10 JULY
A great salvation
‘How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation …?’ Hebrews 2:3
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Hebrews 1:1–2:4
The love of God towards sinners is most amazing and wonderful. When they deserved death and misery, he revealed unto them a great salvation. The wonders of his grace afford a wonderful proof of man’s depravity. This salvation, so great, so necessary, so undeserved, has been, and is, too generally neglected. Consider the danger of this neglect. How shall we escape? You may observe a comparison between the Jewish and the gospel dispensation in the preceding verses. The Israelites had seen the Lord’s salvation—he freed them from bondage, maintained them in the wilderness, gave them his covenant, and placed them in Canaan. Yet many of [them] neglected their salvation, despised the word given by angels, and were for their disobedience destroyed. And all that happened to them was written for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10:11). Their salvation was typical of ours, but fell short in every respect—so that this is emphatically called a great salvation:
(i) with respect to the objects: miserable sinners, who might justly have been left to perish, groaning under worse than Egyptian bondage, upon the very brink of hell, as brands in the burning (Romans 5:6, 8).
(ii) with respect to the means: the deliverance from Egypt was only a display of divine power, but this salvation was the price of blood, the blood of God (Acts 20:28; Revelation 5:9). He saved others, himself he could not save.
(iii) the application of this salvation to a sinner’s heart is a great work, compared to creation (2 Corinthians 4:6), raising the dead (Ephesians 2:5; Colossians 2:13).
(iv) with respect to the end. What is a temporal Canaan, if compared with spiritual blessings—children of God here and heirs of glory hereafter?
FOR MEDITATION: I recommend it as a great salvation—sufficient to pardon the greatest sins (Isaiah 1:18); sufficient to save the greatest sinners—instance in Paul, Mary Magdalene, the malefactor. We are assured by our Lord himself in John 6:37, Isaiah 45:22 and Matthew 11:28. Do not think it humility to say, My sins are too great to be forgiven. It is unbelief, pride and a direct affront to the truth and power of Christ.
SERMON: HEBREWS 2:3 [1/1]
Milo 