The Book of Hebrews was written to immature believers exhorting them to go on to maturity in their Christian walk and life. We read in Hebrews 5:12 “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.” They were not growing in their Christian faith. As part of the admonition to grow up spiritually the writer pauses and inserts five parenthetical warnings, like when a teacher adds on an "Oh! By the way," thought during a lecture.

The first of these warnings is found in Hebrews 2:1-4.“Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?"

One morning when I was a teenager living in Southern Indiana, in a town along the Ohio River, my brother and I found a boat drifting down the river. An 18-foot runabout with a 75 HP Evinrude motor on it. We pulled it to shore and called the local police. As it turned out the boat had drifted away from a dock about ten miles up the river. It had not been secured solidly to the dock and had slowly drifted away, where we rescued it. Like that boat, Christians can drift slowly from the Lord if we are not securely anchored. The warning is to not let the Word of God that we have already learned and or appropriated into our lives slip away because of neglect. The boat, not securely tied to the dock, is gently pulled by the ebb and flow of the current causing it to slowly drift away from the dock (no longer attached to its moorings) until it is completely gone from the dock.  "Drifting" can happen in our Christian life if we neglect the daily reading and study of God's Word.

Verse Three emphasizes the danger. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.” The danger we put ourselves in through neglecting the Word of God is that we face God’s chastisement. No true believer will deliberately make a conscious decision to slip away from his or her relationship with God. But we can drift away a little bit at a time, like that unsecured boat. The Lord will start working on you to bring you back through gentle reminders at first, then more serious chastisements to get out attention. It is up to us to watch and pray and not drift away from our spiritual mooring because of neglect.