Good morning.
That song doesn’t directly have anything to do with my message, but I just love that song. We were all being kind of noisy, so it’s a good place to quiet down and draw our attention to the Lord.
Lord, we thank You for this time at Your table to remember You, and we remember that You are great and greatly to be praised. We thank You for drawing our attention away from all that would distract. We pray that You draw our attention to You this morning as we share, in Jesus’ name.
Well, for several months—quite a few months—I’ve been considering the book of Hebrews. You know, that can sometimes seem like a very deep book. It can seem complicated and can be a little hard to understand, as Peter said Paul spoke things that were difficult to understand.
I even got to the point of picking up Govett’s book on Hebrews. I really tried that for a while, but I didn’t stick too long. So I said, “Lord, there’s so much here. What would You have to say? What would You have to say to me?” And so that’s what I want to share today.
This book is a book of five—most authors believe—five exhortations. There is an exhortation that stood out to me very early in the book. That is stated in the first verse of the second chapter, I believe—or the second verse. It says, “Do not drift.”
So that’s what I want to speak on today: Do not drift.
I’m going to do something a little different. Can you help me on this? I’m going to hand out an outline so you don’t drift. This is the whole message here: “Do not drift.”
Josh said if you need to share with husband and wife, there are sixty copies. So be careful. But you might remember it anyway. That’s the outline. One per couple, maybe. Get them around.
This outline would help those who tend to fall asleep or get lost. You know, if you have a problem like I do, I even sit and write notes during these messages, and then I get home and Sharon says, “What did you think?” I say, “Think about what? I have to go get my notes.”
So this is just practical help to everyone. And if you fall asleep, you can find out where we are, because you wake up and can read your outline and figure out where we are.
My father did quite a bit of speaking, and he said, “Here’s the rule for speaking: tell them what you’re going to tell them, and then you tell them, and then you tell them what you told them.” So this serves all three purposes. This is what I’m going to tell you, then that’s what I’m going to tell you, and then when you’re all done and look back, that’s what I told you: Do not drift.
So let’s read a couple of verses as we start. Hebrews 1:1:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,
in these last days has spoken to us in His Son,
whom He appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the world.
What a wonderful thing. God has spoken in His Son. And this first chapter explains the immensity of Christ—the first chapter does.
The second verse I want to read is Hebrews 2:1. I’m going to read it in a couple different versions.
For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard,
so that we do not drift away from it.
“For this reason”—and that reason is the immensity of Christ from chapter one. Phillips says, “Do not allow ourselves to drift away from it.” The Amplified says:
Since all this is true, we ought to pay much closer attention than ever to the truths that we have heard,
lest in any way we drift past them and slip away.
Strong’s says this word slip is “to flow by and carelessly pass; let slip.” So this is the point—you can look at your outline: Do not drift.
And this is the reason we do not drift. So we put these two verses together. When we think about it, has the Lord spoken to us? Has the Lord spoken to me in His Son? Well, we say yes. And if He has—if He has spoken in our lives—we need to be careful that we do not drift because of such an immense thing He said to us. We must not drift and let our faith in Christ slip away.
It’s always good to look a little bit at the background of these books. When we read something, it helps us understand it and make application. So two things we often talk about are: who wrote this book, and to whom was it written?
It’s kind of interesting. I consulted a number of sources about who wrote this book, and every source is very adamant about who wrote the book. Every different author is adamant about who wrote it. There is only one problem: they are all adamant about a different person.
So we will not spend too much time on that. We thank the Lord that the Spirit of God wrote the book and left it for us in a time like this.
And who was it written to? We understand it was written in the early church, and the saints in the early church, about the time this was written, were largely Jewish converts. They were Jews who had become Christians.
The burden for these folks was that there was a great shaking coming. Jerusalem would be overrun, the temple would be destroyed, and all forms of the Jewish religion would really be done away with. The author was afraid these saints were holding on to Judaism. They were holding on to a religious form and were not turning to the Savior, Jesus Christ. And that was his real burden and his care.
They considered themselves to be Jews who had been saved, and he wanted them to see, “No, you were born Jewish, but you’re Christians. You belong to the Lord.” And they were still hanging on to this religious form.
This thing of religion, by the way, has struck me greatly in the last little bit. I think even today there is a great bunch of religion, and we talk about that as religious form. Be careful we don’t fall into it. And I don’t think any of us are particularly subject to religion, finding satisfaction in that. The Lord’s calling is to find satisfaction in Him.
Of course, the application here is that these people were in a great shaking, and we are in a great shaking. Great shaking. I mean, we had great shaking last week. What’s the temptation when we hear what the Supreme Court did two different times last week? To get stirred up and get really upset.
But don’t do it. I have to fight bad not to get upset. Turn to Jesus. Turn our eyes to Jesus in the midst of this. Take the shaking as a benefit so that we can turn to Him.
Hebrews 12:25–29 says:
See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking.
For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth,
much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven.And His voice shook the earth then,
but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.”This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken,
as of created things,
so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken,
let us show gratitude,
by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe;
for our God is a consuming fire.
God is shaking. We are being shaken. And so I believe the Lord would call us to turn to Him.
You know, we might not have a problem with religion per se, but we have so much—so much—that takes us away from the person and work of Jesus Christ: the world system. I believe the Antichrist is full-on underway. These things we see about moral attacks, I think, are as much as anything an attack against Christianity.
Our jobs are demanding our soul like never before. I retired ten years ago. I didn’t really retire; I quit. But I looked like I retired. It was demanding my soul then.
So the world is demanding our soul. Our self-life keeps us from simple faith in Christ. We try to protect ourselves, and the enemy is so much underway to get our attention and our affection. So we live very much in a period as they did back then.
So my outline: what are the few thoughts I have today? Number one: What is drifting? Number two: How do we combat drifting? There are three points on how to combat drifting.
This is for Steve’s benefit and for David Dalton’s benefit. We’re going to have a little bit of nautical, marine references in here. And every time I get totally off, David, just ignore it. Don’t let anybody know.
I was in the Navy, but I was never in the Navy—just, I was the controller, which the captain called “the enemy from within”: ship’s controller.
Okay, what is drifting, and how do we combat it? Three ways we combat it:
The first way we combat it is to put down an anchor. You cannot drift if you are well anchored. Secondly, be underway. Be underway. Be moving. You cannot drift if you are moving.
And the third way is to constantly navigate. Keep taking our bearings. Where are we? Are we on path? Are we on the course?
Number one: What is drifting? As I read this definition—this is out of Merriam-Webster. I think those guys were Christians, so it’s probably okay if we read a more carnal dictionary. But really think about this definition. It’s really good.
Drifting: an intransitive verb. Do you know what that means?
It is “to become driven or carried along, as by a current of water, wind, or air.” My goodness.
“To float; to move or float smoothly and effortlessly.” Drifting is very smooth, usually.
“To move along a line of least resistance; to move in a random or casual way; to become carried along, subject to no guidance or control.”
So, drifting. Okay, so what do we do when we think about that? Get your outline out: Do not drift. Don’t do it. Think about it.
Because I was thinking about it: drifting is sneaky. It is innocent—seemingly innocent. You start innocently, and it’s almost imperceptible. You cannot tell what is going on. You are supposed to be making application to your spiritual life.
And drifting is insidious. Do you know what insidious means? Go home and look up insidious. But I describe it as sneakily, clandestinely injurious. It is sneaky. Something that is insidious just sneaks in, but it is evil. It is insidious.
So drifting is innocent, almost imperceptible, insidious, and very potentially injurious—very injurious.
Well, think about drifting for a minute. I thought of a couple of ways I drift, to make it more practical. I have some real experience with drifting—spiritually, unfortunately—but in cars, I drift. I’ve been called a drifter for my whole life.
What I do is, I am driving down the road, and I love to sightsee. I love to watch what is going on, what is new in the neighborhood, see the scenery, and get in trouble. You know, if you are not watching where you are going, you get in trouble real fast.
Thank the Lord I have not gotten in trouble, and that is largely because there is usually somebody with me reminding me. It is different people. More often than not, it is my wife, but at least she still lets me drive.
So, drifting. Think about it—drifting in daily life, drifting on the water. I have some experience drifting on the water and the way that manifests itself.
You stop in the water, turn the power of the boat off, and take the sails down, if you are Steve, and you are just sitting there. All of a sudden, you would not believe how much you move. You think you are sitting on a still pond, or you are sitting in the river, and you are just sitting there.
Again, my wife was there. She said, “John, we’re going to hit the shore.” You know, I was just stopping for a minute, but you can drift. It is really sneaky how fast you can drift.
So what happens when you drift? You can run aground. You can run into something and get lost. You get somewhere you never had any intention of getting to. Or you can run over the dam. I’ll get to that later.
Spiritually, there are some real obvious applications of things that happen to you drifting in the water. Running aground: we can run aground and just get stuck. You know, if you get run aground, you cannot get anywhere. You are just stuck right there. No progress.
You can hit an obstacle. And the worst that can happen to you when you hit an obstacle is you can poke a hole in the boat, it fills with water, and you sink. So obviously, if we are going along and poke a hole in the boat, our faith can really sink—our faith in Jesus Christ.
We can get lost. I don’t know where we are. And we can get shipwrecked. We need to know whom we have believed in, and we need to know where we are going.
In April of 2010—who knows where the Boucher Dam is? Oh, my. Okay, if you go over the Willey Bridge—who knows where the Willey Bridge is? Okay. Go over the Willey Bridge and look west along the James River. There is a dam right there.
You can tell it is a dam because there is a lot of water flowing over it and so forth. Well, if you are west of that dam on the river and do not know where you are going, you cannot see it. You know the effect of an infinity pool: you look, and you cannot tell where the pool starts and stops.
Well, if you are on this river and you do not know where you are going, you cannot see that dam. There are some buoys marking it, and there is a big sign. On one side, there is a fish ladder on the north end of the bridge, and there is a big sign over that saying, “Warning, dam,” but the paint wore off and the trees overgrew it.
Anyway, in April of 2010, I think a guy had just gotten a new boat, and he and his family were flying down the river. He went over the dam, not watching where he was going, not taking stock of where he was.
Praise the Lord, he should not have been on the river. The river was overflowing. It had trees and, you know, horses and cows. You know, in the spring it gets full of trash, and it did have cows in it once. It really did.
But anyway, there were all kinds of trash and everything. He went over it, and the only thing that saved him was that the river was so full there was only about that much drop from the dam to below the dam. So he just kind of took a dip and ran off onto Riverside Drive. Of course, he caused a big mess.
Enough of that. So, drifting is a big mess.
The first thing is, how do we combat drifting? We can put down an anchor. And how do we put down an anchor? We need to know who Christ is. We need to know the person and work of Jesus Christ.
We need to know who He is and what He has done, but we also need to know what He is doing today. Be firm.
You know, 2 Timothy says:
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;
but wanting to have their ears tickled,
they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,
and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths.
Elsewhere it says, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.”
Okay, so I just have a few things that I consider to be key to our anchor. Others might have others, but the first one I want to talk about as part of an anchor is this: God loves us.
God loves us. You know, the last few years I have heard more than once people I have known for a number of years say, “I didn’t know God loved me. I didn’t know God loved me.”
Well, I am here to tell you today: God loves you. Because of this table, He has made a way that you can have constant fellowship and communion with Him and live in His love. So God does love us.
“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The author of Hebrews says, “When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” God loves us.
The second possible anchor is this: because of His great love, He went to the cross to purchase our redemption from sin. We have been delivered from the dread of sin. We have been delivered from condemnation. We dare not come back under it.
We have been given that provision to have a clear conscience. And we need to keep short accounts with the Lord. Short accounts. Always keep the blood afresh in our lives.
Do not labor under condemnation. It is so easy. It is drifting. We do not even know we are doing it. I do not know I am doing it. I am not telling anybody else what to do, but get rid of it. Give it to the Lord.
The third thing that is part of an anchor is that we have been given a new life. We have been born again. Our spirit has been born again, and the Holy Spirit has come to live within us.
We are new creatures in Christ. Our sinful nature has been dealt with, and we need to no longer walk as prisoners of this self-life. We have been given spirit life—resurrection life.
He told Lazarus He was the resurrection and the life. He is our resurrection and life. Praise God. Do not live under our old man.
That life we have been given is eternal life. That is number four under anchor. You know, one of the hymns we sing often says, “The sky, not the grave, is our goal.”
We have been delivered from the fear of death. Hebrews 2:15 says we who have been subject to slavery all our lives have been delivered from the fear of death. We dare not neglect so great a salvation.
Five: this is the character of this eternal life. We thank God we have been delivered from fear of death, but we have also been given this eternal life, and we need to recognize it, live in the good of it, and set our hope on it.
God has given us this life because He has called us to work with Him, and the only basis we can live with Him is on that resurrection, eternal life. Jeremiah 29:11 says:
For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord,
plans for welfare and not for calamity,
to give you a future and a hope.
We have a future and a hope that goes on eternally, and He has called us to join Him in eternity. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says:
God has made everything appropriate in its time.
He has also set eternity in their heart,
yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
He has set eternity in our heart. He has called a people to Himself, to serve Him in His house, to serve Him in His coming kingdom, and to be prepared to be building material for the New Jerusalem, for the heavenly city.
So the things we suffer and the things we go through on the earth are nothing compared to our eternal life and our eternal existence. We have this anchor: our faith in Jesus, and who He is and what He has done—an anchor in these days.
And just one last thought on an anchor. Sailors often talk about setting an anchor, setting an anchor. You can have an anchor, but it may not be working too well, and you might still be dragging. You have to use your anchor and test it.
What can happen is, you throw your anchor over, and maybe there are rocks and trash on the bottom. It bounces, and all of a sudden you drag your anchor. So there is a reason for testing an anchor.
You pull that line. They even have windlasses on these bigger ships, and they can pull that line taut so they know it is holding. We need to know our anchor. We need to know our anchor is holding.
And God is giving us, in these last days, many chances to test our anchor—to look off to Jesus.
The second way we can stave off drifting is to be underway. We know we have a foundation. We have tested our anchor. But now we need to be prepared for our journey and be underway, not just sitting there.
We need to fire up the engine or hoist the sails, set our sails, and be underway.
You know, if you get on a big body of water, the authorities require you to file a trip plan. That is so they know when you get lost. You read about all these people getting lost in different places in the news.
If you are going really a long way, or you are going out alone—and really, any trip of any substance—you are supposed to file a plan with the Coast Guard so people can find you when you get lost. So we need to have a plan.
Do we have a map for the spiritual journey that we are on? Do we know we are on a journey? Is our life, is our journey, spiritual and not just carnal? We have our heart set on eternity.
Hebrews 11 has the hall of faith in chapter 11. I guess my favorite person in there, and what is said about him, is Abraham. Abraham was underway. He had a goal. He was looking for something.
Hebrews 11:8 says:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance;
and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land,
dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;
for he was looking for the city which has foundations,
whose architect and builder is God.
That city Abraham was looking for was that day and place where God was everything. He was not sitting; he was moving on, looking for that heavenly city. And we ought to have our hopes set on the heavenly city.
Paul was a spiritual man. Philippians 3:13–14, we are familiar with:
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet;
but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind
and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul had a mission. He had a direction. He was looking for the Lord. He could say at the end of his days, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”
You know, when I think about these two and the ones that are kind of prominent in my thinking so often, it kind of breaks my heart because I realize too easily I drift. Too easily I get off course. Might God have mercy on me and on all of us that we stay on course with the Lord.
Hebrews 6 starts with:
Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ,
let us press on to maturity.
So the author has in mind that we are pressing on to maturity, moving forward. If we see that we are trying to avoid drifting, a great way to avoid it is being underway. Being underway. Have a goal.
Have your engine engaged, which obviously is spiritual exercise. Have your sails up and set: spiritual exercise. So what did these men do? What do we see in these passages?
They went out. They left the world behind. Abraham went out, but he went out with purpose. He was looking for something—that city which has foundations.
Paul pressed onward. He fought the good fight. He finished the course. The author asks us to be pressing on to maturity. Do not drift, but be underway.
The last way we avoid drifting is to keep navigating continually. So let’s say we have put down an anchor, we have got our bearings, and we are underway toward a destination. We are making progress—all great and good.
But there is a third thing I think we need to do, and that is to keep navigating, measuring our position, to make sure we do not get off course.
You know, in this recent history of man, there are a couple of different things that have really helped with navigation. One of them is radar. I have no idea if that is an acronym. I do not know what it stands for.
But when I was in the Navy, on the first ship I was on, because I was a supply officer and they did not have anything for me to do underway, they made me a boat officer. They would launch boats off this ship to land Marines on the beach. So I was a boat officer.
I used to get as green as the water in the ocean getting on that dumb boat. So we were out landing boats one day, on a dreary November-ish day, and the navigation guy on this ship kept giving me this course to steer that was straight out to sea.
In whatever the radio talk was for the Navy, I said, “Could you check that again? I think you’re sending me out to sea, and the beach is behind me.” So he checked it again. They said, “Yeah, no, no, that’s right.” I said, “Well, you’ve got to check again.”
All of a sudden, I am looking back at the ship. In the little office they had for the navigation department, the back door opens. He comes out, looks at me, looks out at sea, slams the door, and goes back in.
He gets back on the radio and says, “Oh, yeah, why don’t you steer this?” He was 180 degrees off. I do not know what was wrong.
But man’s way of navigating is—be cautious, you know? And there is direct application. We are so quick, when we have problems—most guilty, right here—we want to go to another brother and say, “Help me. What should I do? What is the Lord saying?”
Go first. “Seek first the kingdom of God.” Do not rely on man. We should have fellowship with one another; I am not saying that. But that fellowship needs to be out of a foundation in the Lord.
Another way the Navy has picked up a lot is GPS. What does GPS stand for? System or satellite? I don’t know.
Well, of course, they are all dependent on what is in your computer in your car or your GPS. It tells you where the maps are and what is going on.
Some years ago, Sharon’s sister got a car. It had a factory GPS in it, and she was so proud of it. It had a name. It had a woman’s name: Gracie.
You know, I do not like those GPS things. Is that because I am too old? Anyway, I always check a map anyway, to make sure it would send me somewhat in the right direction.
But Gracie got us all the way to Sharon’s brother’s house, and I said, “Well, let’s just see how well this works.” Well, she just could not find his house. She was so close, but she just went around the neighborhood.
All I am saying is, here is another man’s way of doing things. We need to rely on the Lord completely.
There is a third way that we navigated at sea, and it is called celestial navigation. Did you ever hear that? Or, short, “shooting the stars.”
Basically, what that does is, you have a chart, and it shows you where these different stars are. You take an instrument called a sextant, and you figure out where this one star is, and then you figure another star. With these tables, it can tell you—you know, two straight lines intersect at a point—it can tell you where you are pretty accurately.
There is no outside need. Because if it is cloudy, you are in trouble. But we have a star. We have a heavenly star to set our navigation on.
Thank God, we have a place we can look when we get confused, when we get lost. There is that particular star to put our focus and our path on.
Hebrews 12:1–2:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith,
who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
So the author of Hebrews, after these exhortations and encouragements, and wanting us to be strong in the faith, says, “Fixing our eyes on Jesus.” Wuest says, “Looking off unto Jesus.”
We live in extremely turbulent times that will undo us. We need to look off to Jesus and not drift from Him. We have seen here that man’s navigational aids are questionable, at best. Do not rely on man; rely on the Lord.
Personally, several times lately I have been challenged by God’s servants to look off to Jesus: Brother Kong, Brother Sparks, and A. W. Tozer. Since we are familiar with the other two so much, I thought I would just read a quote by A. W. Tozer about looking off to Jesus.
Faith is occupied with the object upon which it rests, and pays no attention to itself.
By looking at God, we do not see ourselves—blessed riddance.
While he looks at Christ, the very things he has been trying to do will be getting done within him.
It will be God working in him to will and to do.
As only Tozer could say, right?
Okay, you still got your outlines? What’s the outline say, Glenn? Do not drift. You got it? Take that home with you.
I just think that is a powerful word: don’t drift. It is so easy, and it is so possible, and it is so destructive.
So let’s just review as I close here.
The Lord gave us the book of Hebrews as an exhortation in preparation for impending shaking, or shaking that is going on.
One thing I hear—and maybe I do not want to step on any of the younger people’s toes here—is that we do not want to hurt our children. We do not want to discipline them. We want them just to grow up freely.
Well, exhortation has a word of correction in it, but it also has a word of encouragement in it. We need to be very appreciative of the Lord disciplining us and giving us that word of encouragement. It is a good thing. It is a good thing.
Kenny, you are going to run over the dam. I think he would like to know that. I am not being mean to him. Watch out for that dam out there.
So, the exhortation we looked at today appeared very early in the book, the first one after the first chapter: Do not drift.
Drifting is a powerful thing. It starts innocent, it can be imperceptible, but it is insidious and can cause great injury.
So we combat drifting by putting down an anchor, by being underway—not treading water, moving forward—and we need to be continually navigating where we are.
Lord, we thank You for Your word to us in these last days. We thank You that You are calling us to simplicity and purity of our faith in Christ. We believe You are calling us to simple faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
I want to pray for myself that I would not be so easily driftable and drifting, but grant grace to have You in view, have that star in view, have a goal in view: the city that has foundations.
Lord, do not let us drift. Do not let us go over the dam. We pray in Jesus’ name.