| A Heavenly Treasure by Eric Blick, July 25, 2025
“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it… [this is a] GREAT SALVATION” – Hebrews 2:1, 3
What is drifting? Nebraska where I live is very flat, as you know, which means the rivers here are more wide than they are fast. If you take a pool raft one hot, summer afternoon and grab some sun on the Elkhorn River, you will find a great place to read and rest. Suppose what would happen if you were meeting friends for dinner at 5pm, you get in the river at 2pm and fell asleep in the gentle breeze? You would miss dinner and wake up miles down the river because you drifted and didn’t even know it!
Drifting is leaving your first love. It is not a monumental decision you make one day to leave. It is your love growing cold to something that once was so precious and is now neglected, second-tier, showing other things have become more important.
The writer of Hebrews just spent all of chapter one saying that the prophets and angels have brought us God’s great word of salvation and revelation about himself all through the Old Testament, but even how much better is that word coming now from his own Son Jesus, the heir and sovereign over all things as we read in the gospels!
I love how the Bible argues. Chapter 2 gives us two concrete reasons why it is bad to drift away from the treasure of knowing God. We could come up with many other reasons from Scriptures why leaving the faith is bad and dangerous and rotting to our souls. Drifting is the picture Jesus gives in the parable of the four soils when the cares of this world and the stresses choke out the initial joy of knowing him.
But how does chapter 2 of Hebrews answer that question: WHY is drifting bad?
1. Drifting from the faith is bad because you are drifting from something that is true, v2-4. It isn’t like you are drifting from something made up or from some compelling fictional story. There are FOUR arguments used here to show four witnesses that testify this great salvation is true, vs3-4:
1. God planned our “great” salvation and spoke it through Someone. 2. Christ is that Someone who lived among us and “explained” God to us. 3. The Apostles heard all this and watched it and wrote about it in the gospels. 4. The miracles in Acts confirmed it – think Peter healing the lame man to walk or the chains falling off him in prison or Paul raising the dead guy back to life who fell out a window asleep in his sermon! Our salvation is true and has reliable witnesses.
The next reason why we should not drift blew my mind in studying this section of Scripture.
2. Drifting from this great salvation is bad because “it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come”, verse 5. How is this an argument? How does this make sense, “don’t drift from this great salvation because God did not subject the world to come to angels”? So to whom is he subjecting it?
Read on. Hebrews 2 then quotes Psalm 8:6 “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.” This is a direct connection back to the creation mandate in Genesis, 1:26 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” The creation mandate is simply stated by God: be fruitful and multiply. Make the rest of the earth like the Garden of Eden. He subjected creation to us.
But when Adam and Even sinned, not only did their relationship with God shatter but creation broke as well and now there is death.
The writer of Hebrews then says in verse 8, “In putting everything under them [mankind], God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them.” (NIV).
The creation mandate is bent and broken and the power of the gospel helps us redeem that. Despite all our advances in business and medicine and flight and city-making, we do not see creation fully subject to us because all die.
Hebrews 2:9 goes on to say: “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.” Jesus fulfills Psalm 8 by rising from the dead, and one day we will see death gone and creation fully subject to us when all is restored.
Don’t drift from your faith because one day you – not angels – will reign over creation, fulfilling the creation mandate without creation rebelling in death. You will reign with him. You will miss out on this, the way creation was always meant to be, if you drift.
Summary: Our salvation is brought by Jesus himself. We know God through Jesus’ words. Don’t drift and wake up later with another love higher in this place. Why? Because you are drifting from something that is rock-solid and true. And because you will miss out having creation fully subjected to you. We will reign with him!
Prayer:
Lord, you are the God who saves and restores all things to yourself. Forgive us for drifting from savoring how precious your love is for us as seen in all you are and all you do. Thank you for this great salvation. Help us, Father, to mine the depths of your great salvation for us – not drifting – savoring how you make the guilty pure.
Amen!
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Sources: 1. John Piper sermon: MAY 19, 1996, Who Rules the World to Come? Scripture: Hebrews 2:1–9 |
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