The Sin of Neglect

Text: Hebrews 2:3

Series: Restoration Sermons

Date:

Speaker: Ed Rangel

Location: Waupaca Church of Christ

Bible Version: NASB 1995

Sermon Type: Expository

Learning Objectives

By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:

1. Identify the two original sins of the Jerusalem church — lying and neglect — and explain what makes neglect a sin rather than mere inattention.
2. List the specific areas in which churches neglect their corporate duties: worship, teaching, restoring the weak, helping the poor, and discipline.
3. List the specific areas in which individual Christians neglect their personal duties: prayer, Bible reading, assembly, imitating Jesus, visiting the sick, guarding the tongue.
4. Explain the equation "neglect = forget" from Deuteronomy 6:12 and explain why forgetting God is not passive but culpable.
5. Apply Hebrews 2:3 to the sinner who has not yet obeyed the gospel: the neglect of the great salvation is a decision, not an oversight.

Thesis

Neglect is not the absence of wrong action — it is the presence of a sin. The man who knows his duty and does not do it has sinned; the church that knows its obligations and ignores them is guilty. The hearer who has heard the gospel and has not obeyed it is not undecided — he is neglecting the great salvation.

Burden

The outline opens with an observation that cuts to the core of the problem: most Christians know their duty. The sin of neglect is not a sin of ignorance — it is a sin of inaction in the face of knowledge. The rich man in Luke 16 did not misidentify the need of Lazarus at his gate; he saw it and did nothing. That inaction was his condemnation. The sermon is an inventory — of churches, of individual Christians, and finally of sinners who have not obeyed the gospel — asking what known obligations are currently being neglected, and naming that neglect for what it is: sin.

Introduction

"How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard" (Heb. 2:3). The word is amelēsantes — to be careless of, to disregard, to treat as of no account. The writer of Hebrews uses it of people who have heard the gospel and have done nothing with it. The point is not that they have actively rejected it; they have simply neglected it. And the verdict is: there is no escape.

That is the frame the sermon inhabits. Neglect is not a minor category of Christian failure — it is one of the two first sins of the first church (Acts 5 and Acts 6), and it is the sin that stands between the unbeliever and the great salvation.

I. First Sins of the Jerusalem Church

The church at Jerusalem was young, Spirit-filled, and meeting daily. Its rapid growth in Acts 2-4 is one of the most remarkable descriptions of community life in the New Testament. And yet the first two sins mentioned in Acts are the foundational categories of all subsequent church failure:

The first sin was lying. Ananias and Sapphira sold property, kept back part of the proceeds, and represented the partial gift as the whole. "Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?" (Acts 5:3). The sin was named, the judgment was immediate, and "great fear came over the whole church" (Acts 5:11).

The second sin was neglect. "Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food" (Acts 6:1). Nobody set out to defraud the Hellenistic widows; the oversight was not malicious — it was neglect. And the church treated it as the serious problem it was, appointing seven men to correct it.

These two sins — lying and neglect — are the foundational dangers. Lying corrupts what is said; neglect corrupts what is done. A church that lies about itself and neglects its obligations has failed at the most basic level.

II. Churches Neglect

The survey of what churches neglect is not abstract; the outline names specific, verifiable obligations:

The song service. "Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). The text commands congregational participation — not performance by a few while others observe. When so few sing that the assembly sounds like a handful of voices in an empty room, the church has neglected the commanded worship.

Teaching. "So that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life" (Phil. 2:15-16). An ignorant church cannot hold fast the word of life or appear as light in darkness. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hos. 4:6) — the destruction is not accidental; it flows from the neglect of teaching.

Restoring the weak. "Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness" (Gal. 6:1). How many members drift out the back door of churches without a single brother or sister making an effort to restore them? The loss of lambs is directly proportional to the neglect of the obligation to restore.

Helping the poor. "One who is gracious to a poor man lends to the LORD" (Prov. 19:17). God has a demonstrated special concern for the poor (Deut. 15:7-11; James 2:5). The poor were chosen (James 2:5), and the poor have the gospel preached to them (Matt. 11:5). The church that ignores the poor has ignored the people to whom God has shown special attention.

Church discipline. The ungodly in the congregation cannot be left unchallenged. To neglect the obligation of discipline is not kindness — it is the abandonment of the individual to his sin and the corruption of the whole.

Any organization neglected will fail (Prov. 18:9). The sluggard's field grows nothing but thorns (Prov. 24:30). The church is not exempt from this law: what is not attended to deteriorates.

III. Christians Neglect

The inventory of individual Christian neglect is equally specific:

Prayer. "Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving" (Col. 4:2). The person who does not pray has forgotten God — not intellectually, but practically. Prayer is the discipline that keeps God present to the mind. Its neglect allows God to become a background assumption rather than an active presence.

Daily Bible reading. "Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow" (1 Pet. 2:2; Col. 3:16). The Christian who does not feed on Scripture is spiritually malnourished, regardless of how long he has been a Christian. Israel's destruction came partly because of this neglect (Dan. 9:13-14).

Assembly on the first day of the week. "Not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near" (Heb. 10:25). The habit of non-attendance is precisely the problem named here: it is a habit, and habits of neglect harden.

Imitating Jesus. "For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps" (1 Pet. 2:21). Imitation is not optional — it is the explicit calling. The Christian who has no ongoing program of becoming more like Christ has neglected the central task of the Christian life.

Obligation to the church. Each member owes the body specific service, contribution, and presence. The member who takes without giving has neglected his obligation.

Visiting the sick. "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:27). James connects pure religion with tangible acts of presence toward the vulnerable.

Keeping the heart pure. "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life" (Prov. 4:23). The heart neglected becomes the heart that generates corrupted action.

Bridling the tongue. "But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison" (James 3:8). The tongue that is not actively governed will wound, corrupt, and destroy (James 3:5-12). Neglecting the tongue is not passivity — it is conceding the field to a destructive force.

IV. Neglect Is to Forget

"Then watch yourself, that you do not forget the LORD who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (Deut. 6:12). Moses does not warn Israel about dramatic apostasy first — he warns them about forgetting. Forgetting precedes betrayal. Neglect is the mechanism by which forgetting operates: you stop praying, stop reading, stop assembling, stop visiting, and within a year God is a stranger and the faith is a memory.

The equation the sermon presses is that neglect equals forget, and forgetting the Lord is not a passive process but an active accumulation of small failures to remember. The antidote is attention — the steady, habitual, deliberate practice of every duty named above.

V. Sinners Neglect to Obey the Gospel

"How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" (Heb. 2:3). The question is rhetorical: the answer is that there is no escape. But notice what has been said about the neglect: it is the neglect of a great salvation — one that was "at the first spoken through the Lord" and "confirmed to us by those who heard," accompanied by "signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit" (Heb. 2:3-4). The evidence for the greatness of this salvation is overwhelming. To neglect it in the face of overwhelming evidence is not passive — it is a culpable failure to respond to the most significant thing ever spoken.

The sinner who has heard the gospel and has not obeyed it is not waiting to make up his mind. He is neglecting the great salvation, as surely as the Jerusalem church neglected the Hellenistic widows or the individual Christian neglects his daily Bible reading. The neglect is active; the consequences are real; and the question of Hebrews 2:3 — "How will we escape?" — has no satisfying answer.

Application

Two questions to press:

What known duty have you neglected this week? The sermon is not asking about dramatic failures — it is asking about the ordinary neglect of known obligations: prayer not offered, Bible not read, weak brother not visited, assembly forsaken, tongue not guarded. Name it. Name it as sin, not as busyness or oversight.

What are you doing with the great salvation? Hebrews 2:3 is aimed not only at unbelievers but at the baptized Christian who has allowed the urgency of the gospel to become background noise — who no longer speaks of it, no longer presses it on others, no longer feels its weight. Neglecting the great salvation is not a category that applies only to the unbaptized.

Conclusion

"So many sins grow out of neglect." That is the conclusion — brief, pointed, and accurate. The quarrel between brothers that was never addressed, the weak member who drifted out the back door while no one looked, the sin pattern that hardened because no one exercised discipline, the child raised without Bible knowledge because the parents never opened Scripture at home — these are the fruit of neglect. Neglect is not the absence of effort; it is the presence of a failure to act on what is known.

"Beware lest you forget the LORD your God" (Deut. 8:11). The warning stands for every generation, for every Christian, for every church.

Invitation

"How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" (Heb. 2:3). For the person who has not yet obeyed the gospel, the time for neglect is past. The salvation was spoken through the Lord, confirmed by witnesses, attested by miracles — and it is addressed to you. There is no third option between accepting and rejecting it; choosing not to respond is a response.

Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who gave himself for the great salvation you have been hearing about. Repent of the life that has neglected both God and the neighbor. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And cease from the neglect — begin the habitual, deliberate, attentive practice of every duty named in this sermon.

Word Study

Scripture Interlock Table

---

Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 105. Primary texts: Hebrews 2:3; II Chronicles 29:11; Jeremiah 48:10 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "29: r r" → "29:11"; "48: r 0" → "48:10"; "Rich 111a11" → "Rich man"; "mo11ey" → "money"; "IH." → "III."; "Col. :$: 16" → "Col. 3:16"; "chun ;h" → "church." Doctrinal audit: neglect named as active sin, not mere oversight; the two-sin structure (lying, neglect) of the Jerusalem church preserved as Boles's framework; church discipline included as a neglected obligation without softening; Heb. 2:3 applied to the unbeliever without hedging — neglect of the gospel is a culpable, consequential act; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).