Today's scripture reading is from the book of Hebrews, chapter 1, and may be found on page 1184 in the Bible underneath the seat in front of you. Hebrews 1. In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son whom He appointed heir of all things and through whom He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. So He became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is superior to theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my Son. Today, I have become your Father. Or again, I will be His Father and He will be my Son. And again, when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, Let all God's angels worship Him. In speaking of the angels, He says, He makes His angels wins, His servants flames of fire. But about the Son, He says, Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. He also says, In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens of the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe, like a garment they will be changed, but you remain the same in your years will never end. To which of the angels did God ever say, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Are not all angels minister in spirit sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? This is the word of the Lord. Today we begin a new series of studies in the Bible. We are going to be looking now for the rest of this year, as well as the first few months of 2011 at the Book of Hebrews. We're beginning it today because it's an appropriate book to begin reading during the Advent season as we think about the birth of Jesus. So, through the month of December, you'll be looking one chapter at a time almost every Sunday into the Book of Hebrews with me. And I wanted to point out something to you before we begin, and that is this golden-rod colored little insert that you have in your worship guide. This is in there every Sunday so that you individually, you as a family, you as a life group perhaps, or a Bible study can work through some Advent devotions during the next four weeks. This will help you to hopefully zero your attention in on the Lord Jesus during this time of year when it's so easy to be distracted by the many other things that come our way. And the way this works is that when you open it up you'll notice that Monday through Friday you have five little readings that will some of which go back into the scriptures that we're going to look at on Sunday and other scriptures through the Bible. But every little paragraph will hopefully help you think about and apply what we talked about on Sunday morning. So I hope that that little tool will be of help to you as we study Hebrews together. I want to tell you that we had a great Thanksgiving. I hope you did too. My family and I enjoyed a big, a big, bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. We had some people over to the house and we had three turkeys to eat off of one smoked turkey and two fried turkeys. We had sweet potato casserole. We had hash brown casserole broccoli and carrots and bread and for dessert we had pecan pie and ice cream. I mean, it was a fantastic dinner. I think I'm still full from it. I asked me a couple of days ago, did we have a good Thanksgiving? And I said it was absolutely gluttonous. I don't know if that's the way you would describe your Thanksgiving. I've repented, you know, God's forgiven me, but it was absolutely a gluttonous Thanksgiving for us. The reason I tell you that is that that's how I feel as we open up the book of Hebrews. I can imagine, I can see in this book of Hebrews a table laden with spiritual food too much to take in at one sitting. We're going to have lots and lots and lots of leftovers because of this book here. It is a deep book. It's a complicated book at times. Some of you might consider Hebrews one of your favorite books. I do. I love the book of Hebrews, but it's not something that you can just kind of casually read. You'll see today that the passage we're going to look at, Hebrews one, is not something you just casually read. There are going to be questions that you'll have. You'll be thinking, I wish Mike would explain this, or I wish we could delve a little more deeply into that. And I'm going to say, sorry, those are the leftovers. You go home and you meditate on those things. You pull out your Bible study books and your commentaries and see if you can dig in and figure it out yourself. Because this is such a big book, such a full book that we will just do the best we can to make it through today's chapter, frankly. You'll see that it's very, very full. So without any further ado, let's dive into this new series that I'm calling Jesus the Crux. And you'll see why I chose that title in just a little while. So what I want to do first is introduce you to the book of Hebrews. When you meet someone that you haven't seen before, or maybe you haven't seen them for a while, an introduction is called for. I'd like to introduce to you the book of Hebrews, and I'm going to do it by giving you six W's. We will be sort of like a reporter and answer six questions about the book before we begin to really study chapter one. The first W is who? Who wrote the book of Hebrews? And the answer to that is I don't know. Nobody knows for sure who wrote Hebrews. There was a fellow by the name of origin who lived in the third century after Christ who said only God knows. And he was living a lot closer to the date than we are. Only God knows who wrote the book of Hebrews. The theory that has been popular for a long time is that the apostle Paul wrote it, but that has been largely discounted. There's probably very little probability that Paul wrote Hebrews. Other people who have been suggested as authors are Barnabas, Apollas, Luke, even a married couple by the name of Priscilla and Aquila have been put forth as possible authors of the book. We just don't know. The one thing we can say about the author of Hebrews according to chapter two, verse three, he or she was a second generation believer in Jesus. It talks about being chapter two, verse three talks about him, the author receiving the gospel not directly from Jesus, but from those who knew Jesus, from those who heard Jesus. So as a second generation author, second question, when, when did this person who wrote Hebrews write this letter? And we would say somewhere around 64, 66, 68, AD. The reason for that is that as you read through the book, you find out that the Levitical priesthood is still up and running. The Jewish ceremonial observances were still going on. The temple in Jerusalem was still standing. If you know some early history, you know that the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. So we figure that the book of Hebrews had to be written sometime prior to that since the temple is mentioned and alluded to so many different times. We also reference in this book to a lot of suffering and persecution. So that probably fits into the reign of the emperor whom you know as Nero, the emperor of Rome between 54 and 68, AD. Third question, to whom was the book of Hebrews written? To whom? And the answer that is, we're not sure. Again, we don't know for sure. The title to the Hebrews was not in the inspired text. It probably came about in the late second century sometime. However, most scholars and I think you're going to agree say that Hebrews had to be written to a group of primarily Jewish Christians. Living in or around Rome and the reason that we think it was mostly Jewish Christians that read this letter originally was that they obviously were well grounded in the Old Testament. You're going to see not only today but throughout our study of Hebrews that the book of Hebrews is chock full of references to the Old Testament as well as a lot of direct quotations. So they were well grounded in the Bible, the Old Testament scriptures. They knew about the Jewish ceremonial laws and so on and many references to Old Testament practices. But here is the most important thing. Whoever the people were who originally got this letter, they were living in something like this right here, a pressure cooker. You know what a pressure cooker is, right? You know how it's cooked? You know how food is cooked in a pressure cooker. You raised the pressure and you raised it in order to cook it. Well, the reason I say these people were living in a pressure cooker was that they were under pressure of many, many different kinds. They were tired. They were discouraged. They were experiencing a crisis of faith. Their family members as well as some of their former friends were telling them something like, you know, if you'd only go back to being like you were before, not this committed Christian but somebody who would be faithful to the Old Covenant, then life wouldn't be so difficult for you. If you'd only get back under the Old Covenant laws and ceremonies and observances, things would be a whole lot better for you and they heard this message over and over and over again. Plus there were false teachers living in and around them giving them all these other crazy ideas. And so as a result, the people to whom this letter was written were at risk. They were at risk of trading in their newfound faith in Jesus and going back to their judaistic roots. Does that make sense? So fourth question, why did the author write this letter to them? Well, he wrote it to encourage them not to do that. He encouraged them not to give into the pressure, not to trade in their faith, their robust faith in Jesus for something that promised them an easy way out. He wrote it to warn them and to remind them that the new covenant is so much better than the Old, so much grander than the Old. You might want to hold your place there in Hebrews 1 and turn to the last chapter, almost the very last verse of the book. Hebrews 13, 22 says, brothers, I urge you to bear with my word of excertation for I've written you only a short letter. Hmm, short letter, 13 chapters. I wonder what a long letter would have been, but I want you to notice word of excertation. That word excertation is the Greek word paracaleo. You might have heard it before. It means to come alongside, to encourage, to exhort, to give a pep talk as it were. And so why did the author write this letter to the Hebrews when they were under so much pressure? To encourage them not to go back, not to drift away from Jesus, but to hold on to the very end. Don't trade your faith in Jesus Christ for something that seems to be safer, for something that's bland, something that's just another insipid religion. That's the purpose of Hebrews. So fifth question, what's the book of Hebrews about? That's the fifth W. I'll give you a simple answer. It's about Jesus. Every chapter, every verse is about Jesus Christ, his person and his work. And that is why I chose for the series that we're, that we're beginning today, this title, Jesus, the crux. You might not have ever used that word, C-R-U-X. It means the point. It means the pivot, the essence, the heart, the core. Jesus is the point. He is what life's all about. I love, did you ever hear what Larry King said one time? Larry King said this. He said, I would like to ask Jesus Christ if he was indeed born of a virgin because the answer to that question would define history. He was right. And we might want to say to Larry King, yes, Larry King. And if Jesus Christ was truly born of a virgin, then it would define your life too. And I'd be so bold as to say here this morning to each of you, that if Jesus Christ was indeed born in that manger of Bethlehem, born of the virgin Mary, as we believe he was, then that should define your life. And it does define your eternity. So we're going to be talking a lot about Jesus as we look at Hebrews because Hebrews is about him. The final question we want to answer is, why should we study Hebrews? Why should we spend a significant amount of our time together on Sunday morning, studying a book that's 2000 years old? Well, let me ask you, have you ever felt like giving up? Have you ever felt like giving into sin? Have you ever felt like caching in your chips, compromising your values, returning to your old way of life? Did FSU beat Florida yesterday? I'm sorry. I could have said is the Pope Catholic, but I thought no. I'm sorry. I just had to do it. Yeah. I'm a popular guy now, aren't I? Thanks, Lynn. Seriously, did you ever wish you were more popular than you are? Better liked than you are? More acceptable to whoever's on the inside? Maybe you could be if you turned your back on Jesus Christ. See, that's how they felt. Life would be easier in some ways if you weren't a Christian. The Calvary Road is a hard road. It's one of self-sacrifice. It's one of suffering and sorrow. Battling with sin every day, the flesh, the devil. What if somebody came up to you and said, life would be a lot better for you if you didn't believe all this stuff. Why do you go to church every Sunday? Why do you read your Bible? Why do you pray to this God you can't see? So you're in a pressure cooker as much as these people were. We deal with crises of faith just like they did. We live in a pluralistic society where anything goes and you're constantly getting that message. Anything goes. Christians got one little piece of truth. Muslims got one little piece of truth. Buddhist got one little piece of truth. How do you know? How do you know what you believe's right? So we're tempted in this relativistic culture in which we live. We're tempted to accommodate ourselves to those thought processes around us. We're tempted to settle, aren't we? For a bland, insipid form of Christianity that doesn't upset anybody and doesn't require anything of us. And Hebrews says to you, don't do it. Don't you dare do it. Jesus is worth far more than rubies. Don't let go of him whatever whatever you're going through. He is better than that. So with that bit of introductory material, let's dive in. A little while ago Karen read for you, Hebrews one, we're going to look at Hebrews one. We're also time permitting going to look at a little bit of Hebrews two at the end. And here's, here's our plan for the day. Our plan is to see what Hebrews one and that little bit of Hebrews two would say to two simple questions. One, who is Jesus and two, what will you do with him? Who's Jesus and what are you going to do with him? First question, let's dive right in. Who is Jesus? Was he merely a good person? Was he just a wise teacher, a moral example, a social revolutionary, a religious leader? Is that all we believe about Jesus? No, the author of Hebrews wastes no time at all giving us the answer to the question. Who is Jesus? He opens his letter in verses one through four with one long sentence in the Greek language. It's one long sentence, not in our English Bibles, but in the Greek it was one long sentence. And here's what he's going to say in verses one through four. Jesus is the prophet, the priest and the king you've always needed. So there's our first answer to the question. Who is Jesus? First, he's the prophet that you've always needed. Look with me at verses one and two. Verse one says, in the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son. Now let's stop right there and think about that. You might have seen on CNN, Fox News, something like that. An anchor man or an anchor woman sitting on one side of a desk and in front of that person is a panel of guests, a panel of pundits. And time is running out and the anchor person says, Jim, you get the last word. And then whoever Jim is gets the last word. All right, this verse is saying that Jesus got the last word. He is, in fact, the last word. See, before Jesus came on the scene, before he was born in Bethlehem, God communicated to his people in all kinds of other ways, little pieces bit by bit, little by little. And in many different venues, such as visions and dreams and miraculous events through ritual, through ceremony, through prophets, through people like Moses and David and Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, you know, Daniel, Jose, all of those different things, all those different people. That you read about in the Old Testament were God's ways of communicating himself, communicating truth to his people. But now this passage says that once and for all in a decisive and full way, God has spoken to us through his son, Jesus. He is the one who is the word. Jesus puts all other words, all other revelations to rest. We don't need any prophets and revelations today because we have Jesus, the perfect and final prophet. Isn't it amazing? And it ought to amaze us that God speaks and that he spoke through Jesus Christ. Isn't it amazing that God would rid the heavens to communicate with his enemies, with sinful people who weren't seeking him? Our son David and his wife, Lindsay, were with us yesterday and they brought their little baby, Talitha to see us. Talitha is about one year old. She's into words now. And most of her words begin with be bed, ball, bath, book. And all of the words sound like this, but, but, but they're all the same. They're just one letter. And we go crazy. I think, wow, she's speaking. She's talking. Isn't it wonderful? Friends, that's our ought to be our reaction. When we think about God speaking, whether it be through the Bible or in that definitive way through his son, we ought to say, my goodness, God, you spoke is too much. He spoke finally and decisively through his son, Jesus. So he's the prophet. We always needed. Secondly, Jesus is the priest. We've always needed to look at in verse three, the second half of verse three says after he Jesus had provided purification for sins. Now, that's what priests do. They provide purification for sins. The word purification is the word from which we get the word catharsis in English. Catharsis means cleansing or removing the defilement. You see, under the old covenant, there were Hebrew priests who had to offer sacrifices day after day. For their own sins and for the sins of the people, but verse three says that Jesus made and it's the Greek tense that means he made it and it's done. It's once and for all. He made purification for sins and it's over with so that now, in contrast to the former days, under the old covenant, it's possible for a person who puts his or her trust in Jesus to really feel forgiven. Because sins have been once and for all purified, washed away. The defilement has been removed. Sin is not just covered. It's not just hidden for a little while like it was in the old covenant. It's now removed. Finally, because of the work of Jesus, he's the priest. You've always needed. Thirdly, he's the king. You've always needed a king. And he is the one you've always needed. Thirdly, he says that he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. That's talking about Jesus's kingly reign. Jesus, you see, after he died on the cross, the Bible tells us that he rose again and later ascended to heaven to the place of highest distinction and honor. That down next to his father on a throne to signify that his work was done. Isn't that what you do at the end of a long day? You come home from after working in the yard or at work or in the office, rearing children all day, teaching, being a nurse, doctor, whatever you are, you come home, your student, you come home at the end of the day, you are exhausted. What do you want, what do you want to do? You just want to sit down. You're going to put your feet up because your work's done. Jesus Christ sat down on his throne because his work was done. In fact, he sat on the cross. What? It is finished once and for all. And Jesus is on that throne now because he is the Lord of heaven and earth. He is the king. So he's the prophet, the priest, and the king. You've always wanted these opening verses teaches that. In short, what we see in Hebrews 1 is that Jesus is God. Let's spend a little while on that. Jesus is God. Let me show you five things in Hebrews 1, 1 through 4 that demonstrate that Jesus Christ is God. I want you to notice first, Jesus is position. His position in verse 2 says that he is heir of all things. See when Jesus rose from the grave and ascended to heaven, he inherited the possessions and the authority of the father, he is God by virtue of his position. Second, notice his power. Verse 2 says that he is the one through whom God made the universe. Do you see that? That everything that is is because of Jesus. He is the one through whom all things were made. And thirdly notice his perfection. His perfection in verse 3. It says that he is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. Listen to that. Jesus is the radiance of God's glory. He doesn't merely reflect it. Remember we talked about that when we looked at the transfiguration a few weeks ago. It means that Jesus is the manifestation of the presence and the person of God. That word representation that is in that verse, it is the word from which we get the word, the English word character. Jesus is the character or the copy or the imprint. It is really talking about a soft metal into which the image of a coin was pressed down real hard. And when the coin, the metal hardened, you picked it up and you saw the exact copy of what was on the original. Jesus it says is that. See, to see Jesus is to see God because he is God. Fourth, notice his providence. His providence. It says in verse 3 that he sustains all things by his powerful word. Do you know what that means? It means that this moment, all of the molecules in the entire universe are being held together by Jesus Christ. He is on his throne sustaining all things, the very fact that your heart is beating right now, that your lungs are filling with air, that your eyes are looking around, that you're thinking as we're talking, the very idea that any of that is happening is thanks to the work of Jesus Christ and his providence. And then fifth, notice his pre-eminence. Verse 4, Jesus is as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. Now, we need to park on that verse for a few minutes because you might be wondering why does he bring up the subject of angels and why does he deal with angels throughout this chapter? Well, I don't want to take too long with this, but some scholars believe that the people to whom Hebrews was written were aware and were being exposed to the practices of a group of people known as the Essenes who were part of the Kumran community. Have you ever heard of them? The Kumran community lived around the Dead Sea in Palestine, lived up in caves, and the Essenes had a fascination with angels. I mean, they speculated about other things too, like Melchizedek, whom you're going to meet later on in the book of Hebrews. And so there's some attractiveness to that theory that these people to whom Hebrews was written were thinking about this because the people that they were sort of fascinated by were talking a lot about angels. And they were probably saying things like, you really need to think about angels. You really need to worship angels. You really need to get into the subject of angels. Well, whether true or not, it was certainly the case that these people to whom this letter was written had a fascination for angels. And can't you get that? Like, hasn't there been a fascination with different things in the Christian community in your lifetime? I remember back when, around the time when I became a Christian, the big thing was the late, great planet earth, a book written by a guy named Hal Lindsey. Everybody was talking about it. It was the newest thing. It was the big fad in the Christian church. You might remember some time back in the 90s, I guess it was, when Frank Peretti became a popular author in the Christian church. Remember Frank Peretti, this present darkness piercing the darkness. And everybody was reading those books by Frank Peretti. And they had all this stuff to say about demons and angels. And it was really good reading. I read those two. And I became fascinated with those types of things. And then in the earlier part of the 2000s, you remember the prayer of Jbez. The prayer of Jbez hit the book shelves. And everybody was buying up the prayer of Jbez. In other words, my point being there's truth in all those things. But what happens when some new fad or some new trend comes into the Christian community, everybody's got to get in on it. Everybody begins to get fascinated by it. And the problem with it is it can easily distract us from the person in work of Jesus Christ. It can easily take us out of the Bible, which is true. And it can suddenly become the subject of sermons and Sunday school classes and conversations and even divide the church of Jesus Christ. So I think we can relate to this fascination with angels that was popular back in the day that Hebrews was written. Now, I want to add that angels are real. Angels are real. Angels are in the Bible. As it says in verse 14, angels are ministering spirits sent to serve God's people. I think I wouldn't bet my life on this one, but I think I might have had an encounter with an angel one time. And I can tell you about it one time when we have more time. Like I said, I wouldn't bet my life on it. But I'm basically saying I believe in angels. But angels are not saviors. Angels are not mediators between God and man. They are not God. And that's the point of the rest of Hebrews chapter one. The author is saying the author is saying you want to trade Jesus in for angels? You want to get distracted on angels and put all your thought and attention on angels? Listen, he's saying. And this is verse five. To what angel did God ever say you are my son. Today I've become your father. See, it's a rhetorical question. The author is saying that is so ridiculous. Because to what angel did God ever say you're my son? It would be like this. Suppose you get a Christmas gift. And you are so taken by the wrapping on the Christmas gift that you just look at the wrapping you analyze the wrapping. It's all about how beautiful that paper is in the bow. Look, look how beautifully constructed this. And you're sitting there thinking open the box. It's what's inside that I want you to see. So the people that we're talking about here were distracted by the wrapping. They were focused on lesser things than the person and work of Christ. Well, in verses five through 14 of this chapter are seven Old Testament quotations and we don't have time to look at them. I hope that you will later today or sometime later this week. But seven different Old Testament quotations and here's the list of them. You can go down and see that most of them all but one of them are from the book of Psalms. So the author is pulling from the Old Testament to say, look guys, your very scriptures teach you that Jesus is the son of God and that he should be your focus. Now, when I read the rest of chapter one, I'm going to say mention just really two quick things here. When I look at these quotations and study them in the context of this chapter, I learned two things and I hope I hope you can take these two things away. Number one, the Old Testament is about Jesus. The whole Bible is about Jesus. And that's the way you ought to read your Bible that the Old Testament is looking forward to Jesus Christ. The New Testament is looking at the life and the person in work of Christ. But the whole Bible is a testimony about Jesus Christ. The second thing I learned is that Jesus is God. He is divine. He is nothing less than God. For example, if you look at verse six, it says let let all God's angels worship him. That's a quotation from Psalm 97. Let all God's angels worship Jesus. Now who but God would be worthy of the worship of angels. You see his argument. He's saying Jesus is God because who but God would be worshiped by angels. And verse eight, look at verse eight. It says about the sun. He says your throne. Oh God will last forever and ever. That word God in verse eight is the Greek word fast. Fast. And so the author is saying your your name is son, but you're God. He's taking the name of God and applying it to Jesus Christ, thus demonstrating that Jesus is divine. Who is Jesus? He brews one answers the infinite God man. That's who he is. Take a look at this quotation by CS Lewis. I love this. He says a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he's approached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let's not come with any patronizing nonsense about is being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. Jesus Christ says CS Lewis Jesus Christ says Hebrews one is the infinite God man. He came to earth as our prophet priest and king and he gave his life as the final sacrifice for human sin. So the question of the day now is what will you do with him? What will you do with Jesus? What have you done with him? That is if Jesus who is who the Bible claims him to be, what impact should that have on you? How should you now live? I may be speaking this morning to a skeptic. Somebody who thinks about religion but you're not sure if you're ready to commit to Jesus. I may be speaking this morning to somebody like these Hebrews, these Christians, people who are tired, you're discouraged maybe. Your Christian faith has come under fire. Maybe you've been persecuted and you're not sure you want to stay faithful to Jesus. What should you do? Maybe I'm talking this morning to some people who are full time vocational missionaries. I know that I am. I think about us who are on the church staff, pastors, elders, deacons, missionary, ministry leaders and so on. You know we are people who are always dealing with religion. It's very easy isn't it to neglect reading the Bible because we figure we've got it knocked already. We know how to give a good sermon. We know how to give it good talk. We know how to deal with the next event. So why pray? Why read our Bible? We get to the point where we think we know this stuff. We are at risk of drifting away from Jesus. I think about some of you who have grown up in church, grown up in a Christian home, grown up hearing, knowing all these stories about Jesus. I think about you who are covenant kids. I think about you who are students in our youth group. I think about you students who attend our UF meetings every week. You've gone to church all your life. You know what? You are at risk of drifting away from Jesus. Getting distracted, getting tired, getting discouraged. I think about some of you who are caught up in the American dream. I'm talking about the suburban lifestyle of East Orlando. You work too much. You spend too much money. You give away too little and you know where God is. He's out there on the periphery of your life somewhere. Because down deep, down deep in your heart of heart you think that the missing key to happiness is one more piece of furniture, one more electronic gadget, one more vacation, one more piece of clothing. I don't know if Black Friday hit you this way like it did me, but some of the talk and some of the ads about Black Friday were downright apocalyptic. It was like buy this, get in on this deal and you have what it takes. You've got a real life going for you. It was almost to that extent. See, nobody's immune. Nobody's immune. We all have our angels that we bow down to. We're all at risk. The same thing that happened to these Jewish Christians can happen to you. And to me, we need to remind ourselves every single day that Jesus is the prophet, the priest and the king that we've needed. He is God. There are no other gods. All other pretenders are counterfeit. God's Jesus alone will satisfy our longings. Nothing short of a personal relationship with him will answer to our deepest needs. So how should we now live? Well, look at chapter two versus one through four and we're with this. We're done. This little bit of chapter two says we must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. If the message spoken by angels was binding and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. Let me leave you with three things that I think we ought to do differently because of who Jesus is. I think that it means that we are to live with adoration, attention and affection. First, with adoration because if all God's angels worship Jesus, how much more should we? Secondly, with attention, verse one of chapter two says we must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we've heard so that we do not drift away. That is to say that we ought to make the chief business in our life knowing Christ better and better and making him known. It's something that deserves our being devoted to it. We must dig deeper and run farther and think harder about the gospel than we ever had before. To preach it to ourselves daily, less we forget, less we drift away, and thirdly, we should live with affection. Notice verse three says, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? That word means rescue or freedom. How can we escape if we neglect such a great rescue as we've been given in Jesus? Have you ever seen that TV show I shouldn't be alive? It's a great little show. Every time there's an episode, somebody gets trapped, somebody gets stranded on a desert island, lost at sea, buried by an avalanche, bitten by a snake, mulled by a bear, and the thesis of the show is I shouldn't be alive. Jesus Christ has come to your rescue. He has freed you from your sins, by his blood. All your sins past present and future are forgiven gone. You've been free from guilt and shame from the misery of earth without Jesus and a hell without Jesus. And you shouldn't even be alive. Doesn't that call for affection? Earlier today we're saying, oh come, oh come, he manual and ransom captive Israel. Jesus has come. He has ransomed you. You are free and you shouldn't even be alive. Give up Jesus, trade Jesus for something less than him, never. No, love the one. Love the one who so loved you that he gave his life for his friends. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you that you have revealed so much of yourself in this passage. It's so much, it's too much to take in. There are lots of leftovers. We feel a little bit glutmus and we don't know how to comprehend it all. Thank you, Lord, that you are profit preached in King. The one we've always wanted, the one we've always needed and just didn't know where to look. Thank you that you're God, that you came as the pre-eminent one, the one who has all power, all providence, all pre-eminence, all position. And yet you died as a servant to sinners on the cross. Lord will you please help us, we pray, to live with full awe and adoration, to live with close attention to you and to never let you go and to live with affection because you loved us so very much as to do that for us. May we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.