Your Daily Bread – Warning to the Church: The Law of God

Turn to Hebrews chapter 2, and that’s where we’ll start this perusal of the warning passages in this letter. We read in verse 1 of chapter 2, for this reason, or therefore for this reason. That takes us back immediately into chapter 1 to explain the reason that he’s referring to, and chapter 1 is all about the glory of Jesus Christ. Verse 2, for example, talks about Christ the Son of God, who is appointed heir of all things, through whom the world was made. And it says in verse 3 that this Son of God is the very radiance of God’s glory, and is the exact representation of God’s nature.

It is He who sustains everything by the word of His power. It is He who on the cross made the purification of sins. It is He who rose from the dead, ascended, and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. It is He who is better than angels. It is He who is called the Firstborn, or it is He whom the angels of God worship. It is He in verse 8 who is God forever and ever, who has a throne and who rules with a sceptre. It is He, according to verse 13, who is set on high and under whose feet all enemies are placed.

It is He, Jesus Christ. And because of who He is, because of His glory, for this reason, the writer says, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it. Because of the glory of Christ, you must pay closer attention than you have been paying to the Gospel which you have heard, because you are in danger of drifting away from it. In other words, you come up close, you sniff around the truth of the Gospel, you are enlightened by it, you comprehend it, you see the wonder and the glory and the Majesty of Christ.

You are in grave danger at that point if you drift away from that. Verse 2 explains why, for if the word spoken through angels, what is that? That’s the Mosaic Law. If you go back into the Old Testament, you will remember that the Mosaic Law was brought by angels, they brought it from God. And if the Mosaic Law, the Old Testament Law, spoken through angels proved unalterable, it could not be changed, it could not be edited, it could not be altered, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense. In other words, if you ever broke the Law, you were judged for it.

If the Law was unalterable, unchangeable, and if every person who ever broke that Law paid consequence for it. Verse 3, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? If people didn’t escape the judgment of God when they rejected the Mosaic Law, how do you think you’re going to escape the judgment of God if you reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ? That’s the issue here. If they didn’t escape who disobeyed the Law, you won’t escape when you disobey the Gospel. And they had heard it, verse 3 says. It was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.

Who would they be? The Apostles. They had first-hand testimony, this assembly of Jews, from the Apostles. They had heard it from the Lord, and they preached it to this group, and this group heard and believed, and a church was founded. Not only did they hear the Gospel preached, but verse 4 says, God was bearing witness with them as they preached it, the Apostles who preached it, by signs and wonders and various miracles. And those are the very three things mentioned in 2 Corinthians 12-12 as the marks of an Apostle. Signs, wonders, and miracles.

The Apostles preached, God attested to the validity of their Gospel by signs, wonders, various miracles, and by the manifestation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will. They didn’t have any excuses. They heard the truth from eyewitnesses, the Apostles. The truth which they preached was indeed the Gospel of the Great Jesus Christ, who is described in chapter 1. That Gospel preaching was affirmed and attested by miraculous signs and wonders and mighty deeds, confirmed by the gifts of the Spirit of God that operated through those Apostles. And if they rejected it, they were in serious trouble, more serious trouble than those who rejected the law delivered by angels, the Mosaic Law.

That’s a serious warning. Based on the Majesty of Christ in chapter 1, based on the Old Testament law and rejection of that, based on apostolic testimony, it was very serious to disobey the Gospel. How shall we escape the judgment of God if we neglect so great a salvation? This is a warning then to those Jews, a part of that church And it stands as a warning to all of you, serious warning. Nobody neglects the law of God without a just punishment, and even more so, nobody neglects the Gospel of Jesus Christ without a just punishment.

You say, well, we haven’t seen the signs and wonders and mighty deeds, but the record of them is laid down right here on the pages of Holy Scripture, and this testimony is in fact true. And so, they are warned not to neglect this great salvation. Turn to chapter 3. In chapter 3 and verse 6, it says that Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are. And he is saying the church is a household of God, the household of Christ, and Christ is faithful over his house. He’s a faithful saviour.

He’s a faithful father, as it were, over his household. Whose house we are, if there’s a key word there, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm to the end. If we prove to be real. And then he warns, in verse 7, just as the Holy Spirit says, and he quotes Psalm 95, he quotes the Old Testament. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the warning to the church, the law of God.

Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].