Gospel Drift — and How to Avoid It
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Well, on Monday, we started the week
00:00:06.120 | by looking at the cross.
00:00:08.120 | It's always a great way to start the week, right?
00:00:10.260 | By looking at the cross.
00:00:12.400 | And we saw there that the manner of Christ's death
00:00:15.960 | was fitting.
00:00:17.880 | It was fitting.
00:00:19.620 | In that episode in APJ 1816,
00:00:22.040 | Pastor John told us to underline
00:00:23.800 | and draw a big red circle around that word fitting
00:00:26.260 | in Hebrews 2.10, where it says,
00:00:28.200 | "For it was fitting that he for whom
00:00:30.960 | "and by whom all things exist
00:00:32.900 | "in bringing many sons to glory
00:00:34.540 | "should make the founder of their salvation perfect
00:00:37.840 | "through suffering."
00:00:39.560 | The fittingness of Christ's public humiliation on the cross
00:00:43.480 | is a profound point worthy of much study
00:00:46.520 | and hours of meditation, Pastor John said to us last time,
00:00:49.560 | because, quote, "God's eternal decision
00:00:51.500 | "to achieve our salvation through the sufferings of Christ
00:00:54.440 | "is not arbitrary or whimsical or meaningless,
00:00:57.580 | "but is owing to a profound fitness and suitableness,"
00:01:01.760 | end quote.
00:01:02.600 | And this fittingness of the cross
00:01:04.920 | calls for intense focus from us.
00:01:07.280 | And we focus on the cross to resist
00:01:09.840 | drifting away from the gospel.
00:01:12.800 | That's a major theme in the book of Hebrews.
00:01:16.760 | And I wanted to connect Monday's episode
00:01:18.940 | with today's sermon clip.
00:01:20.320 | And we do that with Hebrews 2.10.
00:01:23.320 | Here's Pastor John preaching on this text in 1996,
00:01:25.880 | talking about gospel drift and how to avoid it.
00:01:29.300 | Here he is.
00:01:30.620 | - Now, the reason I call him a forerunner,
00:01:32.540 | or in your bullet, I call him a captain,
00:01:34.460 | that's what one of the versions say,
00:01:37.300 | is because of the phrase in verse 10,
00:01:40.380 | leading many sons to glory.
00:01:44.140 | Let's read verse 10.
00:01:45.900 | For it was fitting for him, God the Father,
00:01:49.700 | for whom and through whom are all things,
00:01:53.220 | in bringing many sons to glory.
00:01:55.780 | That's what he was doing in sending Jesus,
00:01:58.460 | to suffer, die, and be glorified.
00:02:00.240 | He was leading, bringing many sons to glory.
00:02:04.560 | It was fitting in doing that
00:02:06.760 | to perfect the author of their salvation
00:02:09.720 | through sufferings.
00:02:12.240 | Now, there are a lot of important things in that verse.
00:02:14.360 | That verse could keep us for months.
00:02:17.480 | What an amazing, rich verse, verse 10 is.
00:02:22.480 | But what I wanna focus on right away
00:02:24.800 | is this phrase, God is bringing many sons to glory.
00:02:29.800 | The reason that's important is because it connects
00:02:32.800 | way back up with verse seven, where he quotes Psalm 8
00:02:36.160 | to say that the destiny of human beings is glory,
00:02:39.400 | honor, dominion over the creation under God
00:02:43.000 | alongside Jesus Christ.
00:02:44.760 | That's your destiny.
00:02:46.360 | That's your goal.
00:02:47.840 | Now, we don't yet see that, the case.
00:02:51.560 | Human beings suffer, they die.
00:02:54.280 | But what we do see is Jesus made a human for a little while,
00:02:58.240 | breaking into death, out of death,
00:03:01.800 | seated on a glorious throne
00:03:03.160 | where we will one day join him unspeakably,
00:03:06.760 | according to Revelation 3, on his throne.
00:03:10.120 | And in doing that, what is he doing?
00:03:12.200 | Verse 10, he is leading or bringing
00:03:14.920 | many sons with him to glory.
00:03:17.800 | So the reason the son assumed human flesh
00:03:21.440 | is so that Psalm 8, which seemed to be aborting,
00:03:26.040 | would be fulfilled in the first man out of the grave
00:03:30.200 | and he would bring others with him.
00:03:34.200 | That's the flow.
00:03:35.540 | That's what's going on here.
00:03:36.560 | This is our great salvation.
00:03:39.200 | When he says in verse three,
00:03:40.640 | beware lest you neglect your great salvation,
00:03:45.160 | this is what he has in mind.
00:03:47.280 | This great coming of the son into humanity,
00:03:51.320 | breaking through death, going into the Father's presence,
00:03:55.080 | being crowned with glory and honor,
00:03:56.960 | and bringing with him many sons and daughters to glory
00:04:01.240 | so that Psalm 8 will have a fulfillment.
00:04:04.020 | It will be fulfilled.
00:04:08.860 | It is a great salvation for several reasons.
00:04:13.580 | We've seen them.
00:04:14.420 | It's great because there's a great destiny.
00:04:18.940 | There will be no more cancer.
00:04:21.100 | There will be no more paralysis.
00:04:23.160 | There will be no more blindness.
00:04:25.000 | There will be no more arthritis.
00:04:26.960 | There will be no more heart disease.
00:04:29.240 | There will be no more depression.
00:04:31.260 | There will be no more violence or conflict anymore
00:04:34.320 | for the former things will have passed away.
00:04:36.440 | Psalm 8 will be fulfilled.
00:04:38.400 | The glory that Jesus now enjoys at his Father's right hand
00:04:41.160 | will become our glory as well,
00:04:43.440 | and there will be a new heavens and a new earth,
00:04:45.440 | and Psalm 8 will be true as you and I vice versa.
00:04:50.440 | Christ, regents, as it were, rule the universe
00:04:54.980 | alongside our older brother, Jesus Christ.
00:04:58.260 | That's coming.
00:04:59.460 | That is our great salvation,
00:05:01.620 | and it's a great salvation, secondly,
00:05:03.780 | not just because of our goal, our destiny,
00:05:05.960 | but because of our Savior.
00:05:07.840 | He is a great Savior.
00:05:09.660 | His glory is our ultimate destiny.
00:05:12.580 | We share in the glory that he has won
00:05:15.220 | by his death and resurrection,
00:05:17.560 | and he was the Son of God coming to rescue us.
00:05:20.100 | No mere human could have done what Jesus Christ did,
00:05:23.620 | so our salvation is great because he's a forerunner,
00:05:27.700 | God, and his goal is the glory of God.
00:05:32.100 | Therefore, verse 3,
00:05:33.460 | therefore, we're always coming back to the therefores.
00:05:36.220 | Don't neglect this great salvation.
00:05:39.260 | Don't neglect it.
00:05:40.620 | One of the great reasons for weakness
00:05:44.060 | in the American evangelical mainline churches
00:05:50.060 | is neglect of the greatness of our salvation.
00:05:54.260 | Ask yourself, how much mental energy
00:05:58.900 | do you expend to occupy yourself
00:06:02.580 | with the greatness of your salvation?
00:06:05.000 | Compared to the energy you expend on, say, your finances
00:06:11.560 | or housing or job,
00:06:18.700 | there is a colossal neglect
00:06:21.900 | of the greatness of our salvation in the church,
00:06:24.940 | not to mention outside the church.
00:06:26.780 | Well, what would be the opposite of neglect?
00:06:30.100 | Let me list off for you answers from the book of Hebrews.
00:06:33.100 | In chapter 2, verse 1,
00:06:34.820 | it is paying close attention to what we've heard.
00:06:37.900 | In chapter 3, verse 1,
00:06:40.260 | it is consider Jesus the apostle
00:06:42.580 | and high priest of your confession.
00:06:44.260 | In chapter 3, verse 12,
00:06:45.620 | it is take care lest there should be in any of you
00:06:48.260 | an evil, unbelieving heart,
00:06:49.700 | but exhort one another every day.
00:06:51.540 | In chapter 4, verse 16,
00:06:53.340 | it is drawing near to the throne of grace
00:06:55.620 | to get help from Jesus.
00:06:57.420 | In chapter 10, verse 23,
00:06:58.860 | it is holding fast our confession without wavering.
00:07:02.020 | In chapter 12, verse 1,
00:07:03.620 | it is running the race that is set before us,
00:07:06.140 | looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our salvation.
00:07:09.980 | And in chapter 12, verse 25,
00:07:11.700 | it is not refusing him who speaks from heaven.
00:07:15.540 | Not neglecting is the mental, spiritual,
00:07:20.540 | emotional engagement with God to behold,
00:07:24.100 | to taste, to see, to embrace him in his greatness
00:07:27.540 | and all that he wrought for us.
00:07:29.060 | To ponder it, to think on it and not neglect it.
00:07:32.780 | My dad and I were coin collectors when I was growing up.
00:07:39.660 | There was a series, a sequence of years.
00:07:43.460 | I can't remember the exact age.
00:07:45.260 | We were coin collectors.
00:07:47.660 | I wonder how many have ever been coin collectors.
00:07:50.300 | I haven't looked at the books for a long time,
00:07:52.020 | but there used to be these fold open blue books,
00:07:54.940 | little holes, dates, place of minting, push the coin in.
00:07:58.980 | If you get a book full, you got a big deal.
00:08:02.100 | Hundreds of dollars it's probably worth.
00:08:04.260 | So my dad is a traveling evangelist.
00:08:06.420 | He'd go away and he'd talk to coin collectors
00:08:08.820 | and he'd save all his coins and he'd bring them home
00:08:11.420 | and he and I would sit down together and look at them.
00:08:14.180 | And we'd look them up in the book and see,
00:08:15.900 | is this good, excellent, or is this fair?
00:08:18.940 | And we'd push them in the book and we'd try to finish books.
00:08:21.940 | And then something happened.
00:08:25.020 | I cannot tell you what happened.
00:08:28.540 | We just started to not do it.
00:08:32.500 | And there were a few spurts in the years after that
00:08:40.380 | of interest and we'd go down in the bottom shelf
00:08:43.180 | where it has a little door and we'd push the door
00:08:44.900 | and there they were.
00:08:45.740 | We'd pull one out and do it a little bit
00:08:48.340 | and put it back and longer months would pass.
00:08:51.460 | And today, I don't have a clue where those books are
00:08:56.420 | and they're worth thousands of dollars.
00:08:58.900 | And that's the way many people
00:09:04.260 | experience the Christian faith.
00:09:06.060 | There's this spurt, there's this engagement,
00:09:11.540 | there's this flowering of apparent zeal and interest.
00:09:15.940 | And then weeks pass and no prayer,
00:09:20.940 | no meditation on the Word.
00:09:25.020 | It's easy to skip worship.
00:09:27.860 | The late home really needs some attention
00:09:30.540 | and there's good fellowship there
00:09:33.460 | and the glory of God is proclaimed in the sunshine.
00:09:38.060 | And little by little, you wake up one day
00:09:42.580 | and it's over, it's over.
00:09:47.140 | It's not only neglected, it's forgotten and you're cold
00:09:51.860 | and there may be no return according to Hebrews 12, maybe.
00:09:56.740 | And that's what this book is written to help not happen.
00:10:03.020 | That's the point of the book of Hebrews.
00:10:05.100 | Don't neglect it, don't neglect it.
00:10:07.660 | It is a great salvation.
00:10:09.940 | It's 10,000 times more great
00:10:13.860 | than dozens of full blue coin books
00:10:18.620 | but this salvation is worth 10,000 times more than that.
00:10:23.300 | And this author is pleading with us,
00:10:25.660 | don't neglect a great salvation.
00:10:28.620 | He writes this book to model for us
00:10:32.460 | and to help us copy him in meditating
00:10:35.620 | on the greatness of salvation.
00:10:37.300 | If you say, what is the book of Hebrews?
00:10:39.540 | The book of Hebrews is one extended effort
00:10:44.140 | not to neglect the greatness of salvation.
00:10:47.100 | It is one long meditation on the magnificence
00:10:51.620 | of Jesus Christ and what he has wrought
00:10:54.380 | through his death and resurrection for you and me.
00:10:56.540 | So if you wanna know how do you not neglect
00:10:59.460 | your great salvation, let the book of Hebrews model for you
00:11:03.940 | how not to neglect your great salvation.
00:11:06.540 | That's what he's doing here.
00:11:09.180 | - So good, that coin collecting story.
00:11:11.100 | I'd never heard that before.
00:11:12.100 | It's a good one, motivating one
00:11:13.780 | to warn us against the dangers of gospel drift.
00:11:16.620 | This clip was taken from a sermon on Hebrews chapter two
00:11:19.060 | titled, "Our Captain Made Perfect Through Sufferings"
00:11:22.060 | preached on June 2, 1996.
00:11:25.420 | If you have a sermon clip to share, email me.
00:11:28.580 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title,
00:11:30.860 | the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio.
00:11:32.900 | Make a note of what stands out to you.
00:11:35.260 | Put the word clip in the subject line of an email
00:11:37.020 | and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:40.140 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:43.820 | Well, what if the Bible warns us
00:11:46.300 | not to become overly righteous, overly righteous?
00:11:50.540 | Is that what the Bible says, to avoid being too righteous?
00:11:54.740 | Yes, it does.
00:11:55.620 | Right there in Ecclesiastes 7.16.
00:11:58.500 | You can look it up for yourself, no joke.
00:12:00.380 | Don't be too righteous.
00:12:01.900 | So what on earth does that mean?
00:12:05.180 | It's a great Bible question and as of next time,
00:12:07.380 | I'm your host Tony Renke.
00:12:08.220 | We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday.
00:12:12.060 | We'll see you then.
00:12:12.960 | (upbeat music)
00:12:15.540 | (upbeat music)
00:12:18.120 | [BLANK_AUDIO]