,
His servants you are to whom you obey? Whether of sin unto
death or of obedience unto righteousness, but God be thanked. Now listen,
that you were the servants of sin. Was there ever a time in your
life when you were the servants of sin? That's what it means
to be lost. But you have obeyed from the
heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you, being then
made free from sin. You become the servants of righteousness. Sinners are slaves to sin. They're slaves. They're in bondage.
They're in captivity. They're slaves to sin. Believers
are bond slaves to Christ. They were born slaves to Christ.
Paul said, we all had our behavior in times past in the lust of
our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. That's
where God found every one of us. Has He found you? Is that
where He found you? You see what I'm saying? Have
you ever been lost? Have you ever been lost? To be
lost is to discover that you're not in charge. You don't run
the ship. Satan has deceived you into believing
that you have a free will. And he lets you run around and
choose whatever you like. Listen to what Joshua told. Joshua
stood up in Joshua chapter 24 and he said, you cannot please
God through your obedience. You can't do it. You can't do
it. It's to discover that you're
not in charge. You don't run things. Satan's
pleased to let you think you do. Until one day you hear something
that's contrary to Him. You ain't free to choose that,
are you? What happens when grace comes
along? Well, you're not free anymore, are you? You find a resistance there. If you want to sin, there's no
resistance. There's no resistance to that. You'll find an excuse.
You'll find a reason to go do whatever it is. You are they
which justify yourselves, he said. You'll find a reason. It's
not hard to find a reason. I'll tell you what's hard to
find a reason for when you hear something right. Boy, now we've
got resistance. Huh? You ain't free anymore,
are you? No, everything in you goes back to sin. To be lost
is to discover you're not in charge. Listen to this over in
II Timothy 2, verse 24. He says, and the servant of the
Lord must not strive. He must not argue. I'm not going
to argue with you. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm going to tell you the truth.
I'm going to leave you in the hands of God. I'm going to leave
you in His grace. I'm going to leave you in His
power. But I'm not going to argue with
you. Be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness
instructing those that oppose themselves. Man stands up and
says, I don't believe that. Be gentle. There's no reason. I'm going to tell you something. If you ever come to know who
you are, you're not going to be so quick to find fault in
everybody around you. You'll see in yourself first
the same fault you're seeing in them. And you'll see that
grace that overcometh. And you'll be patient and wait
on that grace to overcome in them. That's what he's talking
about here. in meekness instructing those
that oppose themselves, if God, peradventure, will give them
repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may
recover themselves out of the snare of the devil," now listen,
"...who are taken captive by him at his will." You thought
you had free will, but he can take you captive just like that. He lets you run around deceived.
To be lost is to realize that you're not free. Satan has deceived
you into believing that you have a free will, that you're captain
of your own vessel, that you're in charge of your destiny. But
in fact, your freedom is just to roam around in his kingdom
and choose whatever he gives you in his kingdom. Joshua said
to Israel, if it seemed evil to you to serve the Lord, If
that's evil to you, if I stand here and I declare to you the
will of God and you find that to be evil, then He said, choose
you this day whom you'll serve, whether the gods that your father
served on the other side of the flood or the gods of the Amorites
in whose land you dwell. We all dwell in the land of the
Amorites by nature. It's theirs by birth. Here's
what he's telling you. It was theirs by birth. It was
theirs by inheritance. Their fathers owned it and gave
it to them. That's this nature we have. It's
been given to us. We live in the land of our nature,
and it's fallen. It's fallen. There's by birth and there's
by inheritance. And if we will not serve the
living God, we're just free to serve whatever idols are in the
land. Just pick one out. They're no
difference. You like the Baptist idol or the Pentecostal idol
or the Catholic idol or whatever idol it is you want to take up,
take it up. Choose you this day whom you'll
serve if it seems evil to you to serve him. You're free to
run around in this condemnation, free to run around in Satan's
kingdom, all you want to run. But you're not free when it comes
to the things of God. Only the living God who abides
with us can overcome the giants of the land and the walled cities
of refuge and tear them down. and caused his king to rise up
and sit on the throne and rule over the Israel of God. And in
this land, there was never a willing submission to the authority of
the king. They were held at bay by his
power. Isn't that true? Those of you who have read the
history of Israel know exactly what I'm talking about. In the
land of Canaan, the Hittites, Amorites, Jebusites, none of
them willingly submitted to the throne of David. They submitted
to it because David stomped on them and took it away from them
and held them at bay. That's what God does over this
flesh. He takes it over. He sets up
His reign. He sets up His king. And He holds
it at bay by His power. There is but one way of escape
out of this land of the oppressor, and that's for the Sovereign
Lord of Glory to send to you His ambassador, and by the power
of God, cause that evil monarch to turn his people loose. All
of these things, all of them pictured and described in the
deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, all the way to the seating
of his king in Canaan. be lost is to see yourself at
the mercy of God, no way out, no chance of escape, no possibility
of parole, locked up forever in chains of darkness, bound
by a fallen nature and an attitude of rebellion. And there's nothing,
nothing in our mind but enmity against God. God must intervene. He must intervene. To be lost
is to come to see my ignorance. The ignorance of man finds wisdom
in everything except things of God. Have you ever noticed that?
They find wisdom in these silly tongues and in these silly evidences
that they call evidences of faith. Faith healing. Brethren, if you
can heal, why is all this healing done with diseases that can't
be seen? Let's get over to where the lepers
are. Let me see one of them. Cleanse
one of them lepers. Let's go out to the cemetery
one day and let one of them call forth the dead. These are true
miracles of God. Let's see them work. Undeniable
miracles. Not these silly pretense of men
standing up saying they are prophets of God. They are false prophets. Men find wisdom in all these
things. They find wisdom somehow in the acceptance of what Jesus
has done. Brethren, what Jesus did, He
did before God, and God accepted it. What difference would it
make if I accepted it or not? Paul said in one of his arguments
over in Romans chapter 2, he said, does my own belief make
the faith of God without effect? It didn't have any bearing on
it whatsoever. Why? Because it wasn't offered
to you, it was offered to God. has to do with what God accepts. But men find wisdom in that. 1 Corinthians 1.18, the preaching
of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. Everything
about it is foolishness. You mean to say that no man at
any time, anywhere, under any circumstance will choose the
Lord? That is exactly what I am saying. There is none that seeketh
after God. You mean that in all the history
of men, from the garden to this day, that no man has ever understood
the gospel by his own intellect? None that understandeth. Isn't
that what he says? You mean that no matter how hard
he tries and how committed he is, that he cannot please the
Lord, not even in thought or motive or deed? None righteous. No, not one. Foolishness, isn't
it? It is to the natural man. Foolishness. To be lost is to have our mouths
shut. What about? God can close this, but I can't
close it. I don't care how much I say, how much I teach, how
many scriptures I quote, how long I learn, how much I don't
care. It doesn't make a bitty difference.
It just goes to the rock and bounces off. Bounces off that
hard heart. Bounces right off that hard head.
You won't listen. You won't bow. You won't submit.
But you will when God shuts your mouth. He'll shut it. He'll shut
it. He'll push you up into a corner,
and he'll shut your mouth. You'll hear it. To be lost is
to have our mouths shut up by the wisdom of God and forced
to wait on God to reveal His wisdom. To be lost is to be shut
up to God's providence to lead you to the Gospel and bring His
Gospel to you. He's done it and you don't even
realize it. How often, how often did I sit
under the Gospel of God's sovereign grace and not know it? not even
think about the divine providence that brought me there and brought
Him here and established this church and all those complex
things that He did in His providence. Oh, there'll be no earnest heed
given to the things we hear until we discover by the Gospel of
Christ that we're lost, bound, ignorant, blind, filthy beggars
before the Lord of glory. Then you'll sit on your blanket,
on your filthy blanket you'll sit there And you'll pray, God,
send me a message. Speak to me. Speak to me. To escape implies a bondage,
and then secondly, to escape implies a way out. Christ is
the way. He's the way. He said to me, give all diligence
to what you heard, but what did we hear? We heard that God spoke
to us. God spoke for us. Father, I pray
not for the world, I pray for them which He spoke for us. He spoke of mercy and grace. Spoke through the heir who is
able and willing to make us heirs. Spoke by the Creator of the world
who has the authority to order them for our good in His glory.
spoken unto us by Him who is the brightness of the Father's
glory, the express image of His person, revealing the whole true
character of God to us. We don't have to sit and, well,
I just feel like God might... You don't have to feel like God
might do something. God reveals what He will and
will not do in Christ. He's made known the whole character
of God. spoken unto us by Him alone who has taken up our case,
upheld the integrity of God by the Word of His power, and purged
our sin, and then sat down at the right hand of God. And there
He ever liveth to make intercession for us. Oh, what a glorious name
He has who speaks to us, who seeks for us, meets with us,
abides with us. What a glorious name He has who
sends His ambassadors and draws His elect. who prays to the Father
on our account, whoever liveth to make intercession for us,
who sends His Holy Spirit to woo us and win us and break these
stubborn hearts and bend this stubborn will, who regenerates,
recreates, converts rebels into bond slaves. My people shall
be willing, he said, in the day of my power. There's a way of
escape out of the curse and bondage of sin. There's a way to escape
the wrath and judgment of God. And this way of escape is Christ.
He's the way. He's the way. And thirdly, there's
an obstacle. The text reads, how shall we
escape if? Oh, I tell you, for the man who's
been made to seek Christ, this is a big obstacle, this if. If
it's the great sea that lay in the path of Israel, God will
have Israel to camp by the sea. He said, Moses, bring them in
by the sea. Bring them in right here by the
sea. I will entrap them in the land, in this wilderness. I'm going to box them in, He
said. And then I'm going to put it on Pharaoh's heart to fall
hard on them. He's going to be coming up on
them. And here they sat by the sea. There are no ifs in the heart
of an undisturbed man, but let God begin to trouble him. And he stands by that sea, and
all he can see is an infinite sea of if, if, if. We are made partakers of Christ
if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast to
the end. Whose house are we if we hold
the beginning of our confidence and rejoicing steadfast unto
the end? Today, if you hear His voice,
how shall we escape? If. You see that? If. Oh, this if becomes a seed to
the troubled heart. But I tell you this, take all
the ifs. string them together on a golden
chain of grace, and hang them around the neck of the Redeemer,
and the sea will split. A way will come through right
through the middle of all the ifs. He'll divide. He'll show you His way. Greater
is He that's in you than He that's in the world. Now unto Him that
is able to keep you from falling and deliver you faultless into
the presence of His glory, persuaded that He which hath begun a good
work in you is able to perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ,
sanctified by God the Father, preserved in Christ and called. Take all the ifs and put them
on a chain of grace and hang them on His neck. And they all
become sure. Sure. That's what Moses said.
Stand still. Quit running about. Quit being
anxious. Quit seeking. Quit looking. Quit
rumbling around. Stand still! And see. See the salvation of the Lord.
And with a shepherd's staff. That's the preaching of the Gospel.
The shepherd's staff. Held that rod out in that sea.
And it split right down the middle. Right down the middle. There's the obstacle. And then
there's a stern warning. How shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation? How does a man neglect salvation?
By refusing to hear it. He won't even consider it. I don't ask you to take a test
when you come in here. I don't have a big thing of papers
up here that you have to pass and then get an award for it
or a button. We used to call them Dewey buttons.
I don't have a Dewey button for you. I'm not going to box you
in back there in the corner and say, now, what do you believe
about this? I'm not going to ask you. I'm going to let you
go home. All I ask you is to listen to what I'm saying, look
at it in the Word of God, and see if what I'm telling you is
so. How does a man neglect so great
a sight? He won't hear. I'm going to tune you out. How shall we hear? How are you
going to call on Him in whom you have not heard? How are you
going to hear without a preacher? You have to hear, but you won't
hear. You won't hear. And then secondly,
you neglect this salvation because of how you hear. If I hold this
text in its proper context, it has to do with indifference.
Give them more earnest heed, lest at any time these things
should slip. Now, I look this word slip up. And I'll wind this thing up.
I know I've gone too long. But this word slip in six other
versions of the Bible says drift. And here's what he's telling
them. If I look at this in a context, here's these Jews who all their
lifetime, I told you this in the Sunday school lesson, had
practiced temple worship and altar worship and animal sacrifice
and the priesthood and all these things, all their lifetime. The
current of this river of Judaism, the current of established religion
was coming down. And their vessels were trying
to get moored over here on the gospel. But this current of religion
wants to, you see what I'm saying? It's going to pull them. It's
going to pull them down there to that old dead sea of Judaism.
That's what he's talking about here. Lest you let it slip. It
just takes a minute. It just takes a minute. Somebody
comes along and says, oh, well, I understand now. I understand. There was a fellow on TV the
other night. He went on and on for an hour, I guess, talking
about Calvinism and what an awful thing it was, and what an ungodly
doctrine it was, and all these things about it. He just went
on and on and on. That drifting, drifting, drifting,
pulling on that book. There's something pulling on
it all the time. He said, be careful how you hear. He tells
us in the Scriptures, he said, forsake not. the assembling of
yourselves together as the manner of some is. Don't do that. Don't do that. I tell you, your
faith needs to eat. It needs to learn. It needs to
grow in grace. It don't need to sit at home
and watch TV. It don't need to sit at home with its feet up
on the rocking chair. It needs to hear. To hear. Grow in grace. Forsake not the assembling of...
How are you going to escape if you neglect this? How do we neglect
it? We don't read it. We carry a
Bible home, take that Bible, throw it over on the shelf. That's
where it sits. Sunday comes, we kind of brush
the dust off of it, take it back to church. Read that book. Maybe you wouldn't be so quick
to oppose what I tell you if you just read the book and see
what it has to say. Lots of the scriptures I give
you, when I stand up here to preach to you, I quote. I don't
give you chapter and verse. I just stand up and quote. If
you read this book, you'd know what I'm saying. You say, I know
where that is. I know where that is. Now I understand
what that's saying. We neglected how you're going
to escape. And then I want you to think
about this, and I'll close. God spoke to us through His Son.
John, I don't know what it is to come in before a high priest.
I don't know what it is to come in before a tabernacle. I don't
know what it is to take a sheep out, slit its throat, and tie
it down. I don't know anything at all
about that. God has spoken to me in His Son. In His Son. Am I going to neglect that? Now
those who neglected that Word that was spoken by angels, by
ministers under Moses' ministry. God said, don't do this. And
they did it. They were taken out with two or three witnesses.
They were stoned to death. He said, imagine how much sore
punishment shall we be thought worthy who have trodden underfoot,
the Son of God, counted the blood of the Testament, an unholy thing,
and done to spite under the Spirit of grace. How are you going to
escape? Where are you going to kill God
in that day? Huh? Are you going to tell God why
you couldn't come down to a worship service? Are you going to tell
God why you couldn't believe the gospel? You can't even tell
me. Are you going to tell God? He
said, how are we going to escape? Oh, God, press that into your
soul this morning.