Worthy Is the Lamb

Excerpts from Kevin DeYoung post:  Lest We Drift Away:  A Sermon for Good Friday

Almost everyone has flown on a plane before. So you’ve all sat through those opening instructions from the flight attendants about what to do in the event of an emergency. They say the same thing on every flight, every day, on every airline. And every day, on every flight, on every airline, almost no one pays attention to the message. I’ve flown several times in the past couple months and I can’t recall seeing anyone looking at the flight attendants or giving one second of thought to what they were talking about. No one pays attention to these instructions.

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So we don’t pay attention. We hear the gospel a hundred times and we don’t think anything of it. We celebrate dozens of Good Fridays and it never makes a difference. Jesus, cross, death, resurrection–it’s all just noise in the background of our lives as we try to get our seats to recline and open the tiny bag of peanuts. No one is listening.
But listen to Hebrews 2:1-4.

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

This is one of five warning passages in Hebrews. These five passages are not teaching that genuine Christians can lose their salvation. What they are teaching is that some people with an external connection to Christianity will not in the end by saved. And further, these passages suggest that those who are saved at the end, will be saved by means of these warning. These passages are danger signs that keep the elect persevering to the end.

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Most church people drift away from God not because they meant to, but because they got busy, they got lazy, they got distracted, they had kids, they got a mortgage, a few illnesses came, then some bills, then the in-laws visited for a week, then the mini-van broke down, and before you knew what was happening the seed of the word of God had been choked out by the worries of life.

That’s the way it happens for many people. They never dropped anchor, and so they simply floated away when the currents got strong. They used to pray. They used to be interested in the Bible. They used to talk to God. They used go to church. They never woke up and decided “Today I’m going to stop being a Christian. They just drifted. That’s why Hebrews 10:24 says “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” Some of the Hebrews had checked out, stopped going to church, just floated away from the whole thing.

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First, we must notice that it is a reliable message. Both of those words are important, reliable and message. The gospel is not the same as asking Jesus into your heart. The gospel is not a program for becoming a better you. The gospel is not a series of ethical commands. The gospel is not an experience of generic spirituality. The gospel is the good news that God so loved the world that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, to fulfill the law, to suffer as a man, and to die on the cross, bearing the penalty for sin the we deserved, and being raised on the third day that we might be declared innocent and righteous before God. The gospel is a message.

And it is reliable. Eyewitnesses saw it and passed it on to others who in turn told others. The story of the gospel took place out in the open for all to see. This was no secret, mystery religion. These things did not happen in a cave somewhere. The miracles of Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit testified publicly that Jesus was not just another Rabbi or another prophet or another teacher, but he was, in fact, the Christ, the Son of the living God.

We must pay attention to this reliable message, lest we mistake false gospels for the real gospel, and end up believing in the Jesus of good causes, or the Jesus of good coffee, or the Jesus of good examples, or life coach Jesus, or greeting card Jesus, or prosperity Jesus, or positive thinking Jesus, instead of Jesus Christ crucified, dead, and buried for the sin of the world.

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We must pay much closer attention to the gospel, to Jesus, and to the cross, lest by an imperceptible current we drift away. Heaven never tires of the cross, and neither should we. The saints in glory never grow weary of the singing the old, old story: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Do not let Good Friday pass you by like a set of airline instructions. Fix your eyes on the cross. Not as the place to show us our worth, but to show us the weight of our sin. Not as the pace where Jesus simply felt our pain, but where he bore our penalty. Not as the place where God overturned divine justice, but where God in mercy fulfilled his justice. Not as the place where love died, but where love reigned supreme. Pay careful attention to the cross. Here we see a great salvation, delivering us from a great wrath, revealing to us a great Savior who was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, that by his stripes we might be healed.