#DailyDevotion Don’t Neglect This Great Salvation
Hebrews 2:1–8 That is why we should listen all the more carefully to what we have been told, or we may drift away. 2If what God said through angels was valid, and every transgression and disobedience got a just punishment, 3how can we escape if we neglect a salvation as great as this? First the Lord spoke of it, and then those who heard Him guaranteed its truth to us, 4while God added His testimony by both miraculous signs and wonders, by different kinds of miracles, and by distributing gifts of the Holy Spirit as He wished. 5He didn’t put the coming world that we’re talking about under the control of angels. 6But somewhere someone has declared: What is man that you should think of him? Or a son of man that You should come to help him? 7You make Him lower than the angels for a little while then crown Him with glory and honor and make Him Ruler over what Your hands have made 8and put everything under His feet. Now, when He put everything under His feet, He left nothing outside His control. As it is, we do not yet see everything put under Him
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It is a Jewish tradition that angels mediated between the LORD and Moses the transmission of the Torah, the Law of God, the covenant between himself and the Israelites. This is why Hebrews brings this up. The Law had strict guidelines and punishments which were not to be transgressed. It it didn’t matter if it negatively hurt your family with such punishments as the death of children, your spouse, or even sometimes a whole village.. There were of course less severe penalties.
Yet, if that covenant was to be taken so seriously, how much more the New Covenant the Father made with us through his son Jesus Christ? We are to listen even more carefully to that and not neglect such great salvation delivered to us. To not treasure and not listen or pay attention to it is to neglect it, as many do today, putting all other things over listening and receiving the good news of Jesus Christ. We should listen to it all the more since Jesus Christ, the LORD, the God of Creator himself has spoken to us in the flesh. This salvation was then spoken by those who witnessed this salvation themselves and were personally taught it by Jesus. This testimony of Christ Jesus had God’s seal of approval with the miraculous signs and wonders but Jesus, and by his authority, the apostles did. Because of this, we should all the more place persevering with there testimony of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ all the more precious in our lives.
Continuing with the theme that Jesus is better than the angels, Hebrews brings the control of the future world which is coming at Christ second advent. Hebrews tells us Jesus has fulfilled this passage from Psalm 8. It’s greatest fulfillment is in Jesus who was made lower than the angels for a little while as he humbles himself to take on human flesh. Yet now Christ Jesus is risen from the dead with a glorified body and ascended to the right hand of God. He according to his human nature has all things put under his feet and is the ruler of all creation. We do not see this yet, but at his second coming we will see him in all his glory and honor.
More than that, part of our salvation is he shares that honor in glory with us in the world to come. He gives a glorified body like his. Even now we are seated with him in the heavenly places (Eph. 2). So too will live and reign with him in the world to come (Dan. 7). Such a salvation we neglect when we despise preaching by not gathering with the saints as he teaches us.
Heavenly Father, give us the ears of a learner so we may devoutly listen to the salvation given us so we may glory in it now and more fully when Christ returns. In Jesus’s name. Amen/