Hebrews 2:1-4 | Pay Attention

Well, it's a privilege to be with you. I don't think I've met many of you, other than the intern, before today, but I'm glad to be here to serve you and just glad to be gathering with faithful churches that do so every Sunday morning all around the world. Our passage today, as you see in the bulletin, is from the book of Hebrews. So, I invite you to turn there with me: Hebrews chapter 2. I'm going to be reading the first paragraph, which comes in verses 1-4. It's my understanding that John, I think, preaches from the Christian Standard Bible; I'm reading from the ESV. Hebrews chapter 2, verses 1-4, says this:

For this reason, we must pay attention all the more to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away. For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding and every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? This salvation had its beginning when it was spoken of by the Lord, and it was confirmed to us by those who heard him. At the same time, God also testified by signs and wonders, various miracles, and distributions of gifts from the Holy Spirit according to his will. — Hebrews 2:1-4 (CSB)

Father, we ask anew that your Spirit would work in us as we turn our attention to your Word. Help me to be clear, and help us to apply what we're learning and live it out, not just today, but in the week and in the years to come. Would your Spirit bear fruit in our hearts? For Jesus' name, Amen.

The Critical Importance of Paying Attention

Some of you may remember that in January of this year, there was a mid-air collision between an Army Blackhawk and a commercial flight for American Airlines. We found out soon after that this turned out to be the deadliest United States commercial passenger flight crash in over 20 years. There were 64 people on board the American Airlines flight; there were three people on board the helicopter, and all of them died. The pilot of the helicopter was 28-year-old Captain Rebecca Lobach, and she was taking part in her annual night flying evaluation. She was joined by her instructor and one engineer, a technician on the helicopter.

About four minutes before the crash, the instructor announced that they were at an altitude of 300 feet and they needed to descend to the upper limit of 200 feet. This command was repeated. The pilot said she would do it. Two and a half minutes later, however, she was still above 200 feet. Air traffic control, which was short on people that day, did communicate and told the pilot that a plane was circling to a different runway. Investigators believe that part of that message was never heard because someone on the helicopter was pressing down the microphone button, meaning they wanted to say something and weren't able to listen.

About two minutes before the crash, the flight instructor indicated that they did have traffic in sight and he requested what is known as visual separation. This means that instead of relying on air traffic control, the helicopter crew was going to make its own observations and its own decisions, and they were granted permission to do this. About a minute before the crash, the controller contacted the helicopter asking if they could see the approaching airliner, but no response was recorded. At that point, the helicopter and the plane were about a mile apart. The plane was coming in at 150 miles an hour.

Seventeen seconds before the crash, the controller asked the helicopter to "pass behind the airplane." But records indicate that instruction might not have been heard. So instead of flying to avoid the plane, the helicopter continued flying straight at it. A couple seconds after the controller's instruction, the flight instructor responded and affirmed for a second time that the Blackhawk saw the traffic. Again, they requested visual separation. 'Let us do this ourselves.' That would be the final communication between the chopper and the air traffic control. According to helicopter records, 15 seconds before the collision, the instructor spoke to the pilot. He told her that he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, and that would have widened the space between the two aircraft. The final paragraph in the report of the New York Times simply says, 'She did not turn left.' This was a helicopter that was supposed to remain below 200 feet, and at the time of the crash, the recorded altitude was 278.

There are times in life when paying attention is critical, and failing to listen will lead to disaster. This is exactly the message we have today in the opening verses of Hebrews chapter 2. You can notice one more time the command of verse 1 is that we pay attention to what we have heard. This is more than just a pastor urging his people not to fall asleep in church; this is a preacher exhorting his people to regular and focused attention on Jesus Christ and on his message.

The book of Hebrews was given to Hebrew Christians—some simply professing, some actual Christians. But the temptation was to leave Christianity and to return to Judaism, because oppression and persecution was coming upon the Christians at that time, not upon the Jews. 'Pay attention,' he says, 'to the message we have heard.' That is the message of Jesus: the message that is about him and the message that has come from him. We have it today for us in Scripture. This is what requires the highest level of our attention. In 2 Peter chapter 1, we're instructed to pay attention to the Word as to 'a lamp shining in a dark place.'

I think it's an automatic thing for most of us: you go into a room and it's darker than you expected it to be, and you immediately pull out your phone and you turn on the flashlight. But is that what we do with God's Word every day? Do we approach each situation and each relationship thinking, 'I serve Christ. What does Christ through his Word ask me to do here? How is Christ calling me to respond?' Are we actually paying attention? And if we're honest, we all will say that we struggle to pay attention. That is part of the human experience this side of the Fall. We have a sinful nature. Even after coming to Christ, sin is still there. We have power over it, but we are dragged down by it. We have fallen bodies; there is a fallen world. So, we sin against Christ; we sin against his Word. We all have, we could say, spiritual ADD or spiritual ADHD.

Four Motivations to Pay Attention

The writer of Hebrews knows that, and in this exhortation, he gives us four reminders or four motivations to help us pay attention, to help us stay focused. I'm not sure which of these reminders will stand out most to you; it might depend on your personality, it might depend on your season of life, but each of these is important. They help us understand why Christ and his message are so vital, why they're worthy of our attention. They also help us keep one another on track; we can be looking out for others and see why or where they might be failing to pay attention.

The first reason to stay focused on Christ is his superiority. So, we'll just call it the superiority of Christ. This is what the opening phrase of the verse is referring to. The verse starts by saying, 'For this reason,' and that reason is the superiority of Christ, which is what Hebrews chapter 1 unpacks for us. You can study that for yourself; I won't spend a lot of time here. But Hebrews 1 begins by telling us that Jesus is the Son of God, the greatest revelation. The Jews understood the Old Testament came from God, and it came through angels as intermediaries. But chapter 1 says that Jesus is greater than an angel; he's greater than all the angels. He is superior; he is greater than anything that had come to them in the Old Covenant. There's nothing more worthy of our attention than Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He is the definitive revelation of God. That's the first reason.

The Danger of Drifting

The second reason to pay attention comes at the end of verse 1, and that is—and this is mainly the concern of the author—the possibility of drift. We need to pay attention because of the superiority of Christ, but also because of the possibility of drift. If we don't pay attention, we will 'drift away.' That's the phrase you see there at the end of verse 1. That's what God wants to keep us from; that's what we should want to keep one another from.

If you've ever gone swimming in the ocean, you understand the concept of drifting. As a kid, I didn't understand. You go out in the beach and you're enjoying the water, and Mom and Dad are just on the shore behind you. You're playing with your friends, and then 20 minutes later, you look up and Mom and Dad aren't there anymore. 'Where did they go?' Well, they didn't go anywhere; their umbrella is still in place, the sunshade is still in place. You're a hundred yards sometimes down one way. You've drifted, and you didn't even feel it. The Greek word here for drifting includes more than just movement; it also includes the idea of something being washed away or eroded.

I think we've all seen pictures of these very expensive houses built into the side of a cliff with a beautiful ocean view. I'm sure that seemed like a great idea at the time, but as the years go by, the waves eat away at the cliff, and then one day the house crumbles into the water. That's exactly what happens with many people who call themselves Christians. They come with energy, with zeal, with joy; they're excited about church, they sing the songs. And then years later, maybe they leave your church or move off somewhere else, and you ask them, they say, 'No, I'm not a Christian anymore.' Their faith little by little waned away. And in this life, and for sure in the next life, what they thought was salvation turns out to be an illusion and a delusion. Jesus warned us about this:

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’ — Matthew 7:22-23 (CSB)

Well, how can you tell if you're drifting? What should we be looking to? I want to give you some ideas for self-evaluation. These are some areas to look out for in your own life, and areas you can be looking out for in other people's lives. Number one, a simple area that we can drift in is unrepented sin. When you stop caring about the sin in your own life, when you begin to move forward and ignore the alarm of your conscience, you're drifting from Christ. When you decide not to confess and not to forsake sin, you're drifting; you're hiding an aspect of your life. It happens in human relationships between a husband and a wife; it happens in our relationship with Christ. Unrepented sin is one way in which we will drift. We need to watch that.

A second area of drift—this is maybe an obvious one, at least for pastors and members in a church—is church attendance. This is a common kind of drifting. People stop making it a priority to go to church. And maybe you've seen it here; we see it in our church. People say, 'Oh, I can't come today, I had family from out of town.' 'Oh, that's fine.' And then the next week, 'Oh, I got called to do overtime, and I decided to do it because I needed some extra money.' And then they're gone, and they miss two, three weeks. And then those two weeks become a month, and then two months, and then pretty soon six months go by, and they've stopped attending. All of us feel that to some degree; it just would be nice to stay in bed a little longer on Sunday mornings.

I remember the story of a mother waking up her son on Sunday morning. She walks into his room; it's 7 in the morning, and she says, 'Frankie, it's time to wake up for church.' She hears just a grumble, and he rolls over in bed. So, 10 minutes later, she's downstairs, she's finished making breakfast, and she shouts out again, 'Frankie, breakfast is ready! Wake up, we've got to go to church!' No answer. Twenty minutes later, she walks into his room to wake him up. 'Frankie, we have church today, get ready!' And Frankie doesn't even lift the covers from over his head; he just says, 'No, I don't want to go. Church is boring. The people there are weird. They make faces at me. Nobody likes me. Plus, I'm too tired. Just go without me.' And to that, his mother says, 'Frankie, I'm sorry you feel that way, but you're the pastor. You have to be there.' Pastors are not immune from drifting away either. None of us are. We have to guard ourselves. That's the second area, church attendance.

The third area we can see ourselves drifting is in relational connections. Don't assume showing up at church on Sundays is the same as being connected to the body of Christ. The images in Scripture of a church are as branches or a building where bricks are connected to each other. This is God's design. God's design is more than just showing up faithfully with the saints; it's encouraging, it's edifying one another all throughout the week. Our lives are to be tied to others. Later in Hebrews 3, there's an exhortation there to exhort one another every day.

One who isolates himself pursues selfish desires; he rebels against all sound wisdom. — Proverbs 18:1 (CSB)

It's a foolish thing. Christ will use brothers and sisters in the faith to keep us from drifting.

The wounds of a friend are trustworthy, but the kisses of an enemy are excessive. — Proverbs 27:6 (CSB)

We need those people in our lives. A fourth way, if you want to just evaluate yourself and see if you're drifting, is personal prayer. Do you pray all by yourself, the way Christ instructed us, the way Christ said there was a reward for it? Is it part of your everyday life? If you're not investing in personal, private prayer, that could be a sign that you're drifting spiritually. So, we drift through unrepented sin, we drift through neglecting church attendance, we can drift through weakened relational connections and insufficient personal prayer.

A fifth one would be Bible intake. It's good to be gathering on Sundays and hearing the Word of God being taught or preached in a classroom or in the sermon, but that's not supposed to be the only time we take in the Word of God. It's like saying, 'On Sunday, I'll have such a big meal I'm not going to eat all week.' None of us live like that, I assume. The Bible says that it is for us 'milk in our infancy,' and it is 'solid food in our maturity.' That's the attitude we need to take. We should be reading the Bible, studying the Bible, memorizing the Bible, taking it in however you can, meditating on the Bible. Like Colossians 3, the Word of God should be richly dwelling in us. Otherwise, we're drifting.

A sixth area, and this is more common, I think, in today's culture, would be doctrinal distractions. This is a kind of theological drift, and this includes things that are either clearly, blatantly false teaching or distracting, unhelpful. I don't know how many of you heard about the TikTok rapture; I'm sure that falls somewhere in there. People were consumed saying the rapture was going to happen just a few weeks ago, and time and energy, and then more videos get produced, consuming people's attention but separating them from Christ, who is the Head of the Church. What makes this kind of drifting dangerous is that it *seems* spiritual. 'I'm Googling things about the Bible!' But it's not actually drawing us closer to Christ. Doctrinal distractions can actually undermine the message and undermine our relationship with him. That's why Paul told Timothy, 'Don't pay attention to myths and genealogies, secret codes.' Study the Scriptures, but study the Scriptures to know Christ. It's not an intellectual exercise. One of the more common distractions today is this idea that, 'Well, we need the Bible, but the Bible...' Some will say, 'It's not actually God's Word; it's a vessel that helps you hear God's voice.' So, they'll say you read the Bible so that you can learn to hear God, rather than say, 'No, the Bible is God's very Word.' Notice again in verse 1, it says you need to pay attention. It says not to some new message, not to some personal whisper. He said, 'Pay attention.' We need to pay attention to what we have already heard. Give yourself to what Christ has already said. The moment we start looking for meaning and guidance outside of or in addition to Scripture, we start to drift. Someone once said, 'If it's new, it's not true. And if it's true, it's not new.' This is what guides us: the Scriptures.

Lastly, this is number seven on our list—this is a huge one: worldly concerns. This is one Jesus specifically told his disciples about. He mentioned it in Matthew 13 with the Parable of the Four Soils. Maybe you've heard that parable. The first soil, the seed doesn't even penetrate the ground; it's hard ground. The last soil is fruitful. But the two middle soils, they appear to be genuine disciples at first. The second soil falls away, it says, 'because of tribulation and persecution.' People come to Christ with energy and zeal and joy, but ultimately they end up more concerned with earthly comfort than with honoring God. The third soil says that fruit was choked by 'the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.' There's nothing wrong with working hard and earning money. There's nothing wrong, for certain times, for us to rest and relax and even enjoy earthly comforts. But those kind of pursuits can very easily crowd out our devotion to Christ. As parents, we can mock or even correct our kids because of how obsessed they are with candy on Halloween and fail to realize that we do the same thing in our own lives every day if we are pursuing something other than Christ. So many things in this world can lead us to drift. We have to make sure that the garden of our heart isn't filled with the weeds of worldliness. The possibility of spiritual drift should keep us focused on what matters most. It should be a warning to us to pay attention to Christ and to his message. If we don't actively do that, we'll drift.

The Certainty of Judgment

As Hebrews 2 continues, we get an even stronger warning. This brings us back to the main outline. Here's a third reason to stay focused; here's a reason to pay attention: the certainty of judgment. So, there's the superiority of Christ, the possibility of drift, and now the certainty of judgment. Look at verses 2 and 3 again with me. It's a rhetorical question:

For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding and every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? This salvation had its beginning when it was spoken of by the Lord, and it was confirmed to us by those who heard him. — Hebrews 2:2-3 (CSB)

Again, this was given originally to Jews. They understood that the Old Testament had come from God; they understood that it came through angels. But what they needed to remember was that Christ is greater, Christ is better, Christ is stronger. And so you have in this rhetorical question a simple argument: if God punished those who disobeyed under the Old Covenant—which the Apostle Paul says has faded away—what do you think is going to happen to those who disobey or walk away from the New Covenant? Let's say today after church, someone offers you a ride: 'Hey, let's go to Seal Beach, I'll drive you,' and you get in the car and you go. And two miles into the drive, the car overheats; it's on the side of the road, you can't make it to the beach. Tomorrow, if that same friend with the same car says, 'Hey, let's go to Big Bear,' would you go? If the car can't go 10 miles downhill, is it going to make it 100 miles up a mountain? No. If God judged people for disobedience in the Old Testament, what do you think is going to happen to those who disobey Jesus Christ, his Son, the one who's given us the new and greater covenant?

I think at that moment the Jews' minds would have been filled with examples of God's judgment. Our world understands that God is a God of love and mercy and compassion and patience. We should too, but we can't do that to the exclusion of his justice. Adam and Eve sinned, and death and a curse came into the world. The world was filled with violence, and God flooded the earth. People refused to spread out over the earth, and God confused their languages. Judgment came on Sodom and Gomorrah. Judgment came over Egypt, and judgment even came over Israel. The entire generation that left Egypt, that was freed from Egypt, died in the wilderness over the course of 40 years because they refused to listen and to obey. They refused to trust God's promises. The sons of Korah were swallowed by the earth. Israel lost battles; plagues even came over them. In the time of the Judges, their enemies ruled over them. Saul had the kingdom ripped from his hand. David lost a child; David forfeited peace in his own family. And in the end, all the curses of Leviticus and Deuteronomy—the curses of the Mosaic Law—came to pass on the people because they continued in rebellion and disobedience. They said, 'You know, I didn't get struck by lightning today, so let's just keep doing it. It doesn't matter.' The North was destroyed by Assyria; the South was conquered by Babylon. The story of the Old Testament from one perspective is a story of judgment. It's inescapable.

And it's not that God was being harsh or unreasonable. These were just punishments; these were judgments that the people deserved and about which they had been warned. If we drift away from Christ, if we fail to pay attention to the message, how are we going to escape judgment? It's a rhetorical question because the answer is: we won't; we can't. Disobedience brings disaster. Drifting from Christ brings disaster. And we know that the worst disaster of all is not a hard life; it's not difficulty in our relationships. The worst disaster of all is the warning of Christ—that's the wrath of God in eternal hell. Jesus spoke repeatedly about hell.

Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. — Matthew 10:28 (CSB)

Some people might say, 'Well, that sounds like a threat.' I prefer to simply say that's the truth. Christ is over all. Christ is worthy of all our love and attention and glory and honor. And we are called to be reconciled to the Father through him alone. There is salvation in no one else. And that's why the cry of the early church, the cry of the apostles, was, 'Turn from your sin. Repent and be saved from this perverse generation. Be reconciled to God through Christ. Draw near to God.' James says, 'Those are commands that apply the moment we come to salvation, but they're commands that apply every day of our life. We repent until we come back to the truth.' Whether it's the thousandth time we've heard the Gospel or the first time we've heard the Gospel, whether you grew up in the church or whether this is your first time coming on a Sunday morning, all of us are called to humble ourselves before Christ every day, to trust only and fully in his death and in his resurrection, and to call out for mercy. The superiority of Christ, the possibility of drift, and the certainty of judgment are wakeup calls to anyone who's no longer taking their Christian vow seriously. We need to continually pay attention to Christ and pay attention to his message.

The Reliability of the Message

As we come to the end of this paragraph, we see a final motivation or reminder. This is much more positive: number four, we need to pay attention because of the reliability of Scripture, or the reliability of the message. Some of the Jews to whom this message was originally given might have been tempted to doubt the veracity or the trustworthiness of the message. 'How do we know this is what God actually said?' And you might have similar doubts. You might have had them if you've been a Christian for a long time. Maybe you remember a season of your Christian life, 'How do I know this is the truth? If my parents were Buddhists, would I be a Buddhist? If my parents were Mormons, would I be a Mormon? How do I know this is the right message?' The message of Christ is the message of the New Covenant; this is the New Testament. And to bolster our confidence in the message, the writer points us to two important factors: he reminds us number one, of the human affirmation, and number two, of the divine affirmation. For us, these serve as affirmations of the New Testament—of the Scriptures.

The human affirmation is what you see in the middle of verse 3. Here's how the author describes the message of Christ: he says it's the message of salvation. This salvation, he says, in verse 3, 'had its beginning when it was spoken of by the Lord, and it was confirmed to us by those who heard him.' Jesus, God in human flesh, shared a message with Israel. We have to understand that's the beginning of Christianity; it's not just a religious system that people pieced together. God himself gave it to us. But the Jews to whom this book was originally written didn't hear Jesus; they weren't in Jerusalem at the time that Jesus ministered, or in Israel. How did they get it? He says it was 'confirmed to us by those who heard him.' They heard it from reliable human witnesses. That's the end of verse 3. The message of Christ went out through eyewitness testimony, particularly through men chosen by Christ. We call them the apostles. The Greek word for apostle points to someone officially sent, an official delegate. They were with Jesus during his earthly ministry, and they saw him after his resurrection. This is actually part of the requirements of an apostle. If you read Acts 1, Judas dies, he killed himself, and Peter stands up and says, 'We need a replacement.' But they weren't just going to pick any man who was devoted to the message of Christ; they wanted someone who'd been with them since the beginning and who would serve with them as a testimony or a witness of the resurrection. That was significant because the Gospel, the message of Christ, was not going to be built up by speculation or mythology or rumors. It was going to be preached for what it is, and that is a historical fact. That's why Ephesians 2 says that the church is:

built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. — Ephesians 2:20 (CSB)

What we have today is the Word of God; the New Testament is the teaching of the apostles. That's what it is. Since the beginning, you read in Acts 2, the church comes together, and they devoted themselves:

to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. — Acts 2:42 (CSB)

The eyewitnesses chosen by Christ are the human affirmation of the message. In verse 4, we have a divine affirmation. The message is being preached by the apostles; that's the human side. This is someone who said, 'I was with Jesus, I sat with him, I heard his teaching.' But now look what verse 4 says:

At the same time, God also testified by signs and wonders, various miracles, and distributions of gifts from the Holy Spirit according to his will. — Hebrews 2:4 (CSB)

God himself, just like when he spoke at Jesus's baptism, saying, 'This is my Son, in whom I am pleased,' was doing it as the apostles preached. He was authenticating the message with signs and wonders. We know in Acts 2 that people, when the Holy Spirit came upon them, began to speak in languages they didn't previously know. The sick were being healed; the power of God was so amazingly on display. Acts 5 says that people were laying sick people on the streets, hoping that Peter's shadow would fall upon them. It doesn't say his shadow actually healed them, but it shows us how captivated the people were by the power that was on display through the apostles. These men who were personally appointed by Christ went out doing miracles just like Jesus did. They were doing what 2 Corinthians refers to as 'the signs of an apostle.' In 2 Corinthians 12:12, Paul says the signs of an apostle were performed among us. That was God bearing witness; that was God testifying to the message with signs and wonders. This is divine affirmation.

The topic of spiritual gifts, particularly with these sign gifts, can be a little divisive today because people debate to what extent some of these things should continue today. And I'm not going to get into that today. But at a minimum, any careful student of the Scripture should be able to say what was happening in Acts is not happening today, not to the same degree and not in the same way. Jesus and the apostles, where they went in that initial apostolic age, eradicated sickness. And that age has passed. The canon is closed; the apostolic age has ended. If you hear someone on TV or on a podcast saying, 'I'm an apostle,' realize they're not using that in the same way the Bible uses that term. But there are some things that have not changed. At the end of verse 4, God did miracles, but he also, it says there, 'distributed gifts by the Holy Spirit.' 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 tell us that the same thing continues to happen today. The Holy Spirit gives his people gifts; he distributes them according to his will, and he does it for the glory of Christ and for the edification of the church. That's what it means to say you have a spiritual gift: you are serving the church in a way that helps others know Christ and worship him.

So even if God doesn't supernaturally affirm his Word to others, your Christian life and your Christian testimony still serve as an affirmation of the truth. A previous pastor in our church would share the story of a man who came to Christ. He was a drunkard, an alcoholic. And he came to Christ, and he was opposed by his friends who loved partying with him, and they said, 'He's boring now.' And they began to attack and question his faith. They asked him, 'Okay, Jesus, it says he turned water into wine. How did he do that? What did he do? Explain that to me.' And this new convert said to his family, 'I don't know how he did. I can't tell you how Jesus turned water into wine, but I will tell you how Jesus turned liquor into shoes for my kids and furniture in my home.' It's like the blind man who said, 'I don't know anything about him, but I'll tell you what he did to me. All I know is that I couldn't see, and now I see.' The gifts that the Holy Spirit gives us, the empowering that he gives us to fight sin, are testimonies to the reality, the reliability of his message. Your holiness, your love, your Christian transformation will be used by God to bring others to the truth. Hebrews says it near the end:

Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness—without it no one will see the Lord. — Hebrews 12:14 (CSB)

The world needs to see a transformed people if they're going to understand the God who transforms them. And what an encouragement that should be to us to keep running the Christian race, to keep focusing on Christ, to keep paying attention to him. If you want your kids to grow up and to serve God, don't make your life around your kids. Build your life around Christ and teach them to do the same; teach them to focus on the truth he's given us. His Word is reliable. It's been affirmed by eyewitness testimony. It's been affirmed by divine power. And those of us who've come to Christ have seen that power in us as he gives us a new heart—a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. So, this is not a message that we can walk away from. This is not a message that we can afford to forget or to minimize or to ignore. This is a message we need to hold up every day in our life and in the lives of those around us. Paul said:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. — Romans 1:16 (CSB)

And we know it's also the power for sanctification. The Word of God is the message that will sustain and preserve us faithful to the end. Our faith will not fail if we continue to pay attention. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for your mercy and your compassion. You do not deal with us as our sins require, but you show us mercy. You have compassion on us like a father has compassion on his children. And as parents continually, repeatedly exhort their children, you give us reminders and exhortations that we need because we're so forgetful. Turn our hearts to you. Help us treasure and value this message and our Savior more than anything else this world can offer. We pray you would use our lives individually, and I pray you would use this church collectively as a powerful testimony of the message of Christ as they stay focused on it. Would you bring more and more people in their communities to hear and to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Give them soft hearts as they face their own sin, as they deal with brothers and sisters in the church. Give us humble hearts to be able to receive correction from others. Give us an urgency to stimulate one another to love and to good deeds. Where we see others drifting, where we see others slipping, help us to gently, graciously, and courageously call them back to the truth because we love them and because we know the glory of Christ is worth all our attention. In Jesus's name and for his glory, we pray. Amen.