Book: Hebrews

Full Transcript:

Let’s take our Bibles this morning and turn to Hebrews 12:18-24 and get ready to use your Bible again because we’ll be going back to Deuteronomy also and some other places in Hebrews. I have been out of Hebrews for a while because of a bit of a break. We are back in it and I just want to mention that this book has really been a very rich theological book.

It is a very christological book. Christ is the center of it. Of course, it has a purpose of this book to be deliberate and to encourage every listening, every following, every learning believer to press on in this Christian race.

That’s where I kind of left you last time. Running the race and that when we do run the race that the growing knowledge of God will increase one’s faith and cause all believers to hear and see what God is doing.

Got that, to see and hear what God is doing. Ultimately to understand where God’s grace actually brings you. In a very real way God’s doing a big thing.

He really is and sometimes we don’t see it as a big thing. We don’t see salvation as a huge thing. I was just reading the missionary letter from Jamie Winship and he had a story in there about a Iraqi Air Force pilot.

If you read it he was shot down over the Arabian Gulf in their conflict with Iran. He said, “it was a horrible sound the pilot.” He told couples were listening to his story that the surface to air missile that struck his French made mirage jet.

Caused it to burst into flames, he injected into the ocean and he floated in the Mediterranean Sea for three days. He watch the sharks circle him and he could see the expressions on the faces of the Iranian sailors as they patrolled and search the area for him.

HE pray two things, he was a Muslim, one was that he would be invisible to the enemy and the second, that he’d ask God to either kill him quickly or save him big. Jamie Winship and his friend Yon were listening to the story in there apartment in Atlanta, Georgia and he stopped right there, and they said well what happened? You can’t just leave us right there. He said, ” An American aircraft carrier picked me up.” How big is that? Now that’s just the earthly story. God is doing something big. I believe that in this part of Hebrews He wants this audience, who’s being tempted to go back to the old religious system, which is easy.

Which doesn’t bring persecution upon them. They don’t lose anything. They get their respect back and all the things that go with being a Jew at that time in Judaism.

They were attempting to go back and He is saying to them, wait a minute don’t go back because God is doing a bigger thing than He ever did with the Jews in the Old Testament.

He’s doing a huge thing and I don’t want you to miss it. See if we take our eyes off the goal and start looking back we will not finish the race.

If we keep our eyes on the finish line and continue to grow in our understanding of what awaits at the finish line, we will conclude that there is nothing better.

There is nothing better that can be offered to you or sufficient enough to replace what God has given you in Christ Jesus. There’s nothing bigger. There is nothing better. That’s the whole book of Hebrews.

If you miss that you miss the whole thing. You see this is where our problem lies though. We don’t think enough about Heavenly realities. We don’t think enough about our privilege and our blessing that we have in Christ.

We are so distracted by the temporal. We are so distracted and overloaded by the information dump that each of us experiences every single day. We’re consumed by that. People twittering, texting second by second motions of what people are doing all over the place.

All empty waste of time. In fact, it robs us . It is worthless. It robs us and it crowds out any time to think about eternal realities which will actually help you endure the Christian race. Remember in Hebrews what we need is endurance. What gives us endurance is truth.

That’s what set before us. I would like all of you today to ponder what a difference Christ makes. Now, this message is in two parts so if you come to the first part you have to come to the second.

Because the second gives you the bigger picture but it starts with the first part. What God offers us in Christ and what Jesus has accomplished is immeasurably superior than anything else that could ever be offered to you.

The Jews had Abraham they had the the Abrahamic Covenant with all the Messianic promises. Yet, all the Old Testament saints died without seeing the promise fulfilled in Jesus. Here is the direction of our texts this morning that the readers have come to the actual fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. That is to Jesus Christ and all that He actually has bought for them and brought to them.

We have it too. We have the fulfillment of the promise. We are on the other side of the cross. In fact, our text is designed to help us understand what we have not come to and then it shows us what we actually have come to.

Now, let me show you real quick Hebrews 12:18. Notice what it says,

For you have not come…

See that in your Bibles. Do you see that in your Bibles? In your electronic Bibles, in your paper Bibles, in your cell phone Bibles, whatever Bibles you’re looking at. Look at a Bible.

It’s saying there in the Word of God that listen you have not come to something. But then look at Hebrews 12:22 where it says,

But you have come..

Those two little phrases there are supremely important for our texts because it helps us to run with greater endurance and it gives us an understanding as to where we are standing in regard to the Lord God. Either you are in His fiery presents or you are in His favorable presence.

If a person is in God’s fiery presents, that means their approach to God will prove to be deadly because it’s the wrong way. If that person is in the favorable presence of God, that means that their approach to God will be welcomed.

Only because they have received Jesus Christ. Only because they have a mediator between them and God. Only because they have been sprinkled with His blood having been reconciled to God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son.

See, this is vitally important. Here’s the mistake people are making, they see the small picture. They only see part of the picture and they don’t see the whole picture.

They are only looking at part of the Revelation and not at all the Revelation. This is the mistake people make, they cling to the old easy way or they cling to partial Revelation.

Therefore, according to Hebrews neglecting the truth. Neglecting so great a Salvation offer to God, they’re not looking at it as great. Or they ignore it. Even despise God’s final Revelation in Jesus Christ where it already said in Hebrews, then they trampled under Foot the message, or the person of the final say, in how God saves people.

Or what they finally do is they fall back to the old religious system and escape any trouble or persecution that’s going to come with the name of Jesus Christ or the trouble that comes in running the Christian race.

It’s a long-distance race. It is not an easy race. You cannot do it in the flesh. You must have Gods Spirit. You must be filled with God’s word. Let’s not make these mistakes but instead we should desire to understand two things about where we are heading in the race.

Since we have come to Christ. Why? Because if you are going to run this race, this Christian long-distance race, with any kind of successful endurance you must know where you have come from and you must know where you’re going.

You must know where you have not come to and you must know where you have come to. That’s how He packages the text this morning. I want you to see the first point which I will labor for this morning is that today I want you to park in this text with me.

I want you to see two things. There’s two mountains that are talked about in this text. Two different mountains. The first mountain is Mount Sinai. The second mountain is Mount Zion.

These two mountains are very significant in all of the Word of God, but these two mountains are vitally important. Hebrews 12:18 says,

For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind,

The mountain He is talking about here is Mount Sinai. Now that is the mountain which Moses receive the Ten Commandments.

He is saying here, in other words, you have not come to Mount Sinai. Another way of saying it Christians are not stuck at the foot of Mount Sinai. They have gone on from there to another Mountain.

At what mountain have they gone on to? They have gone on to Mount Zion and I’m not going to be preaching on that this morning, but I want you to see verse 22 it says,

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels,

I’ll just stop right there because that text is loaded with seven things God lists that say, okay you have not come and you’re not stuck at Sinai, but you have come to Zion. What a blessing, what a great thing God has done for you when you reach Zion.

I’ll describe and define what Zion means next week. See, before you get to Zion you got to go to Mount Sinai. Before you get to Zion you must go to Sinai because what we learn at Sinai about the character of God is so much needed to understand why you must be saved in the first place.

Then even after you’re saved that God has not changed in who He is because you’ve become a believer.

He is the same God but, what happens that once you become a Believer, you learn more about Him. You learn more about what He has done. In fact, when you learn about and understand the justice of Almighty God then, the grace of God is all more sweeter right. When you realize what God saved you from and how you couldn’t rescue yourself from that then the grace of God becomes something that is so deep and wide that you just swim in it like it’s a vast ocean.

From our passage we can clean glean about 6 things showing forth God’s power and majesty and holiness and kind of show you where He’s going with this for our own sake this morning so that we can understand it in our own Christian Life. So that we can understand that these characteristics He’s listing here really are emphasized by earthly natural signs, which always usually accompany God’s presence in the Old Testament. Look at what it says in Hebrews 12:18. It says,

For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched..

In other words, the mountain you come to cannot be approached. It’s deadly to approach this mountain. Then also it lists some things.

For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched..

This meaning that it is an inapprochable Mountain. It says secondly that this Mount is consumed by a blazing fire. In other words, it’s ignited to burn. At this mountain there is thick black darkness. You can cut the darkness with a knife.

There’s also deep gloom at the mountain and it ends also in verse 18, that there is whirlwind at the mountain.

In fact, that word actually means cyclonic winds or hurricane winds. If anything’s going on like that on a mountain you don’t go Near that thing. Do you know why? because your life is in danger. All those things, all these, signify that there was an infinite distance between God and man. In fact, so frightful and awesome was the display of God’s power that the people begged God to speak only through a human messenger like Moses don’t speak to us directly.

Hebrews 12: 19 says,

and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them.

In other words, the people will say, “stop speaking. We can’t take it. It’s too much for us. It’s too overwhelming we cannot take it.” Take your Bibles and turn back to Deuteronomy where we pick this up in the Old Testament.

Of course, we now we see the people of Israel. They are three months after coming through the Red Sea and this is what they come to. They come to Mount Sinai.

This is what’s going on there. Their first real display of the personality of God is displayed on this mountain and they are shaking in their boots by God’s presence. Deuteronomy 5:25-27 says,

Now then why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord, our God any longer, then we will die. For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? Go near and hear all that the Lord our God says; then speak to us all that the Lord our God speaks to you, and we will hear and do it.

The people are responding to the presence of God and they’re so afraid of what they have heard and what they have experienced by these natural things going on in the mountain that they say, “Listen we can’t take this because we know if we hear it any longer it’s going to kill us. We’re going to die.”

Moses becomes the representative. In fact, if you take your Bible and go back to Hebrews, the present tense of the verb is used verse number 22 to signify the command that God gave them.

The present tense really presents a command as ringing constantly in their ears. Hebrews 12: 20 says,

For they could not bear the command, “IF EVEN A BEAST TOUCHES THE MOUNTAIN, IT WILL BE STONED.”

They couldn’t bear that particular command. All this saying this, that the Sinai experience was a terrifying one. People don’t see God as terrifying. They don’t see God in this way, and that’s not good.

You must see God like this because if you don’t you will not be afraid of Him. The Sinai experience, even from Moses, with its audible and it’s visible aspects produced fear in him.

Under the Sinai Covenant there was a sense of danger in approaching God and distance that separated the worshipper from God. Look at Hebrews 12:21. This is what it says about Moses,

And so terrible was the sight, the Moses said, “I AM FULL OF FEAR and trembling.”

Just think for a minute, Moses is shaking in his boots at the presence of God. He’s trembling and it says he’s full of fear. There’s nothing left inside of him, but fear. This whole section is making it very clear and emphasizing the frightening and inapproachability of this God.

In other words, all that took place on Sinai to which God brought Israel, was not the completion of the Abrahamic promise. What do I mean by that? On the mountain of Sinai God brought the Ten Commandments right? What was the purpose of the law? What was the purpose of the Ten Commandments? The Law of the Bible says was added to keep them in the knowledge of sin.

Now you have a God who’s presenting Himself like this before the people. They are full of fear and now Moses gives them the Commandments, the decalogue, and the people are reminded everyday that because of their sin they’re in trouble with this God.

In fact, Paul brings up in Romans 5:20. It says,

The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

Then he says again to the Galatian church why the law then? Why the law? Why the Ten Commandments? It says in Galatians 3:19,

Why the law then? it was added because of transgression, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.

Remember according to the writer of Hebrews the law was never the completion of the promise. In fact, if you just like the slip back a minute to Hebrews 7:18-19 it says,

For, on the one hand, there is a setting aside of a former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness for the Law made nothing perfect, and on the other hand there is a bringing in of better hope, through which we draw near to God.

In other words, if I take you back in your mind’s and if you haven’t been there, just by way of memory, the two proper ways a person may have access to God, may approach God, in the Old Testament system was in the first proper way through the law. Through the keeping and obedience of the law. A second way ,both went together they weren’t separate, to have access to God, to approach God, was through the priesthood. Through the sacrificial system. That prove to leave one with a real issue. A real problem and that the two proper ways to have access to God were ineffective.

In this sense that the law was weak and useless unable to make anything perfect, as I just read, that the priests were weak and in perfect and sinful and died and the sacrificial system was repetitive. Over and over again and could make no one perfect.

The bottom line was that the law of the priesthood in the sacrificial system could not give a person continual access to God and make one right before a Holy and just God. Why was that? Because there was no escaping the human estrangement from God which followed sin. All the efforts of the priest and all the sacrifices offered could not restore a lost relationship completely.

Why did God do it that way? Well, why was it necessary for the old system to be replaced by the new system? It could not be achieved for this reason because it could not achieve the completion God intended. This Mount Sinai is again showing the people how they just can’t approach God in the old way.

Even the system God put in place was ineffective to bring and restore a relationship to the Living God. Believers needed to have a priest who can give them constant access to God and make them perfect.

That’s what they needed. Make them acceptable before a Holy and a just God. Before God in whom people and men tremble. Before a God in whose presence was a fiery presence. Before a God who if you approached Him in the wrong way, you would be killed.

The Old Testament method of providing for God’s people did not produce Holiness in them and it did not perfect anyone eternally. The point is this in Hebrews, Christ makes all the difference.

The Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came from who? Jesus Christ. That very verse is right on the very top of Mount Nebo in Jordan. The only verse I saw. That’s the perfect verse. I wish they understood it. Those who come to see it.

The Bible is really saying to us that Christ makes the difference because He is the final fulfillment of the promise. Listen what it says in Hebrews 7:19,

and on the other hand..

I love when it says that in scripture. hope

..there is a bringing in of better hope, through which we draw near to God.

Wait a minute. Here is Christ who now gives one the ability to draw near to God. Jesus Christ becomes the high priest and what does He do for us? He enters into the Holy place, not made with hands as it says in Romans 9.

What does He do? He passes into the Heavens, passed the second curtain into the Holy sanctuary and He enters Heaven itself. Hebrews chapter 9, and then Jesus was hidden from everyones sight when Heaven took Him but Jesus passed into the presence of God Himself as a man. As the God man. Hebrews 9:24 says,

..now to appear in the presence of God for us;

Jesus is the one who makes the difference. Who adds the Revelation of God that could save us from the wrath of this God and bring us into His presence completely. As one holy and as one made perfect.

The Heavens took the Lord Jesus Christ, He entered into it and now He sits as a Victor on the right hand of the Majesty on High and He must remain there until the time comes for God to restore all things.

Until then, we ought to reap something from a passage of Scripture like this. We ought to reap an understanding of the character of God and how we can respond to His character in a right way.

Not in a wrong way. What did the people learn about the character of God that day? What did they learn? The first thing they learned is from Deuteronomy 5:24 and it is that the presence of God was awesome.

It was great. It says in Deuteronomy 5:24,

You said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and His greatness,..

That day God wanted them to experience that part of His character. A second thing they learned was that God communicates and He does so in understandable words. Deuteronomy 5:24,

..and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire; we have seen today that God speaks with man, yet he lives.

Now this was completely different than all the gods around the nation of Israel. Then all the gods Israel new even in Egypt. None of the god spoke to the people.

They were just graven images made by men. Men offered sacrifices to them. Men would pray to them, but they never spoke to them. Here they learn that God speaks.

This is an incredible revelation that God speaks. Not only that but in Deuteronomy 5:24 that God lives. That God’s alive. It changes everything. Wait a minute, I’m not serving some dead deity.

I’m serving a living God who has an awesome presence that if I’m not careful He could easily consume me. They learn this too and this was a very important thing they learned. They cannot approach God in any old freestyle manner. To do so would prove deadly even if irrational animals wandered in too close to the presence of God at Mount Sinai they would be killed.

That is to conclude if rational human beings came too close, the same thing would happen to them. Death. So they learned also and maybe most importantly about the fiery terrifying presence of God. What does that teach us? To learn what they learned. That we can learn also today even as Believers, even as those who know Christ, that the fear of the Lord is a very important part of our life. To understanding correctly.vTurn to Deuteronomy 4:10 because this gives a sense to us what they learned that day.

What was the main message God was teaching them at the foot of Mount Sinai? Well, you’ll find that in this passage of Scripture. This is what they remembered in Deuteronomy 4:10 and it says,

Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, ‘Assemble the people to Me, that I may let them hear My words..

notice what it says,

..so they may learn to fear Me..

There is the lesson. Then it says,

..all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’

Teach their children what? The fear of the Lord. Because at Sinai we learn to fear God.At Sinai we learn that the law magnifies our sin and makes us more condemned before this God. That’s what we learn. It says also in Deuteronomy 4:11-16,

You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens, darkness, cloud and thick gloom. Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form-only a voice. So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. The Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgements, that you might perform them in the land where you are going over to possess it. So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female.

The people learned that day that this is a God to be feared. This is a God who is someone you cannot go up against. This is a God in which you will not win.

This is a God who cannot be approached by your own philosophy of life, by your own religious system, or by anything you come up with. You can’t approach God. You only could approach God in one way and that way was given to Abraham as a promise that we have fulfilled in our hearing this morning.

That promise is Christ. That through Jesus Christ I can have access to God. I can approach God.

In fact, it tells us in the Word of God I can come with confidence boldly to the throne of God, only through Christ. Any other way, even today, will cause that person to remain under God’s condemnation and God’s Wrath and if they try to do it any other way or go in any other way, they will be consumed and sent to an eternal destiny without Christ.

So all peoples should learn this lesson and believe me christians ought to learn this lesson. The lesson that they learned at Sinai. That to hear God is to fear God is to obey God.

They all go together, but sometimes when we think about the fear of God, we think all wrong about it. We have to go beyond the knee knocking fear of God, because that’s part of it, to what the fear of God actually does for us as believers. As someone who’s coming to a relationship with Jesus Christ. In fact, it was the same in the Old Testament when they understood rightly the full character of God and took the full revelation of God is not only a god of wrath but He’s a God of loving kindness, He’s a God of truth, He’s a God of compassion and He is a God who comes to the rescue.I have both of those and I begin to understand the God of the Bible and I understand now more in Jesus Christ what God intended for you and I. But this whole thing about the fear of God understood rightly really brings great benefits. Just to show you what I mean take your Bibles to a few passages of scripture in Psalms.

I looked at a section on the fear of God and there were so many passages of scripture. There’s no way that I can look at all of them, but I wanted to take a look at some of them from the book of Psalms to give you a sense.

The benefit we have when we properly fear God. Psalm 25:14 says,

The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant.

See when we fear God properly He lets us in on it.n It can be translated friend. That God lets his friends in on what He’s doing. He tells them the truth. He lays it out before them. Those who fear God, God watches over them. Psalms 33:18 says ,

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope for His lovingkindness.

The eye of God is on those who fear Him, who have respect for Him. Who want to hear and obey Him. Fear is all that is included and this kind of fear is that I want to obey God. I want to do what He says. I want to approach Him in the right way. I want to honor Him with what I think and what I do in my life. I want to do what God wants me to do.

In fact, here’s another passage that the angels are given the job of protecting and delivering those who fear God. Psalm 34:7 says,

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.

God is looking out for those who fear Him. He’s protecting those who fear Him. He’s rescuing. Have you ever sensed that God has rescued you from something. We pray from Matthew 6, Lord deliver me from temptation.

We’re asking God to rescue us from the power of temptation that could come against us that in the flesh alone we would easily give into it. But God steps in with His Word and the power of His Spirit and He rescues you from where temptation could lead you and it leads you to sin. You know where sin takes you right? It destroys everything in your life. See, God promises that those who everyday get up and learn to fear Me that I am they’re providing protection.

I am they’re ready to deliver you ready to watch out for you. Psalm 34:9 says,

O fear the Lord, you His saints; For to those who fear Him there is no want.

The fear of the Lord will give you freedom from your craving. When you fear God you don’t have any wants.

Why is that? Because you realize you grow and you say, “Lord you provided all my needs. I have way more than I even need. You have kept me, protected me, and supplied my needs. I don’t any wants. Not only that but you provided for my greatest need Eternal salvation. The ability to approach You through Christ. What else do I want?”

It’s like the Psalmist who says, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Eternally. Why? Because I have no wants. I have no needs. The Bible says that those who fear Him will have freedom from craving things. Then Psalm 147:11 says,

The Lord favors those who fear Him, Those who wait for His lovingkindness.

The fear of the Lord will make you a delight to Him. You want to be able to be delight to God. The Lord God finds delight in those who fear Him. Those who hear Him and obey Him all go together. Psalm 103:13 says that we are guaranteed the pity and compassion of God to those who fear Him. Psalm 103:13,

Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

We’re guaranteed the permanent love of God to those who fear God. Psalm 103:17 says,

But the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children.

Of course, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. It has to start here. It says in Psalm 111:10,

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments; His praise endures forever.

Proverbs 14:27 says,

The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may avoid the snares of death.

The fear of the Lord satisfies.

Proverbs 19:23 says,

The fear of the Lord leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.

The one who fears God can approach God because they will see the only way to approach God is through Jesus Christ and they will obey the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

After they come to Christ, they will have a clearer and a better understanding of what it means to fear Him. In fact, it was when the Apostle Peter with all his issues he had dealing with other cultures because he was he was a Jew of Jews. That’s for sure. And when God was trying to teach him that God is not a respecter of any man then Peter came to this conclusion in Acts 10:34-36 and it says,

Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.

Then he qualifies it with this,

The word which He sent to the sons Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)

He is saying to them, listen, anyone who comes and learns the terror of God in God bringing wrath upon a human being that they could have peace with God through this person Jesus Christ because of what He accomplished on the cross and now have access to God. Well then everything changes. Jesus Christ makes the difference in my approach to God.

I will not be killed. I will not be consumed. I don’t even have to be terrified anymore even though I have a respectful, rightful fear of God. Yet, I come boldly into God’s presence.

In this passage there is a sharp contrast between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. It’s meant to show a drastic difference that Christ makes in our approach to God the Father the sense on Mount Sinai is very cautious.

The sense on Mount Sinai is a cautiousness about how you approach God so keep back. So you do it the right way, but on Mount Zion a Believer finds encouragement to come boldly into the presence of God. As Hebrews 4:16 already said,

Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

This is revolutionary to those who heard this message. When one becomes a Biblical Christian the whole economy in which they belong becomes grand and glorious and the atmosphere is quite different between the two mountains. One is the atmosphere of fear.

Which is needed but the other is a festive atmosphere. It is as if one has finished a great race successfully and you come to the end. There’s a festive atmosphere. It’s like one who finishes the great battle and they won what was at the end? A festive atmosphere.

The Bible is really saying to us and the second that I’m going to bring up next week is that those who are in Christ are now heading for the festive and joyful economy of Heaven. That put before us in running the race at the finish line is what gives us endurance to continue because what God promises He will not take away.

We are heading for home. Home is described by another Mountain but this time it’s not Mount Sinai it’s Mount Zion. Then it list at least seven characteristics of what believers are headed for and are to look forward to.

Hebrews 12:22 says,

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels,

So you have not come to Mount Sinai, you have come past it to the teaching of grace through Christ. Hebrews 12:23-24

…to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.

Wow. That’s what we have to look forward. That’s the greatness of salvation. I’m going to unpack that next week, but I want to ask you a question. Who do you fear?

You have to come to Mount Sinai first. You have to know the fear of God and the awesomeness of God. That God is the judge. That He makes the rules. He sets out the plan on how He saves you. Not you. Then he saves you. Not you.

I must fear Him in this sense, “Lord, whatever way you choose to save a human being that’s the way I want to come.” Then the Father says well the way I’ve chosen is Christ.

I’ve chosen the cross. I chose Christ to bear the wrath and penalty for your sins that the wrath you saw on Mount Sinai. More of it that I poured out of My Son for all the sins of all those who would come and believe in Me through Christ.

That’s the way I’ve chosen. I have not chosen any other way. No religious system can save you. No philosophy of life can save you. No “would-be” God that you created in your own mind and your life can save you. Only Jesus Christ can save anyone. Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist Catholic, Baptist.

Whoever you come from and whatever your background is, it’s Christ who you must come to to be saved. I must fear Him and then my fear changes to joy when I understand what He has done.

Whom do you fear? Where are you heading? Are you heading to God’s fiery presence? Or are you heading to God’s favorable presence? Where are you heading? You are heading somewhere today? I’ll guarantee you that.

You are heading somewhere today. Today only through Christ can you be heading into God’s favorable presence. I prayed today that you would come wherever you’re at, if you have a bunch of doubts in your mind. Come anyway.

Coming with all your sin and all your baggage. Come and trust in Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you know Him as your Lord and Savior then grow in your knowledge, so your faith increases so you can fear God rightly and not only being keenly aware of listening to His Word, but also putting His Word into practice by your obedience.

Because He is still the same God. How do I know that? Look at how He ends Hebrews 12:29,

for our God is a consuming fire.

He wants to show the people. Listen, if you want to go back to your old system, to your old ways, to your old philosophy, then go there but I want to remind you of this God is still a God of a consuming fire.

You will stand before Him. You will be responsible for your actions and your decisions. I want to let you know that. You haven’t seen God as big as He wants to show Himself.

You have shrunk Him down into a little box where you control Him. He says that if you want to do that you go back to your Judaism. You go back to your religious system.

You go back to the easy way. Go back there, but God is still a consuming fire. He hasn’t changed because He offers free grace through Christ. He has not changed. Where do you stand? That’s it.

There’s no other place to go. I love when God corners us. He corners us. He says, okay, what you going to do? Let’s pray.

“Lord, I think the greatest thing that we can pray today is that we would hear God and see what He’s doing. I do ask you, Lord, that all who are here this morning, you know who they are. You know where they’re heading. You know what they’re putting their trust in. You know who they’re putting their trust in.

But I pray Lord that you would change all that for those who have thought wrongly and have dependent on things that will not save them. I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would show them if they have never confessed You as Lord and Savior. If they have never come to repent and turn from their unbelief to trust in Christ.

The only way to approach our heavenly father than I pray, Lord, today would be the day they ask you to save them. If those who are here that you know know you I pray you would grow all of us Lord in a proper understanding of how to fear you.

Because You are still the same but I thank you, Lord, that through Moses you gave the law but through Christ came grace and that we have grace available to us every moment of every day.

Thank You, Lord, that the fear of God actually benefits us because You’re for us. So we don’t have to fear You with trembling fear. We have to fear no one because if You’re for us no one could be against us.

Thank You, Lord, for the word of God help us to see the greater picture of what you’re doing and help us to see how great salvation is and we’re actually heading to that Mount Zion and I pray we would rejoice in it. That we would understand that festive atmosphere that we’re heading to even though this race that were in is hard.

Sometimes it’s long. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. The lessons you want to teach us. Sometimes we feel like they crush us, but Lord we know You’ll never give us anything more than we can handle.

So I just ask you, Lord, develop our character. Give us endurance to run the race and help us to keep our eyes on the gold and we’re heading so we can do it with an attitude of joy and with the strength that comes from You and I thank You for what You do in Christ name. Amen.”

Full Transcript:

Let’s turn to Hebrews 12. Last time, my message was that the Christian life should maintain a steady and persistent exertion. In addition, we must do that together. In this part of Hebrews, the writer is telling us to do the Christian life together, never alone. It’s impossible to do it alone. The Christian life has been described as a race, and when you become a believer, you’re in it and you are to give all your effort to cross the finish line.

It is not a race to determine how fast you can run, nor is it a race to compete with others. Rather, it is a race to determine success or failure in reaching the goal. The point of the race is not the one who’s first, but the one who finishes. All with endurance will finish. All with faith in the Lord every day and consistently will finish.

We need to think of the Christian life as a foot race. It’s more like a cross country race. In a cross-country race, you have your ditches, rough feels, hills, steep declines, briars, protruding roots, and obstacles of all kinds. That is a picture of the Christian race.

Also, the race can be described as a marathon race. The Christian life is really a long-distance run, not a sprint. It takes endurance, grit, and toughness to finish well.

Think of it like this: you’re running, and you have been maintaining a good steady pace. All of a sudden, your legs start tightening up, your breathing becomes shallow and fast, your joints begin to ache, your feet begin to blister, cramps begin to pop up in various places, your throat begins to become dry, and you start feeling queasy and light headed. Your body starts telling your mind, “it’s time to drop out, quit, throw in the towel, and sit on the bench.”

Surprisingly, your brethren running with you and the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before you begin to prod you on to finish the race. Suddenly, the spirit of God gives you the strength to keep moving, looking forward to the goal, fixing your eyes on Jesus, and you begin to think, “I must finish no matter how hard it gets. No matter what happens, I must finish.”

Then, the purpose of the race is just to finish the course, but to finish the course well. It is to finish this long-distance race despite hardships, exhaustion, and pain. The Christian life is no easy thing. Part of running the race well is removing those things which will slow you down and hinder you from making good progress.

Along the way, you will learn some really important things, so you can finish well. Usually, you learn those things through the school of discipline when the Heavenly Father steps in and begins to teach you extremely important things. Those things don’t usually come when things are going alright and things are normal. It comes when there’s trouble.

You begin to realize, from Scripture, that God steps in and He disciplines you. He sends trouble to your life. He sends difficulties and hardships into your life that cause exhaustion and pain. However, it’s all for your good. It’s all for His glory. It’s all to mature you. It’s all to make you a stronger runner to finish the race.

On a special note, there are various things that we will need to consider and apply for finishing the race well. The race is also about helping others. It’s about helping others around us to finish. Together, we must overcome the curse of American individualism. We are far too individualistic in America, and we must to stop that.

It’s not about us, but it’s about the glory of God together as we finish the race. Thus, we must overcome together, so we will consider three responsibilities we should be actively engaged in. Before we go there, let’s have a word of prayer:

Father, we come before You in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we humble ourselves before You, Lord, for there is no God like You. There’s no other one to be worshipped. You are the only God, and the only way we can come to the Father is through Christ, Our Savior. We thank You for the truth that You’ve revealed to us in Scripture. Lord, make us listeners that want to understand Your word and put it into practice. Lord, cause us to run well and to finish. It’s only by Your strength and by the strength that You’ve given to the body of believers that we can finish. Lord, let us take our responsibilities serious and put them into practice so we can all be moving forward to the gold line knowing, Lord, that we have eternal benefits waiting for us. Those benefits are even available to us. We praise You, Lord, for so great a Salvation you have given to the saints. I pray, Lord, that we would honor You by adorning the Gospel with our life. I pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.

First, we are all responsible to take care of the weak members of the church body. Hebrews 12:12 says:

Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble.

To strengthen the weak, the exhausted, and the discouraged means that the race we are in may make us weak, it may bring us to the place where we are exhausted, and it may bring us to the place where we even get discouraged. However, when the body is working and taking on the responsibility, we’re not going to let that happen by the power of the Spirit.

Our passage gives us a picture of a runner who has drooping hands and weak wobbly knees. They are on their way to almost becoming paralyzed. Do you ever feel that way in the Christian walk? Do you ever feel like you can’t go another step?

You begin to feel that life’s too heavy, that the circumstances and the pressures are too great, and the responsibilities are too great. For the Christian runner, that could mean you have encountered hard times, maybe even persecutions for the Gospel or living the Holy life, or even the very discipline that comes from God. These can cause you to grow weary and dishearten. This is precisely the place where the body of believers comes into play. Now, how do you think you are to deal with those who have been weakened in the race?

Number one, you have to take notice that they are weakened. The Bible is really saying that there are strong ones and there are weak ones. Sometimes, the weak ones become the strong ones because they learned a lesson and vice versa. However, you always have the strong and the weak in the church. Thus, the strong are looking out for the weak. You’re taking notice of it.

In our text, we have a verbal exhortation that is given in Scripture. You don’t tell them to get out of the race. Actually, the strong runners are to tell the weak runners in the form of a literal command to straighten up. In Hebrews 12:12, the word

strengthen

is the Greek word we get

orthopedic

from, which means to set up, to make erect drooping hands and relaxed knees, and make right or straight.

We are to help each other tough out the race by God’s good grace. We are to do so by verbal commands. When we’re running alongside somebody, you can’t tell them to stop and get out of the race. Rather, you are helping and encouraging them. When you watch the marathon, those on the sidelines are encouraging. You have a bunch of people cheering, “You can make it! You can keep going!”

In fact, this is an allusion to an Old Testament passage found in Isaiah 35:3-4, which is usually given when there is an indication of a spiritual slowdown amongst God’s people:

Encourage the exhausted and strengthen the feeble. ⁴Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.”

In other words, we’re to remind them to keep going. We are to remind them that God’s discipline is for their good and strength. We’re to remind them by our words and also by our life. Also, the body of believers are to look at the weak and there to do something else. Hebrews 12:13 says:

and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

Here,

path

literally means wheels that make tract. Again, he’s quoting from and alluding to Isaiah 35:8:

A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it.

As believers, we are to walk in such a consistent manner in following the Lord that our path becomes firm and so well-trodden that it leaves groves in the path, so even a fool who is following you can’t stumble or go astray because the groove keeps them where they ought to go. See, that’s what we do, and we are to do that for those who are weaker. In other words, do everything you can to make the race easier, so that they will not turn from running the race and their limbs will not ultimately be put out a joint and disabled.

The goal is that they would be healed and get strong enough in the race to run on their own. Then, they will become the one who begins to encourage others in the race. With the goal to be healed, the body of believers will come alongside of them, help them get stronger, and finish the race. The strong must keep the weak on the straight path and on the right road. Again, he is alluding to the Old Testament passage of Proverbs 4:25-27:

Let your eyes look directly ahead And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you. ²⁶Watch the path of your feet And all your ways will be established. 27Do not turn to the right nor to the left; Turn your foot from evil.

In other words, make straight tracks for their feet with your feet so they know where they should be going, and don’t stray off to the right or to the left. Significantly, they’re not going to drop out of the race showing that they were never believers in the first place.

Thus, the strong must hold up the drooping hands and the wobbly knees of the weak by their verbal exhortations, their prayers, their acts of mercy, and by their daily example. John Owen suggested:

The lame is those who are retaining ceremonies and worship alongside the teaching of the Gospel.

This running posture is not far into the book of Hebrews. It has been telling us that when you’re running the race and when you’re living the Christian Life, you ought to do it together. Hebrews 3:13 says:

But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Then Hebrews 6:11-12 says:

And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, ¹²so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Hebrews 10:25 gives another type of exhortation to the believers in running this race:

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.

These are simple verbal encouragements that we give to those who are getting sluggish, getting weak, and slowing down in the race. Maybe they are getting sidetracked and their attention is going somewhere else. Maybe a trouble came in that was too heavy, so you come alongside of them.

Sometimes, it’s just verbal encouragement. Of course, it is more than that, but that’s where it starts. Sometimes, in my Christian walk someone comes up and says, “I’m praying for you and I want to encourage you that God is using you. Thank you for the gifts that God is giving you. You’re being faithful to live the Christian life,” and that encourages me.

That’s all we need. I need you and you need me. Sometimes, I’m going to be in the pits. Sometimes, I’m not. Sometimes, you’re going to be in the pits. We have to look at each other, notice our lives, and be involved with each other’s lives, so we can encourage one another.

Sometimes, it may be by way of admonition or even rebuke. Maybe someone gets caught in a sin, and you got to go tell them, “That’s not pleasing to the Lord, or that’s not what God wants you to do.” Most of the time, somebody, who’s a believer, will say, you’re right. That’s all I needed,” and you rescue them.

However, we must have our eyes out there. It’s the responsibility of all of us to look out for those who are weaker than us, who know less than us, and who have only been Christians for a short time and don’t know all the things that they are going to come in contact with. Maybe they never even heard a message on discipline or thought that the Christian Life was going to be a cakewalk.

We have to be careful that they know those things. See, the strong understand those things because they’ve learned them. The strong know by having been disciplined by the Lord several times. Thus, you’re watching out for the weak, for the younger, for those who have their arms starting to sag, their knees get wobbly, and they’re starting to look like they’re going to drop out. Go get them and come alongside of them. That’s our responsibility and we have to take it seriously.

Secondly, we all have a responsibility to pursue two community essentials. The first one is to pursue peace with all men. We are never going to have peace for the sake of giving up essential doctrines or laying aside truth.

Rather, it’s on the non-essential things, and it is always for the sake of the body. People are going to come to the church with different opinions, different ways of thinking, different backgrounds, and different baggage. Therefore, we have to learn how to pursue peace with all men.

Remember, peace is not simply freedom from trouble. First, peace is God-ward, which was already won through the sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ. Because we are at peace with God through Christ, we are to make every effort to maintain peace that has been given to us. Peace means everything which makes a man pursue a man’s highest good.

For the Hebrew, the highest good was that people would obey God. Obedience was the highest good, so I’m pursuing peace for the sake of people being obedient. Therefore, I am to have peace with men because I now have peace with God. I can actually have peace with men because I have peace with God, so there is peace in relationships, and this peace will not come automatically because we come with thoughts of the world in our mind, we come with remaining corruption, and the devil, of course, will always disrupt the life of any group of believers.

He’s always ready to cause dissension and trouble in the body. Therefore, that is why we ought to have peace with great effort in the body, not allowing things to fester where peace is hard to maintain. By the spirit of God, we have been given the peace of God to keep the bond of unity.

Thus, we are all to be contributing to that, so if a weak person comes into a body to get healed, the atmosphere of the strong and corporate unity brings healing and growth that strengthens people. We all have to be watching out for that.

Secondly, in Hebrews 12:14, we’re not only to pursue peace as a community essential, but we’re to pursue holiness:

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.

We are to pursue holiness, and there are three things that is required for holiness. First, holiness is required for our well-being. Remember, God’s goal, when he disciplines us, is so that we may share in His holiness, which is the goal. He does correct us. He does drive out the sin that is still in us, but only in order that we may be more truly the children that God wants us to be.

Mark this down: God will have you to be holy. God has not called us to uncleanness or impurity. Apostle Paul told us in 1 Thessalonians 4:7:

For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.

It means to be set apart to God. In Hebrew, it’s a special word directly connected with the character of God. God is holy, and only holy people are going to want to be in the presence of a holy God. Wickedness cannot survive in the presence of purity and a holy God, so God’s nature demands holiness in the Christian Life.

We have been made holy before God, but now we are to live out that holiness, which means that believers are to be set apart from evil and separated to God by entirely giving up to His service.

Secondly, holiness is effective service. We are going to be disciplined by God, so we turn out to be what God wants us to be in holiness. To be effective in service, you must be living a holy life. In 2 Timothy 2:21, Paul told Timothy:

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.

Holiness is required and necessary for our well-being and for effective service. Specifically, in Hebrews 12:14, holiness is necessary for the assurance of our salvation. In fact, the only safe evidence that we are in Christ is a new life. If you know nothing of holiness, you shouldn’t flatter yourself that you’re a Christian.

Bottom line, it is not those who profess to know Christ who will enter into heaven, but those whose lives are holy. In Hebrews 12:14, it says very clearly:

…the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.

You can’t see the Lord without holiness. You can’t come into the presence of God without holiness. Thus, strive for peace with everyone. Paul says in Ephesians 1:4:

Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.

When we became Christians, we were not only called to salvation, but we were called to holiness, which is the package. Therefore, we are to be set apart as Christians and are to reflect the attitudes and behaviors consistent with a new relationship with God, in Christ.

In other words, he was telling us to keep pursuing a life that is more and more set apart to God, which reflects more and more being like Christ. We are to be living in the Spirit, not living in the flesh. We are to be living according to the word of God, not the mindset of the world. We are to be living in a way that pleases God, not in a way that just pleases you and other people.

For the Christian Community, we should be a living example of harmony and holiness. That’s our responsibility. We’re to live that way before the world.

Thirdly, we have a responsibility to watch out for the spiritual well-being of the brethren. In this section of Scripture, we’re given three objective clauses that give us warning against various evils that could ruin our faith. Hebrews 12:15 gives the first warning:

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God…

We begin this life of faith by God’s saving grace and only by His grace. Again, it could be legalism has come in to a certain extent and people are no longer walking in grace but walking by way of works or by way of establishing the righteousness before God. The author is also concerned that none who are running in the race are to fall behind. None are to turn away from the prize that is set before them.

Specifically, the danger is the threat of apostasy, or throwing in the towel from the Lord completely. The warning has been already given in Hebrews several times. In Hebrews 3:12 the writer says:

Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.

He’s calling the body to watch out for each other. That there would not exist among you someone who is an unbeliever or who remains in unbelief, but someone that we can admonish and challenge with the Gospel, and if possible, rescue them from their unbelief.

That’s a sad state of heart because the Bible says that unbelief is evil. It’s evil because it tends to make the heart evil, and the heart has a tendency, in that condition, to turn away from the Living God as if it’s not important.

They were in danger of turning away from the great, awesome, and the dreadful God, who’s able to punish and avenge their sin for all eternity. Hebrews 12:25 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.

When you have someone like Moses, like the apostles, and this writer of Hebrews warning us about not falling away and making sure that you’re in the faith, and if you refuse to listen to them, then how would you escape if someone tells you from heaven? Specifically, in Hebrews 1, Christ is the final revelation to us, who rescues us from the condemnation of God.

If you don’t listen to Jesus Christ, the Son, and you turn away, how will you escape? There will be no Escape. Our passage is speaking of the disastrous eventuality of cutting oneself off from the grace of God instead of being carried forward by the grace of God, which we should do in the race. Rather, they turn away from it and is being left behind and lost forever.

Of course, we have seen it happen and it does happen. It’s those who maybe receive the word of God, but when trouble and tribulation come in, they are gone. They didn’t think they signed up for that and they don’t fix their eyes on Jesus, His sacrifice, and what He’s done on their behalf.

Not believing Moses, God’s faithful apostle and mediator, is one thing. However, not believing the greater than Moses, the faithful Apostle and High Priest, Jesus Christ, is ruinous. In Hebrews 12, it is addressing the assembly of God’s people in which he cautions them about the sin of apostasy.

Apostasy is a sin where once you have the full knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you cast that aside and walk away from it. There’s no return. The Jews, having the full knowledge of the Old Testament and now the full knowledge of the revelation of Jesus Christ, they turn away from that. There’s no salvation.

Thus, we are to watch out that no one falls short and that people understand the truth and the Gospel. As a result, they are able to run the race and finish with everyone else. As a body, we are to watch out for that. Also, we are to watch out and not allow any bitterroot to grow up. Again, Hebrews 12:15 says:

have no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled.

He is quoting this second warning from Deuteronomy 29:18:

so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.

It’s clear from Moses that this root is a person who is inclined toward apostasy and departing from God. He’s warning against a person who really doesn’t care about the truth or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was a person in the congregation of Israel, but also in the congregation of the church. He’s saying:

Listen, watch out that no bitterroot grows up.

Usually, a root is something that’s underneath the ground, and you can’t see it yet. As soon as it sprouts up, you can see it, and that’s when you make sure you root it out. This bitterroot refers to people in the church whose heart are turning away from the Gospel, and they turn either to some form of a works-based religious system or idolatry. In this case, it could have been Judaism or some system that you have to work your way to Salvation.

Therefore, they are setting aside the full implications of the cross of Jesus Christ. They are moving away to a sensual life or a life just living for themselves, which of course is idolatry. If somebody lives a life of sensuality, it is a life of idolatry. Paul said in Ephesians 5:5:

For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Clearly, we need to be aware and be watching out that this does not happen. In Hebrews 12:15, if this root and attitude of bitterness grows up and gets more exposure in the church, it will defile many. That’s how destructive it is, and the implication is that this one embittered, rebellious person, in the midst of the church, can have disastrous effects on the whole community of believers.

This person having left the grace of God develops a certain quality of thinking that poison, contaminates, and causes others to think less and less of Christ, and more of another religious system that is way easier to be involved with than being a Christian. Therefore, they have this attitude where Christ gets lowered and everything else gets higher, so the Bible says these people are defiled.

The word

defile

means those who are made unclean. Remember, a person who was unclean was debarred from approaching God. They can’t even approach God, so this person becomes an influential person. Therefore, causing other people to be unclean and unable to approach God. For this person, they sink back into guilt, sin, and bitterness that scorns Christ, His blood, His righteousness, and His plan of salvation. They even mock it. As a church, we are to watch out and listen, so no one falls short of the grace of God. If this happens, then it destroys everything.

This warning given is not just of the pastors and elders, but to the whole congregation. You’re going to have conversations and notice things that I may never get a chance to notice, and you must identify those things and take care of them for the sake of the whole body. You don’t want the body to get defiled by this person.

Believe me, somebody who’s always grumbling, complaining, and demeaning the Christian life, the things of God, and the word of God are already giving indication that there’s something wrong in their heart. They could be a weak believer, but in this case, it is not a weak believer. This is an unbeliever, who is in the congregation and who understands the difference between the systems of religion and has outright rejected Christ and the Gospel of saving grace through faith in Jesus Christ but is still amongst the believers.

For example, Esau, in the Old Testament, was an immoral and a religious and Godless man. Hebrews 12:16 warns against two appetites and entangling sins that are displayed Esau’s life:

that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.

Some people will argue that the Old Testament didn’t say that Esau’s immoral. However, if you go back in your thinking and in the history of Esau’s life, then you will recall his act of taking too far in women as wives. As the Bible records, it made the life of Isaac and Rebekah, his mom and dad, miserable because he went with these Canaanite women, which were just idolaters and polytheistic.

The Bible does refer to him as immoral in the sense that he did not regard the advice of his parents. Actually, they must have regarded him as immoral. Synonymous with immorality is fornication amongst the people because they were to marry within their tribe, within their nation, not outside their nation, and he didn’t listen to that.

Hebrews is the place that mentions of his character, and immorality is a very entangling sin. When the emotions are engaged, and relationships are engaged, then other things happen from immorality such as children and family connections. It’s very difficult to rescue someone from that. Now, can you be? Yes; the word of God has to transform the heart.

However, he’s saying to watch out that these two appetites of the central passion and immorality doesn’t get into your life or into the life of others. You are to watch out for it and pray for the body. If it does, it’s going to hamstring you. When you hamstring a horse, they’re done.

Secondly, we are to watch out for physical appetites. Again, Hebrews 12:16 says:

that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.

In Genesis 25, Esau comes in from the field after hunting, famished and starving. His brother, Jacob, is making red stew and he says, “Listen, I’m hungry man, so give me something to eat.” Jacob, which means the deceiver, said, “OK. I’ll give you some stew but give me your birthright.” Finally, Esau gives him his birthright.

Thus, his thoughts, aim, and pleasures were only earthbound in which he only had regard for the fleeting and unprofitable gratification of the flesh. That’s the idea of living for myself now, so I have as much pleasure as possible on this earth, which was Esau’s thinking.

Thus, the Bible is saying to stay away from the physical appetites that are only earthbound, that are not profitable for eternal things, and that only gratify your flesh for a short time. It will only give you little pleasure but will never give you eternal happiness. So, Esau gives all that over for the precious privilege of his birthright.

Esau’s birthright was really important. In fact, his birthright included the headship of his family, great property rights, the inheritance of the blessing of Abraham, and being connected to the bloodline of the Messiah. Man, why would you want to give that away? So, what’s on his mind?

On Esau’s mind is food, drink, sports, and sleep. It sounds a little bit like the macho-man of our day, and it even sounds like a commercial. Listen, don’t be like him. For a single meal, he threw away the ancestral ship of the Messiah, and everything that went with that such as great privileges. Esau treated the sacred birthright as a common thing to be used in a trade of another common thing such as one meal.

According to Scripture, once these rights are lost, they cannot be recovered. No matter what effort is put forth. In other words, the moment he showed contempt for his birthright, the consequences of his bad attitude could not be reversed. In fact, that’s exactly what it says in Genesis 25:34:

Thus Esau despised his birthright.

When Esau realized what he did years later, Jacob, his brother, had the blessing of Abraham. When he finally desired to inherit the blessing, he was examined, found wanting, and outright refused.

See, God refused to have him as his heir because his desire was for sensual passions and for physical appetites. That is it. He cared nothing about God, which is why he uses the word godless. He didn’t care about eternal things. Hebrews 12:17 says:

For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

In other words, it was too late for Esau. Thus, Esau became the embittered man in Genesis 27 and onward. If some shrink back and return to some religious, works-based religious system, and leaves Christ, it would be impossible to undo the damage. Esau continues as a cautionary example of the impossibility of restoring again to repentance those who have rebelliously sinned against the light. They had revelation of what God was doing and sinned against it. Hebrews 6:6 says:

and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

In other words, they will no longer hold to the essential aspects of the Christian faith. Dropping out of the race altogether places them from all hope of restoration in Salvation. So, the body of believers is called to listen and watch out, so that these kinds of appetites are not the things that you’re pursuing in this race that were in.

Rather, you are pursuing the Lord by a peaceful and a holy consistent walk. Your desires for God are growing greater and your desires for this Holy God is growing greater than any appetite that you can have in this physical body, in this world, or any other system that could be offered to you. You out right reject because you know the truth.

If you know the truth, the truth shall make you free. If you have been around for any time, you have come to see that people sometimes come to the Lord and they’re excited about the things of God, then quit in a short period of time. Their zeal evaporates, they go back, and live as they did. They may have been converted to a group. They may have been going to some kind of church thing and to the likeability of some cool Christians, but they were never converted to Christ.

This is not the attitude of those who are converted to Christ, so this passage of Scripture is giving ample responsibility to the body to seriously watch out for each other, especially since all of these things are real. Satan has a way of employing all his tools in his bag of tricks. So, we’re to be watching out, we’re to be praying, we’re to be diligent, we’re to be holding up the weak, we’re to be watching out, and weeding out the roots of bitterness.

We are to be watching out about our own appetites and desires, so that we would be guided and directed to that which is honoring to the Lord and pleasing to the Lord, which goes along with what a real believer is in Christ. We are transformed by the word of God in the renewing of our minds.

We know what the acceptable and perfect will of God. Together, let’s make sure that this does not happen among us as much as possible and let’s take corporate responsibility seriously. Let’s pray:

Lord, thank You for the word of God. I pray, Lord, in some of the serious things in this passage, that You would make us aware, and bring to our attention those things that we are to be responsible for, especially, Lord, as we mature Christ, as we run the race a little longer than other people, as we realize how You have disciplined us, and how You work suffering, trouble, and different things into our life. Not only to correct us concerning our sin, but to correct us in our wrong thinking and understanding of the things of the Lord. Even in this case of our wrong understanding of the church body, what the church body is to do, and how the church body is to respond to one another, watch out for one another, hold up each other, pray for one another, and encourage each other. I pray that You would help us to be the things that You want us to be mentioned in this passage. Lord, we can be diligent and faithful to You. Lord, enable us to be more aware of it and learned in what were to do in our responsibilities. Then, Lord, enable us, by Your power, to do them. We thank You, Lord, for Your graciousness to us, Your kindness to us, and Your faithfulness to keep us. Hold us up in this race. I pray, Lord, that all of us would learn to finish well and You would encourage others to finish. I pray this all in the precious and great name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

Full Transcript:

“Let’s take our Bibles this morning and let’s turn to Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 12, I’m looking at the second part of a message on the Father’s love. It really has to do with discipline.

In fact, the Lord is saying to us here in this section of scripture, “trust me to discipline you.” Don’t misunderstand my discipline in your daily life. Instead, gain the correct information in the Word of God that speaks to you about My doings and My will for My beloved children and that includes discipline.

In doing that don’t let anything induce yo to abandon faith in Christ. Worldliness will try to lure you into loving things rather than loving God. Materialism, also, will tempt you to ultimately forget God and to trust wealth and yourself. Then to thinking of yourself as dependent. Of God not needing Him at all. Don’t let family, friends, peers or social pressure. These may be factors to shaky questionable faith. Cynical voice is always casting doubt over the things of God and what God has said and the things that God deems the most important. Don’t let suffering or persecution or discipline.

These things may tempt you to grumble, to complain and even to despise God. For some to abandon the faith all together showing to whom they really belong. Don’t let the unpredictable events of life shake your faith.

These may work out in a way that will test your faith. Don’t be surprised by these things there. They are tests given by God. They are trials for our faith because our faith must be tested to its genuineness, its strength and its endurance.

I was reading the short story about a father, who of course was a grandfather too at the end of his life.

He’s in a bed in the hospital dying. Family standing around him. They ask him a question. “Are you afraid to die?” He lived his life by faith. He loved the Lord. You know where he was going and he simply said this to his family, “My father owns everything on both sides of the river.”

Thats faith. That’s where we want to be, but it’s not going to be without discipline. We have already learned in chapter 10 of Hebrews that believers gained endurance through this particular thing. Hebrews 10:32 says,

But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings

Sufferings being plural. This ill treatment came upon these believers as a direct consequence of their having embraced the christian faith. They have become open followers of Jesus Christ. In turn all believers must learn that through trials your spirit will become stronger and your faith will become more firm. See we need endurance. Verse 36 of Hebrews chapter 10.

I’ve been saying that the proof of faith lies in perseverance. It lies in endurance. After that professional of faith the rest of your christian life you’re running a race. You’re  enduring in that race. You’re enduring to finish the race, to pass the goal line.

That’s what God has called us to and it says verse 36,

you have need of endurance.

That’s what we all need. Presently, while we’re alive we have a great and essential need. All of us need to continue to endure and remember endurance means to persevere absolutely and emphatically under misfortunes, under trials, under pressure, under the difficulties of life  without holding and letting go Christ but holding fast to our faith in Christ. Never giving that up because that becomes the most precious thing in our life. That becomes the focal points. Christ becomes the focus of our life. Christ becomes the goal of our life.

Everything is about Jesus Christ, not just the cross because the cross has far-reaching eternal implications for us every single day. Why are we to do that? Because trials force us to depend on God.

Trials mature us spiritually and develop in us a proven character. Trials purify causing us to lay aside the weights that hold us back from running the race and lay aside the entangling sins in our life. The things that so easily tempt us to get out of the race. Lay them aside. Put them to death. You’re able to do that now because you’re in Christ and trials cause us to long for heaven. Long for God’s presence. All these things are preparing us to run the christian race.

To reach the goal and to finish to receive the reward. That’s what it’s all doing. It all has an eternal purpose for us. In this second part preaching on the Father’s Love, let us look up verse 2 to 3 of chapter 12 because that’s what I kind of left off last time. I mentioned some things about it, but I’m going to begin there. Hebrews 12:3 says,

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

He is giving somewhat of a solution not to quit because Jesus is the goal of our race.

He is also the companion in our race. He already has reached glory because He has already made the journey. Endure to the end and reached the goal. We therefore are to rely on Him for support and help.

We know from the Word of God He is the perfecter of our faith. That right now Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father on high. Having endured the cross and the shame for us, now He is for us. It tells us in verse 3,

to consider Him. W

e are commanded to consider Him in what way? Consider the perserverence of suffering that Jesus underwent. Consider also the opposition that He encountered from sinners against Him.

It says,

who has endorsed such hostility by sinners against Himself. T

hat the Lord Himself did this. No one helped Him to do it. He did it for Himself for our benefit.

It really means to carefully estimate one object with regard to another. Compared His unparalleled sufferings with the little that you and I have to pass through.

We’ll never be able and we’ll never go through what Christ went through. Why? Because we don’t have to. He went through it for us, but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be exempt from suffering and from trouble.

Those are many things ordained by God for us. In the scripture saying listen think about Christ when He suffered for your sake. The little we go through can’t be compared.

It says in Hebrews 12:4,

You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;

In His endurance of hostility from sinners Jesus suffered death. Violence and death represent the supreme degree of opposition in a struggle against sin. We never had to do that. While those who have received this letter had previously endured severe persecution, including back in chapter 10, reproaches, afflictions, imprisonment and dispositions of their goods and property. They had not yet sealed their testimony with their blood. Some of the patriarchs that went on before them did.

Today there’s a special group of martyrs that God’s called to be martyrs in this world and all through the different generations, but that’s a special group. Not everybody is going to be in that group.

Most of us are in the group where we suffer the daily routine of life. The daily routine of living for our faith amongst family, friends and coworkers. Here’s the purpose for considering Jesus in verse number 3 and 4.

It is

that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

 By considering Jesus it will prevent us from growing weary and fatigued in our race. Jesus will enable you to remain under and hold out under the most severe strain.

Why? because He said He would do that. That’s what He said and God keeps His promises. Jesus had remained faithful in spite of great suffering. That’s the point He’s making here.

He was faithful in spite of great suffering. Now some people say, “well, He was Jesus. I’m not Jesus.” But He was a man and that’s the point of Hebrews 2, He was a man who took the full brunt of what evil can give Him as a man.

He did not give out. He didn’t call on heaven for it. He did it and suffered great suffering for our benefit. Here’s the question that remains in this text.

Can we remain faithful in the race in lesser suffering? We can and we will, only if we avoid the dangers of misunderstanding the necessity and how necessary discipline is that comes from our heavenly Father. Hence this morning let’s consider three scriptural directives that will help us gain clarity and understanding. I believe that’s what He is doing here.

He is clearing up for His audience, for His readers what God actually does in discipline and what’s the whole purpose of it. This is applied to all suffering, all discipline, and all trouble that comes our way because of you’re God’s kids and you’re in God’s family.

Remember God knows everything that’s going on in your life. Every detail that’s going on in your life. There is nothing that He does not notice or does not know about. Here’s the first directive. It is simply this,  remember the encouragement in divine discipline.

Remember the encouragement. What’s the encouragement? Look at Hebrews 12:5. It says,

and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My Son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him

The word exhortation is also translated to encouragement. He’s saying here, you have forgotten something. What did you forget? You forgot the exhortation which is address to you as sons. What’s the address? It says right there in Hebrews 12:5-6,

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.”

I covered that last week so I’m not covering that this week. That’s a quote directly from Proverbs  3 in the wisdom literature about a young son growing up to be wise and listening to the voice of his father and his mother and then taking that information and applying it in a very specific way to everyday life. Part of that was the discipline that came to the young man because of the rod of the parents on their backside to drive away rebellion, unbelief and disobedience. Then also the reproves that came from the voice of the parents saying, “Don’t walk this way, don’t go there.”

This is the difference between righteousness and unrighteousness. This is the difference between good and evil, this is God’s way. This is every other way and the young man begins to log that in and then begins to apply it to his life. The affliction that comes through discipline is necessary for that growing young person as they grow up.

Why? Because the only thing that’s going to drive away rebellion, unbelief, and disobedience is the rod on the chunky side of their body.

That’s the only thing. That’s God’s wisdom. Jesus would have disciplined His son like that. in a matter of fact He disciplines us like that. The children of God learn and respond to His discipline. What do they do? Number one. They don’t forget but they remember this is how my heavenly Father’s does things because it’s right in His word.

Next thing is that they don’t despise it. I carry this from last week, but they accept it. They receive it. They receive it with gladness. They receive it in this sentence.

I need this now. I don’t understand why I need this now, in all its implications, but I need this now. The third thing is that they don’t faint and quit because their parents discipline them.

They perseveringly endure. That’s what they do and why is that?  Hebrews 12:7 says,

It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

There’s the question. It is assuming the father is taking responsibility to do that job. Of course, it’s the wise father and mother training up a young man from being foolish and naive.

It’s possibly a scoffer to that of being a wise person. Knowing how to veer down the narrow path and not go down all the broad paths that are introduced to him.

Here’s the most plain and convincing evidence that you truly belong to the family of God. The Heavenly Father who is deeply concerned for His children chastises them. It is for discipline.

It is for chastisement that you endure. Why ?because You are my children. Now however, painful it may be at the time. Painful discipline is necessary. In order to rid us of unnecessary weights, entangling sins and things we’re not going to take care of by ourselves.

Then what it produces in us is maturity that bares the characteristics of Christ Himself. The chastisement, I love that old english word. Discipline, it means you are going out to exercise. Chastisement, it’s like a boot coming down.

This is a woodshed experience. This is what you need at this time. Chastisement is applied to all God’s children not to kill us but to correct us.

To show that we truly belong to the family of God as legitimate sons and daughters and special objects of God’s care and love. What was the encouragement in all of that? Here’s the first thing.

If you have discipline from the Lord you’re in. Get that. If you have discipline from the Lord you’re in. That’s the encouragement. God is not trying to do me in.

He’s not trying to do any of those things to harm me at all whatsoever. You are one of God’s kids, that is the encouragement. That’s the exhortation. This is what you ought to go away believing very firmly in your heart because if you’re going to grow in faith, you grow in the character and knowledge of God.

When you grow in the character and knowledge of God, then this is what’s going to happen. You are going to realize and it should be ringing in your ears with assurance.

When God disciplines me, however that may come, it’s because I’m in His family. I have entered into that family through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, which I don’t have to go through because He was my substitute in my place, dying for my sin, and making it available to me by faith to be right with the father who is in heaven. Now I am in God’s family and now I have a Heavenly Father. Even if I didn’t have an earthly father. I have a Heavenly Father now and the Heavenly Father is going to correct in my mind what a real father is and what a real father does.

There’s at least two things that we should never forget when it comes to God disciplining us. Here’s the first thing. You should never forget that God is constantly at hand and His gracious help is ever available to us.

That’s what you should never forget. Why shouldn’t you forget that? Because it’s been said all over Hebrews. Hebrews 2:18 says,

For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.

The Lord’s able to come to our aid for those who are tempted. Why? He was tempted to the fullest extent of temptation.

We are not. We give in way too soon. He went the full distance and therefore He knows exactly what we’re going through. He knows the power of temptation and He knows how to help you in it and aid you in it so you don’t get pulled down and completely destroyed.

Hebrews 4:15-16 says,

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

When you’re in God’s family, even though He comes in and He disciplines you and it made me through a great trial of suffering and maybe a small trial of suffering. Nonetheless, I should always consider that God knows about this. He’s ordained this for me and I want to respond in the right way. I should, number one, remember that God’s for me and His help is available to me.

That means in discipline, part of it could be get to prayer and talk with God about what’s going on in your life. Stop trying to handle it yourself in the flesh, by the world.

By means that do not help. They just drag you deeper into depression and discouragement. It says here to be encouraged. God has help right there available to you. Do you believe that. It has to take faith. If I believe it I will pray and ask God for help.

What do you know about what’s going on in my life right now, and give Him the details. Give Him the pain that’s in your heart. Give Him the thoughts that are going through your mind. Give Him all of it. Why? He is wanting you and maybe using the discipline to bring you to depend on Him.

So you pray. Because this is where Satan wins the most. Keep God’s people away from prayer. Keep God’s people away from praying together. Give him a lot of good stuff to do fill their schedule so that never happens.

We never feel the guilt of it because it’s really not sin, I had to do this. Something was required of me and it goes on and on and on. You don’t think satan wants to keep you there.

He does. That is how skilled he is. Hebrews 7:25 says,

Therefore He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

Who’s praying for us? Christ Himself. Why? We are His kids who know Christ. He’s praying for us. Why? He knows the suffering we have to go through. He knows the difficulty of living in our bodies to have remaining corruption.

He knows the Temptations that you’re being blasted with from all kinds of places. He knows that but He wants us to come and pray as He’s praying to the Father. For what reason? To keep us in the race. To keep us encouraged because we know all the lies that satan can hurl at me at this point.

Hey, God’s for me. I read His word. You deal with Him. This is what He says. You can throw all the lies you want at me about who I am, that I’m not worthy, that I don’t deserve salvation, that God not for me and that this discipline has come into my life because God actually hate you.

That’s all lies. how do I know it’s lies? Because the Word of God says God is for me and God aids me and all those things. I should never ever forget that God is constantly at hand and His gracious help is always available to me. Day or night doesn’t matter what the weather is doesn’t matter what time of day it is it doesn’t matter where you are. It’s available to you. The greatest resources in the universe are available to God’s kids, right now. Not in eternity, now.

There is a second thing that we shouldn’t forget and we ought to remember. It’s that anything we suffer for the gospel. We suffer sometimes things for our own sin and we make our own problems. But when we suffer for the Gospel, it should always point us to recognize that God so far from neglecting us is actually showing Himself to be a true Father to us by treating us, truly, as His kids.

You get out of line. You’re in God’s family. I’m going to get you in line. You want to continue in this sin. This sin is giving you pleasure. You don’t want to take care of it.

I will take care of it by sending you trouble. You haven’t entangling encumbering thing in your life. Maybe you love something more than God. Maybe you’re going in direction you shouldn’t but it’s not benefiting your spiritual walk, your spiritual life at all.

God says, well, I’m going to send something to you to remind you that this is more important, I’m more important, that work of God is more important than you think thats important.

That’s what the Lord’s going to do. Why? because He is showing Himself to be truly a father to His kids and a true father trains his kid not only with teaching but with discipline unto correction, a changed lifestyle and behavior and thoughts. All those things included and more. When we understand, we receive encouragement. This this is what He wants the people know. He wants us to know don’t be discouraged, be encouraged because I’m giving you the correct information about what I’m doing

On the other hand in Hebrews 12:8 it says,

But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

If you don’t have discipline from the Lord you are out. Doesn’t matter if you made a professional of faith. Doesn’t matter if you walk the aisle fifteen thousand times.

If you are not disciplined by God, you’re not in His family. That’s what it says. It is the “If then” scenario.

All of God’s kids must partake in the discipline of the Father.

Nathai is the word. It is actually translated clearly to bastard. A bastard is someone who has no known father or that father is not sufficiently interested in his children to inflict on them discipline that fits his illegitimate children.

In other words, he’s an absentee and unconcerned father. The child becomes a bastard illegitimate because the father does not care enough to correct and discipline the child, the son, and direct him in the right way.

This passage gives ample reason for deep concern that if someone does not experience God’s discipline through painful correction they are not God’s children. They are not born again into God’s family.

They are without hope, without God, satan is still there father and he is a harsh and heartless father. His kingdom and in his kingdom there is no light. There is no truth.

There is only darkness and lies. That’s where people are who are without discipline. So be sure of this, according to scripture, only illegitimate children are beyond the heavenly Father’s discipline. Today is a great day to come to Jesus Christ. It’s a great day to receive Him as your Lord and Savior. If you been around the church a while and you’re a young person all you want to do is have fun.

All you want to do are things you want to do and you’re not interested at all in the things of the Lord. You really haven’t been disciplined by him.

You’re just living two lifestyles. One outwardly and one inwardly. You know how to fool your parents, you know how to say the right things to the right people but inside you don’t care about any of this stuff.

If God has never come in and disciplined you, you’re in trouble. You’re in trouble. If you’ve been in the faith for a while and God has never come.

It may not have been time for you to be disciplined by God yet. Maybe that’s why you’re not disciplined by Him yet. Yet, there may have been times in your life you have been disciplined by Him and you didn’t recognize it as God’s discipline.

You look back now as you’ve matured and realized God was disciplining back there. I didn’t really understand. I was more confused back there but now I understand.

That time produced something into my life that nothing else ever produced. In fact it produced what the Word of God said it should produce. So it’s a great time.

Listen, if you don’t know where you’re at spiritually. If you doubt your salvation right there where you’re at, call on the Lord Jesus Christ and be ye saved.

Charles Spurgeon would say. Be saved, man. That’s what it’s all about. Come to Jesus Christ and live. In fact, if you look at the second directive.

The first one to remember. The second one is to recognize subordination to God’s discipline is essential. Hebrews 12:9 says,

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?

Now, let me just stop there for a minute because I want to set this up for you. Here is what they call the lesser to the greater comparison in Scripture.

Here’s a contrast between an earthly father and and his discipline and a heavenly Father and His discipline. It’s giving here the matter of the earthly fathers discipline and the worth of it. Then it’s given the manor of the heavenly Father’s discipline and the worth of it. I just want to recognize this and it’s really very clear and to the point for us. Look at the first part of Hebrews 12:9 and Hebrews 12:10. They talk about the earthly father. The first one is this, that our earthly father we gave limited subordination to.

Why? It’s interesting to note what it says in verse 9.

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them;

That’s a real interesting comment. Do you know why it’s interesting? Because fathers who make an effort to discipline their children gain their respect. See that’s not the modern-day flow of thought in our society.

That is the flow of thought in scripture. They gain their respect. We should respect our human parents who are disciplining us.We should respect them. That’s the right thing to do. What is the manner in worth of this earthly fathers discipline? If you look in verse number 10 it says,

For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

This is how they did it. Number one, they did it for a short time. They just had a little while, while the children were growing up before they got to adulthood, to discipline them. Usually after they get to adulthood you really cannot harness them in anymore. They leave the home. They have other ventures. They go on. Your discipline does change from that of corporal discipline to, when you get older, more of a counselor. It should be that way, but that’s the earthly realm we live in. We have a very short period of time to take this young child and try to form them somehow into something good.

Look at the next part of verse number 10.

They did it according to what seemed best

to them

In other words, according to their pleasure. According to how they knew how to do it. This is a great baffling thing about parenting. Here’s the baffling thing. You don’t really have a manual to do it. Of course, we have the Bible. I’m talking apart from the Bible. Most people, how do they do it? Well, I put some things together about my grandparents if they were in my life or my parents in my life, or somebody respect in my life.

You got to put all these things together and you try to do it in your home. You read this book and that book. Usually it is all worldly wisdom and you start doing it and it ends up being a train wreck.

Somebody was just talking to me yesterday about somebody he had invited to their party couldn’t come because of their son took their SUV and tried to commit suicide buy running it into a pole or something like that.

Kids have a lot of things happening to them today. There’s more kids today saying, “I’m out of here” than ever before in the United States. In which we have everything and everybody in the world wants to come here. Yet, our own kids are missing something and the reason why is because something didn’t happen in the beginning.

Their earthly fathers we’re subject to the infallibility of human judgments. Sometimes immoderately they dealt with their children. Sometimes capriciously they dealt with their children. Sometimes they were swayed by favoritism between their children but presumably always with the best intentions in mind but no one could ever say, “well, here’s the goal. This is what I want to do.” They try to shoot at it because they didn’t know where to shoot. Not until you get to the Word of God do you know where to shoot. So we have parents who are who are permissive in the way they discipline.

They have no boundaries in their home. There’s  too much freedom in their home. There’s some love and concern in their home, but the kids can pretty much do what they want.

Then there’s the other ones who’s the neglectful parent where there’s no boundaries at all. There’s no love because there’s no boundaries because there’s no communication. There’s no interaction. Nobody eats together.

Nobody does anything together. So there’s no confidence and security in the kids. They go out into a world and I said, wow, I have to obey that guy. I have to actually listen to my boss.

I have to actually do an assignment in school and to pass this course and to get a degree. This is like we’re just coming from. I can’t handle this. Then you have the authoritarian parent who has lots of rules and no love.

Then you have the authoritative parent who si which is more like the parent in Proverbs. Who has lots of rules. There are boundaries and they are clear. There’s a regular scheduled thing going on in the home.

There’s penalties. There’s a lot of love and there’s confidence and security. So when the child leaves the home, they have confidence and security. Of course, they have a focus on what God wants them to do in their heart.

The knowledge of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If that’s in a young kids heart then the prayer of the parent for the rest of their life, even when they leave the home is this.

“Oh Lord, please continue to put in my child’s heart a desire for them to love You and serve You. Not that they would get a great paying job. Not that they would be well-known and famous. No, Lord, that they would put You first in all things. That they would love You with all their heart.”

That’s the greatest gift that any parent could ever see happen in their children.

It is when they leave the home that they’re living for God. They are loving God. They are not perfect. They still have struggles. God’s going to still deal with them but the wise parent makes instructing their children in the way of the Lord a priority. They not only instruct them, they lived it.

Nothing is more important than teaching the children about life from God’s perspective. The realities of wisdom and folly. The realities of righteousness and wickedness. The realities of truth and error. The realities of God’s way and all the other voices in ways that are going to be screaming at them, “come follow me. Come follow me.” The child will know from the Word of God will say, “No, I’m not going to follow you because this is what God says.” The second part Hebrews 12:9 is what we ought to do. We ought to give total subordination to our Heavenly Father. If we gave some respect to our earthly fathers, we ought to give total subordination to the Father. Look what it says there,

shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?

Interesting way of putting it, isn’t it. The eternal God, Who has authority over your souls. Then look at the little phrase at the end of verse number 9,

and live.

Be subject to the Father completely, the Father of spirits, and live. Well, that’s interesting encouragement. Now you want to know real life, submit to God. You want to know real happiness and joy, submit to God.

Why? Because this very little term, “live” actually refers to the true life that is to be possessed by the true children of the heavenly Father. Meaning that the Father is the source of all life.

To turn away from Him is actually to turn away from life. All over Hebrews we have the Word of God, which is life. We have the life that was given to us by the sacrifice of Christ. We have, what we’re heading for, eternal life.

Everywhere we’re talking about, that is connected with God, is that we have life. That leads me to the manor and worth of our heavenly Father’s discipline. That’s why we should totally submit to Him and it’s found in the second part of verse number 10.

Our heavenly Father’s discipline, in other words, is good for us. For He disciplines us for our good. This means across the board that anytime the Father disciplines It’s always, always, always for our good. Earthly fathers cannot accomplish that. Father’s be encouraged for what you couldn’t do God will do when your kids come to the Lord. They’re not going to get away with God.

Because God knows everything going on in your life. He ever and unfailingly with full knowledge of our persons and of the situations which we are placed in, and in accordance with what is beneficial for us, will discipline us. Not simply now but at every leg of our christian race.

At every phase and stage of our spiritual maturity forever. He will do it forever. It’s going to be ongoing.

There’s no higher desirable good that God could ever bring into our life then what is found in the last part Hebrews 12:10. It says,

… so that we may share His holiness.

The purpose for disciplining, the goal for Him correcting us, driving out sin that is still in us is that we may be more truly the children of God. That we may more clearly demonstrate the character of Christ in our life and be sure of this, that He would have us to be holy. Be ye

holy, for what? I am Holy. The purpose of God bringing suffering, trials, tribulation and discipline into your life is that you share in His holiness. Are we as holy as we ought to be? Are we as holy as we should be?

We’re not. We’re never there. God’s goal is that you’d be holy and that you would share in His holiness. In fact, it was the Apostle Paul who told the Thessalonian church and he said this, for God has not called us to impurity but to what?

Holiness or another word used in scripture is sanctification. He calls us to be set apart unto Himself. Holy means those who have been set apart to God.

God’s going to set you apart more and more and more unto Himself where you’ll be less set apart unto yourself, to others and to whoever else is trying to get your attention.

He will set you apart unto Him and when He does that you will share in His Holiness. This is a special word used in Hebrews and it points to God’s holy character. That Holiness which is only essential to God’s attributes.

Therefore, God is the source of this holiness and for all who are holy and to those who partake in it. Those who are holy are so only because they partake in His holiness. That means they have come through the discipline.

They have received it. They understand why it’s coming. They did not despise God in it. They actually welcomed it because they understood they need correction in this area. I need to put something off in my life in this area.

I have not been a good testimony in this area. Whether it’s in your private life or it’s a public thing that everybody knows about. Whatever it maybe. God’s discipline is going to make me holy.

When you pray the, “Lord, please. Will you develop Your image in me more and more? Will You make me holy.” You know what you’re praying right?

Thank the Lord He does it in the right way and in a loving manner. Commentator O’Brien says this and I want a quote this to you. He says, “Since it is His intention, the heavily Fathers attention, that believers participate in His holiness through loving correction the clear implication is that apart from His disciplinary sufferings it is not possible to share in His holiness at all.”

It’s not possible at all to share in His holiness. Hebrews 10:10 says,

By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Hebrews 10:14 says,

For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

The minute you and I became believers, you know what happened? God started the whole sanctification holiness process on you. It’s not going to end until you drop off these bodies and you’re in the presence of holiness.

It’s not going to end. In fact it look at Hebrews 12:14 you can’t even see the Lord without holiness. It says,

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.

The Old King James Version says,

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:

Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness with without which no one will see the Lord.

I can’t see the Lord without being holy. I must be made holy and set apart because that’s the stamp of God upon me. Therefore, when I am then I will see God. That’s a promise. The question is, shall we subject ourselves totally to the subordination of the father and receive the prophet that comes from the heavenly Father’s discipline?

Shall we do that? We ought to do that. That’s the point. That’s what believers do. Because when we do, here is the last directive, we realize the nature and purpose of all discipline that’s imposed upon us by the heavenly Father. What is it? Well, let me just give you some of the nature of it. Verse 11, short-lived. All discipline for the moment. That means there’s going to be a beginning  and an end to it. It’s not going to be on going on forever.

Most discipline that’s most effective is not long-term. People who go to prison for their life usually end up being worse at the end. Because they were never corrected and brought to a place for them to see their evil and sin.

It was Paul who told the Corinthians church for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

Then he says in 2 Corinthians 4:18,

while we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

It’s short-lived.

Then secondly in Hebrews 12:11, it’s painful. He says,

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

It’s not joyful when you’re going through it.It’s painful. Discipline is a consequence of not heeding correction often and it is an unpleasant consequence. It hurts. The purpose of discipline is instruction and correction. In fact, Proverbs 13:24 says,

He who withholds his rod hates his son,

I don’t want to hurt my little son.

But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.

Come on, let’s go do it again until you learn how to change this behavior. Until you learn how to correct your attitude. Of course, it also can be just the father’s voice. It doesn’t always have to be the rod to the back. There’s a point where your children know exactly the tones of your voice.

Just like you know how you’re different dogs bark. One bark is, Let me into the house. Another bark is it raining outside let me back in the house. Another one is, I’m hungry. Somebody is at the door and they bark incessantly.

Our children know the tones of our voice. When we’re really serious and we’re just fooling around. You should be fooling around a lot of times. You need to lighten up. You and I need to lighten up sometimes and enjoy life.

God wants us to enjoy things. Chastisement means to inflict pain in Proverbs. It means to inflict suffering upon the individual with controlled force with a view to amend behavior.

There’s always a goal in wisdom. Always a goal, never random. Never flailing. Never in anger. Always controlled and in private. They know why they’re getting disciplined. Tell them why they’re getting disciplined. You do it quickly, make it painful and and they’re off and running. That what you do and it’s over.

That’s how God does it. The heavenly Father will teach us things that are extremely important to us through our troubles that we would not easily receive if everything went well with us all the time.

There’s a third thing about the nature of discipline and it’s found in Hebrews 12:11 it says simply,

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

In other words, here again is the goal it yields a rich harvest of right living. It yields a rich harvest of right thinking and of right behavior. In fact, the purpose of it, from verse number 11, is that this discipline will produce well-trained spiritually tough christians.

Yet to those who have been trained by it. You know where the word train comes from? We get from this Greek word trained, gymnasium. God brings us to the gym in discipline.

He brings us to the gym. For what reason? To make us strong in faith. To make us strong in our understanding so we endure in the race. So that we are obeying God more.

So that we are laying aside the weights and sins that entangle us. Gods replacing that fruitful right attitudes and right living that pleases Him because it produces well-trained believers.

Then secondly, it produces inward peace. It says,

afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Inward peace. i ran across this verse in Isaiah 32:17-18 it says,

And the work of righteousness will be peace, and the service of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever .Then my people will live in a peaceful habitation and in secure dwellings and in undisturbed resting places;

In other words, discipline actually ends in quite a different way then we would ever imagine. It actually gives you inner peace. I think for several reasons, you know who your heavenly Father is, you know why it’s being done. You know why you needed it and you know what it produces. It’s going to make you a better believer a more serious and sober believer.

Then it produces moral uprightness after it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. That’s really righteous behavior. If Christ’s images going to be stamped on me, Christ perfectly obeyed the father, then when I am trained in holiness and when God disciplines me correctly, what’s going to happen? I am going to actually have my attitude corrected, my behavior corrected and sometimes the whole direction of my life corrected when God disciplines me.

What happens is that I’m peaceful. I’m living the way I wanted to live, but I couldn’t live this way until God disciplined me.

God has changed my whole thinking on this on matter. I couldn’t change my thinking myself. I had too many blind spots, but God through discipline cleared up my thinking and now I’m thinking righteously.

I wanted to change my behavior towards my wife or towards my kids, but I couldn’t do it. I always went back to the old flesh but through discipline God brought me to change how i responded in those situations and it bore fruit of righteousness.

The fruit on the branches are not anger anymore. the fruit on the branches are actually peace and joy. Why? Because God took the time as a loving caring father to apply the needed pressure in your life to get you where you ought to be on the road to holiness.

That’s what He does and He’s good at it. But you know His motive in His intention behind it. This period of discipline is followed by enjoyment of peace and right living in the ultimate enjoyment that you are truly God’s kids being prepared for the enjoyment of His presence for all eternity.

That’s where it’s all headed. We who are God’s kids should be encouraged today. Biggest proof of being a believer is Gods spanktian.

If you don’t have discipline, you should be deeply concerned about your soul. Come today, and believe in Christ. If you don’t know how or you don’t know what to do. Talk to me or someone else and we will show you from the Word of God what God requires for you to repent of your sins and believe in Christ by faith alone. Amen.

If you are a believer rejoice. Thank the Lord for where you’re at right now. If you can remember times of discipline in your life, praise Him for it. That’s what I was doing this week. I was looking back on my life and I was looking from the time I trusted Christ to all the things that the Lord disciplined me in. Sometimes very severely, sometimes not so severe but each time it was for a correction in my direction. Correction in my behavior. Correction in my words I was using.

A correction in my attitude towards people. A correction in my prayer life and in my study of God’s word. A correction that made me more serious and sober to want to do what’s right and pleasing before the Lord. All those things and just thank Him for it. Thats what we ought to do this week and then sit back and enjoy the peace and the righteousness that comes afterwards.

The confidence that comes with being a real believer and being in God’s real family.Were God really deals with us and just praise Him for it.

“Let’s bow together in a word of prayer. Lord, thank you. Thank you, Lord Jesus for clarifying for us ,by the Word of God,this matter of discipline. Thank you, Father, that You are a good and a caring God. Father, I pray that our attitude towards You would always be that of not forgetting what it’s all about.

It would be that of not despising or fainting or quitting. It would be that of submitting to You totally because you can be totally trusted in Your intentions in the means in which You use and in the goals and the fruit You in which You will produce in our life as believers. Thank you for what you’ll do and what you have done and I praise You for it.

Help us to remember Your word as we go our way. and This week that it would be the time of examination and a time of prayer of rejoicing and thankfulness for what You have done so far in our life. I pray this in Christ name. Amen.”

Full Transcript:

Hebrews 12:5-6 says:

and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; ⁶FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”

In looking at that, let’s turn to Proverbs 3:11-12, which is where the writer of Hebrews is quoting from:

My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD
Or loathe His reproof,

¹²For whom the LORD loves He reproves,
Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.

The writer of Hebrews is appealing to God’s wisdom, which starts with the knowledge of God. In a very real sense, God is saying in wisdom:

Trust me to discipline you as My children trust Me to bless you.

The reason for this relationship between Father and Son, and, in Proverbs, teacher and student reveals that education is not just a matter of memorizing words and relying on information. Rather, it involves trust and respect between two people. When someone implements that knowledge that they’re learning with a relationship with the Lord God himself, it drips down through their character. Proverbs 3:1-4 says:

My son, do not forget my teaching,
But let your heart keep my commandments;

²For length of days and years of life
And peace they will add to you.

³Do not let kindness and truth leave you;
Bind them around your neck,
Write them on the tablet of your heart.

⁴So you will find favor and good repute
In the sight of God and man.

In this section of Proverbs, he’s actually giving four exhortations, and the fourth one is the one that the Hebrews writer is quoting. The first one is to keep God’s commandments, which are found in Proverbs 3:1-4. The second one is to rely on the Lord’s guidance and understanding, not your own. The third one is to honor the Lord with your provisions. Then, he comes to this fourth one, which is to accept the Lord’s discipline.

I was reading a story of a father, who’s training his son up in wisdom and hoping that his son would come up to his standard academically, especially since he had a very high academic standard. He was always prodding his son to get higher grades. When he got the report cards, he was always a little disappointed that his son didn’t really measure up to his excellence.

One day, he got a letter from the principal stating that he was invited to an awards ceremony. In his mind, he’s wondering, "Why would I be invited to an awards ceremony if my son got grades like this?" Reluctantly, he went and sat there. As he was sitting there he’s thinking in his mind, while other students are being called for academic awards, how much his son sucks and that he should have tried harder. He continues to tell himself:

Why am I here? Am I just filling a seat? Did I just get invited so that there would be a crowd?

Then, the principal got up to the podium, got before the microphone, and announced, for the first time:

I’m presenting a special award to a young man, who has been so exceptional that we couldn’t overlook his accomplishment.

His name is Gordon, the man’s son. The principal spent several minutes describing the fine character of this young man such as his kindness towards others, his trustworthiness, and his quiet leadership.

The principal went on to say:

We have never had a student like Gordon in our school, and there probably will never be another like him. So, we’re giving you, Gordon, for the first and possibly the last, principles cup award for integrity, diligence, and decency. Thank you for what you have brought to our school. We needed this more than academics, and anyone who gets to know you will be better because of it.

His father sat there and thought how the principle was speaking to him because he had not gotten to know his son. When you raise your children, sometimes the world standard on where they should be and what they should accomplish is quite different than God’s standard. God’s standard is always character. It doesn’t mean academics aren’t important, but it’s always character first.

Often, anyone growing up is foolish and naive, and God’s word will make them grow out of their foolishness, grow out of being naive, and become wise. The only way for that to happen is that God would be first in everything, the One who guides you, and the One who directs you.

In God’s educational school room, He does not excluded correction. Eldon Woodcock wrote:

Wisdom involves a right attitude and approach to all areas of life. In spiritual life it includes a commitment to follow the teachings of a holy and righteous God, who expects His people to reflect His qualities, and a moral commandment to do what is right avoiding that which is wrong.

In this next exhortation, the writer of Hebrews brings out to those who is speaking to, especially in light of Hebrews 12:4:

You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.

In other words, God poured out on Jesus Christ the penalty for unrighteousness Not His own, but ours, so that we can be set on a path to live righteously and to be in God’s School room where we are educated in the right way. Thus, this exhortation may reveal the real test on trusting God. The real test of real faith, which is how you respond to your loving Father’s discipline.

Now, the problem is that we don’t always realize God’s disciplining us when he is, especially since we don’t always realize that God is involved with all of the regular, everyday providences we go through. God is not on the outskirts and comes in once in a while. You have the Holy Spirit indwelling you permanently and all the time. Meaning, God is always with you.

Therefore, this exhortation may be the exhortation that gives you the understanding and the correction that you need to go in the direction you’re not going, but should be going in. However, you haven’t gotten there yet.

It’s one thing to trust God when the horizon is bright, but what about when suffering comes? It’s one thing to trust in wealth. Wealth may cause you to forget God. On the other hand, suffering may cause you to alienate yourself from God. Trouble may cause you to alienate yourself from God, but the person of wisdom learns to strike the balance.

They learn to see what God is doing in their life, and when trouble comes, when suffering comes, and when discipline comes, the first questions we should ask is: Lord, what are you trying to teach me? If that’s not the first question, we will usually end up responding to it in a wrong way, and we will not get the lesson that God wants to teach us.

Let’s look at the wisdom before us on these pages. It could very well be one of the most difficult ones to understand, but when understood, it is the most liberating, self-abasing, purifying, and God exalting of all of them, especially since it will make you more Christ-like. It will make you more holy when you respond correctly. Again, Proverbs 3:11-12 says:

My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD Or loathe His reproof,

¹²For whom the LORD loves He reproves,
Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.

Under this major heading of Accept the Lord’s Correction, I’m going to look at three things. First, the nature and definition of divine discipline. Secondly, the nature and wrong response to divine discipline. Lastly, the nature and encouragement of divine discipline, which is where the writer of Hebrews picks up.

Discipline is different than punishment. The word punishment means retribution from God, which is intended to do harm. Discipline means hardship through which God intends to do us good because we have a loving, heavenly Father disciplining with their children.

Now, we become children based on believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We’re brought into the family of God. When that happens, our relationship to God has change from being an enemy to be a child of God, or someone in God’s family. Therefore, that’s how God is going to deal with us.

Thus, discipline is God’s educational system, which is the thing he uses to correct us, and it’s always intended for the good. When Paul is telling the Corinthian Church about their abuse in the Lord’s table, he says this to in 1 Corinthians 11:30-32:

For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. ³¹But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. ³²But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

The Lord is going to bring discipline upon His children, and He’s going to do it for their good and for His glory. When a person is in the family of God, they are disciplined by the Father, who loves them.

The very word discipline in the Hebrew is masseur, which correction and instruction. It means to restrain from doing wrong. It means to reform by words. Also, it means to be reformed by actions such as corporal discipline.

The verb means to train and to bring someone under the discipline. It is the training of an individual in areas in which he or she is unruly and does not want to be told at that point, so they will be brought under the disciplining hand of God. In the Septuagint, the word also means to train, to teach, to discipline, to correct, to whip, to scourge, and to beat.

Here, the word is used in a way where it means to take one into the school house, or into the woodshed. One definition suggests that it means whatever parents and teachers do to train, correct, cultivate, and educate their children in order to help develop them and mature them. That’s not a bad discipline. Proverbs 19:18 says:

 

Discipline your son while there is hope,
And do not desire his death.

It’s interesting how that’s connected there. In other words, to discipline your child in a way where you’re bringing physical pain upon your child in a correct way, in a controlled way, without anger, without manipulation, without abuse, and you’re never desiring the death of your child. Rather, you’re always Desiring their correction. Then, Proverbs 23:13 says:

Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

I’m reading these things because the Bible is advocating spanking. Would God spank His kids? If Jesus had kids, would He spank His? Yes; it says so in the word of God. Therefore, He wrote it, and the word is connected to who He is in His attributes and character, so there are positive and negative aspects to God’s education. Of course, spanking is one of them. Then, Proverbs 29:17 says:

Correct your son, and he will give you comfort; He will also delight your soul.

When, it comes to disciplining children, this very fact that disciplining both in a positive and a negative way, and both in a verbal and in a physical way. Arthur Pink wrote:

Divine discipline is God correcting in love, not smiting in wrath.

When God punishes His kids, it’s never for their destruction. It’s always for their maturity and their holiness. Proverbs views discipline as a necessary feature of the educational process, which helps form a child’s character and sharpen a child’s listening skills.

In Proverbs, the point is to get your children to listen to your voice the first time. If you say, "Johnny, come here," Johnny will come. However, when you’re doing it the second or third time, Johnny’s in control, not you, and his listening skills are not where they ought to be. You need to sharpen those skills. For Johnny, that mean that he needs to most likely be taken care of in the private matter – in the woodshed matter.

Discipline is not always for disobedience. It’s also for the good of the recipient. Let’s look at some Biblical examples explaining the definition that God uses divine discipline in at least three ways in the word of God. The first way is simply that of correction. God’s going to correct behavior. In fact, God uses discipline for personal transgression.

If there is sin in your life, He’s going to correct you, especially if you don’t do the correcting yourself. A good example of that is found in the word of God in the life of David. When David sinned with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, and brought her into his bed, the Bible says some things to David that are noteworthy. 2 Samuel 12:10-15 says:

‘Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ ¹¹“Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. ¹²‘Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.’” ¹³Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. ¹⁴“However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die.” ¹⁵So Nathan went to his house.

In other words, the discipline given to David was corrective discipline, not judgmental. If it was judgmental David should die on the spot. He committed murder, so the loss is that you die. If you commit adultery, the law says you are to die. However, he didn’t die. God forgave him and corrected him.

Of course, sin always has consequences, and the consequences for David was the loss of an infant son by Bathsheba. Several of his sons caused many serious problems within his life, and the sword never departed from David’s house. However, the result drew David closer to God, and it helped him to grow and mature by returning back to the narrow path. When you read the Psalms, you read how David was corrected and trained by God in that way. What is he right in Psalm 119:71:75 says:

⁷¹It is good for me that I was afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.

⁷⁵I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are righteous, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.

Again, David took the Lord’s discipline and used it in a right way. He was corrected, and he never went that way again, so it was very profitable for David even though there were consequences of sin. The sorrow that came from his own son was on going, and of course David was a king, he had much responsibility, and he was to be an example.

If you and I don’t take the weights that hold us down, the sins that easily entangles us, and we don’t take care of them, then the encouragement will come when God disciplines you for not taking care of what you ought to take care of. He is telling us:

Listen, as believers, there are two general areas that we must pay close attention to and be deliberate in, which is to lay those things aside.

Hebrews 12:1 says:

Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Those very things that weigh us down in running the race are not necessarily sinful, but we must strip them from ourselves because they impede our performance. Last time, I mentioned that they could be habits, earthly pleasures, leisurely fun, and spending a lot of time blogging on the internet and Facebook. It could be a craving for good times and entertainment, ordering too many Netflix, and bedding down every night to the entertainment mindset, which doesn’t benefit you and I at all. It just gives us the world stuff in one large dose, and we don’t need that.

Those are some of the things that you and I need to scale down and move out of our life because they’re not profitable for running the race. It could be desire for prosperity and gain. It could be worldly ease and desiring to take the path of least resistance. It could be associations with people, with clubs, and the list goes on and on. These are the weights that keep us back from running the race. We must shed them just as an athlete sheds his tracksuit.

Also, it could also be sin. We need to put off the things that easily entangle us because they hamper us, and they keep us back. Those sins could be anger, hatred, criticism, laziness, covetousness, envy, complaining, grumbling, slander, prayerlessness, hypocrisy, pride, thanklessness, and unbelief. So, the Lord is saying to us:

Listen, if you don’t take care of them and lay them aside on your own, I will step in, as a heavenly Father, and I will correct you. I’m not going to let my children act like that.

We live in a world where if you talk about spanking or corporal discipline, you’re in trouble, and as believers, we need to be wise in that area. However, what worldview is inclined to think that it’s wrong to spank a child? All the worldview is inclined. Simply, they have the wrong view of God.

In Scripture, God’s telling us what he does and what he wants us to do, and He is saying it is right. In fact, spanking is quick. To tell child, "go to your room and don’t come out until you figure out what you done wrong,” How does that help anybody? How about spanking being quick, clean, and definitive? Because you have done wrong and you broke the rule, you get a spanking for it.

Then, the child gets a spanking, and before they go out of the room, you hug them and tell them you love them. Five minutes later, they’re bouncing off the walls having a great time because they paid their penalty. However, they are learning in the process.

To send a kid into a corner and stick their head in the corner is humiliating. To send them to the room to figure out what they’re supposed to do and have them count to ten is all ridiculous. It does not amend behavior, but its seeds bitterness and anger towards the parent.

However, God’s takes care of it in the right way. If we have a right view of God, God’s parenting style is using suffering to discipline his children. It’s using leverage for pain to drive out rebellion and disobedience that’s in that child’s heart. Nothing’s going to drive it away unless you, as a parent, apply the needed pressure at the right time. Keeping in mind, the character of each child being different right and knowing what age that it ends.

Discipline starts with a rebellious, strong-willed child. It could be a lot in the beginning, but as they learn, it becomes less and less and less. By seven or eight years old, it’s almost rare to have corporal discipline because you taught them how to listen to your voice. If they learn to listen to voice, they will learn to listen to God’s voice. Then, they will learn listen to voices of authority.

A second way is prevention. God sends discipline into our life by way of preventing us from often sin. A great example is when God gave Paul a messenger of Satan to buffing him in the flesh. Why did God do that? He did it for prevention. It says in 2 Corinthians 12:7:

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself!

It is preventing Paul to exalt himself, and for others to exalt him. He was given this thorn in the flesh. Paul was caught up to the third heaven. He saw things that no man ever saw. Therefore, he knew things no man ever knew before Paul, so he was giving this thorn in the flesh to keep him in his place.

Paul was given the discipline to keep prevent him from being proud. The affliction never left Paul. He prayed three times and God said no because it was needed for him in God’s ministry and service to Him. As a result, the thorn made the apostle more conscious of his weaknesses and God’s strength. In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Paul says:

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. ¹⁰Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

There is the principle: we all must learn, as Christians, that when you are weak, God is strong. When you are strong and exhausting yourself, God is usually not involved. It’s usually your own flesh, right? It’s a strange principle to learn. Nonetheless it’s true.

When you realize who you are and who God is and what God is doing in your life, you’re often amazed when God even uses you. God can use you, but you give God the glory. He wants to use us, but He doesn’t want you to exalt yourself. It doesn’t matter what gift is given you or what measure of gift he’s giving you, God always gets the glory.

Sometimes, He sends discipline for preventing you from sinning, which could be a handicap in your life, a person in your life, or a circumstance in your life. He’s holding you back, and it could be a short period of time or for a whole lifetime like Paul. Nonetheless, God has done it.

A third way God does it is by way of instruction. The great example here is Job. When God sent something on him, he had all the suffering any man would ever want on this Earth. He had family bereavement, he lost property, and he had grievous, bodily afflictions. They all came fast and one after another. In the end, Job learned that he was instructed in the character and ways of God Almighty. Job 42:3-6 says:

Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ “Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

⁴‘Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will ask You, and You instruct me.’

⁵“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;

⁶Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.”

Secondly, I want to bring up the natural and wrong response to the divine discipline. Meaning, our natural inclination when discipline comes is to resist it, right? It’s to say: Why me? Why Now? Why to this extent? Proverbs 3:11 gives us two warnings:

My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD Or loathe His reproof.

The first warning is to not reject. You have been learning all these things about the Lord, so don’t reject when He steps in and He corrects you, prevents sin, or instructions you in something. Puritan, William Arno has an insightful definition of the word:

It means to make light of anything and cast aside as if it had no meaning and no power.

In fact, Hebrews 12:5 translates it a little bit different than Proverbs:

and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM;

Arno went on to say:

The affliction comes on the particular suffer, and the suffer only looks to the immediate cause and they look no further. They refuse often to look to the higher links in the chain and refuse to make a communion with God.

In other word, they are not asking:

Lord, what are you doing in my life right now? What weights are holding me down that I’m not putting off that you want me to put off? What sins so easily entangle me?

Also, they’re understanding this:

Lord, You’re My Father. You’re not doing this to harm me, but You’re doing this for my good, for my correction, for greater holiness, and for a greater walk with you. Then, let me respond to it in the correct manner, not with a negative rejection.

That’s an improper attitude, and that’s failing to ask the right questions. Secondly, in Proverbs 3:11, he says toot loath His reproof. Loathing means to be grieved by what’s happening in your life. Hebrews 12:5 records it as:

…NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM;

You get weakened by it because you think of all wrong. There are several ways in which we reject and loath God’s discipline. Number one, we do it by callousness. Meaning, a lack of regard of Gods have admonitions and instructions. We always have to look at our life as God is involved with us in every little detail about us.

Peter says that it’s not strange for trials and tribulations to come in, and God uses that for the good. That’s normal Christianity, but in modern-day flow of Evangelical thought, it’s not normal today. Biblically, it is normal to have those things happening to us, so you view them as common or as inevitable troubles. You never received the heavenly father has some special design in them just for you. Thus, discipline hardens the heart, but is intended to melt the heart

Secondly, it is complaining, grumbling, murmuring, belly aching, and under the breath remarks. You asked yourself:

Why do I deserve this? I don’t deserve this kind of treatment. I’m supposed to be a Christian.

You become envious because others around you seem to be carrying a lighter load than you, so Christians need to take heed because God does not go lightly with those who murmur or grumble. God will keep the pressure on your life and the discipline in your life until the behavior is amended, and the sin is repented of.

Even going to get other people to pray you out of the distress in that time, is of no avail. God will keep you there until He trains you in His school of education by way of corporal discipline.

Another way of responding in the wrong way is carelessness, which is to fail to mend your ways and habits. You just despise God’s rod whether he sent sickness, troubles, bereavements, and you do not come to set them apart by prayer for examination. When God’s discipline comes, we are to prayerfully examine our life.

That’s one thing the Lord’s table gives us an opportunity to do every month. You come to examine yourself, so look at yourself right now: what troubles and things have come into your life in the last couple weeks or month? If you’re a believer, do you think God had nothing to do with that? Do you think that He’s taken by surprise? Have you considered yourself and have you examined yourself to see what you need to correct? Then, you just want to give up, and you say:

God it’s too much for me to bear.

Yet, we know in Scripture, that God will never give you more than you’re able to bear. They may even respond:

Well, I guess I’m not a child of God.

Therefore, they want to quit. Not that they do quit, but they want to quit. In man’s every rejection, they fail to see God, the Father, lovingly at work. They take their eyes off the goal. What is the goal anyway? In Romans 8:28-29, it says:

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. ²⁹For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren

Isn’t that goal? Then, Psalm 34:19 says:

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
But the LORD delivers him out of them all.

God’s not going to keep you there forever, and that’s a good way to look at it. Left to ourselves, we tend to suppress the God-given knowledge and wisdom about discipline. Rather, we learn usually to run away or be taking up by our old, evil imaginations that want to go into another direction. When everyone tends to obey the way of the good Father’s wisdom reluctantly, defiantly, or sometimes gives a good show of external compliance, but fails to insubordinate heart before other people, then that is a heart disposition that we want to avoid.

Today, you may need to pull some weeds. You may need to lay aside some ways. You may need to forsake some sin, and your attitude towards God’s reproof should always be that of humility and teachability because that’s exactly what the Lord wants you to do. Look at trials as proof of God’s love. Look at trials as proof that God wants to purge you, prune you, and purify you.

That’s his intention, and you’re not going to get away from it. As a believer, you can’t run from it. Job 5:17-18 says:

“Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves, So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. ¹⁸“For He inflicts pain, and gives relief; He wounds, and His hands also heal.

God always has a purpose, and he never does things randomly. Then, there’s a third thing in Proverbs 3:12 and that is the nurture encouragement of divine discipline:

For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.

I must admit that it is hard to see discipline as good, but hardships, testing, sickness, and grief is the mark of love for the child of God. It’s to show when we respond correctly, us delighting in God and God delighting in us. Thus, God intervenes because He loves us and wants us to grow and mature in faith and in trust. In Revelation 3:19-20, it says:

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent. ²⁰‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

If you take the Lords discipline correctly and you learn the lessons, then you’re back into fellowship with God never breaking the relationship of ongoing Fellowship. You can’t break the relationship with the Father that’s going to be forever eternal.

Therefore, discipline should be accepted as part as His mysterious educational purposes because His discipline is always for our good and His glory. No matter how clearly God marks out the path of righteousness, some miss it, some are careless, some are stubborn, some have left the path, and they need to be brought back to the path. As a caring father, the Lord needs to discipline them, point out their mistakes, and return them to the right path.

Love is always God’s motivation for correction. If we take it correctly and if we respond to we correctly, then the Bible says that we are well pleasing to him. You are well pleasing in His sight. We end up taking more delight in God. We also discover, maybe on a higher level, that He loves us more than we ever thought he did.

Also, we are His children, and the seed and spirit of God is in you. No one could snatch you out of His hand and no one could take you out of His family. You are there forever. Maybe you’re learning more of that, and that He is your Father. Even if you didn’t have a father or you had a bad example of a father, when you come to the word of God, you find out that the heavenly Father, who is now your Father because of the Lord Jesus Christ, is a good Father.

He knows how to bestow good gifts on His children. In His educational process, He will not hold back corporal discipline from you if we need it. In fact, if you are without discipline, you are illegitimate children. Meaning, you don’t belong to God’s family.

Everyone, who is a believer and names the name of Jesus Christ, will be disciplined by God the Father himself, so be looking for how God is working. He is our Father, and God disciplines the wise for their own good and profit. So, what’s the reward for the patient and grateful acceptance of reproof? It is a deepening awareness of one’s affectionate relationship to God.

We are to find God at the center of our life and understand that God has to be first in all things. In a general sense, our culture and even the church has moved away from interpreting the suffering of life as part of God’s necessary discipline. They moved away from that. There has been a failure to learn from our struggles, which is something of the character of Christ. God won’t let us go on that way.

Correction is for the child’s good. In fact, this is the principles that have been laid out long time ago in Scripture. Deuteronomy 8:5 tells us:

Thus you are to know in your heart that the LORD your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.

Then, Proverbs 13:24 says:

He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.

Meaning, you’re not going to let up until this behavior is amended and corrected and that’s when you love your children. Sometimes, it’s not always corporal. Sometimes, it’s by voice commands. Sometimes, it’s pressing them to do what’s right or the right thing to do. There are ways to discipline other than that as your children get older.

For instance, my kids’ hands are very sore because I had them write many times about certain behaviors that were wrong or sit there and write me five hundred times, "No, I will not talk back to my mother." All five hundred lines had to be straight. If there was a crooked line, then they would start over again. Usually, I would pick a nice sunny day to do that.

There are ways to discipline that is wise, good, and amends behavior that gets the right thoughts into your children’s heads and hearts, so they do what is right. When it comes to discipline, don’t resort to the ridiculous things the world tells you. Nothing grieves me more than when I see a mother screaming at her kid in the food store because her kids pulling up all the boxes of the sweetest cereal that they can find and putting it into the cart. Then, she’s yelling at the top of her lungs, which drives him to kicking on the floor.

All you have to do is reign that in by discipline and that behavior will be gone in three times. As Christians, do you believe that? If you don’t, you won’t do it. If you believe it, then you believe that God’s word is true, and God’s word is not only true, but it works. Then, you’ll implement it in your life, and you will help other people to implement it in their life.

In conclusion, we learned at least several things. Number one, suffering is really God’s means of discipline. The corporal discipline part of it is necessary in God’s school of training, so that the disciple becomes mature and fruit-baring. In Hebrews, we have the same thing happening. God wants us to have a vibrant faith. He wants to us to live a Holy life. God, the ruler of the universe permits suffering to fall on all men in discriminately, but the God of mercy stands by to make the suffering God’s love instrument in training every one of his children until they amend their behavior.

The same stroke may fall on two different people: one for judgement and one for discipline. Nonetheless, God will use what he needs to use in your life. It may be different than it is in my life and maybe for a different reason than for your life, but He will use whatever He needs to use to bring us to the place where we amend our Behavior.

Number two, discipline and suffering prove God’s fatherly love. It doesn’t prove that God is against us, but it proves God is for us and he has our good in mind. When God disciplines us through suffering, it is a sign of His love for us, not with unfairness, anger, or indifference, but to learn from the pressure that is applied to them. Hebrews 12:8 says:

But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

I can proclaim with confidence, whatever the providence maybe that turns your joy to grief, it is the chastising hand of God. God will keep you there until you learn.

Lastly, discipline suffering reveals what is in your heart. If I spurn the discipline, or if I look at the discipline as in as an offense by grumbling, murmuring, or bellyaching, then I’m not accepting it. In Proverbs, a wise son accepts the discipline of the Lord because he knows everything that goes behind it and he knows the character of his Father, who is implementing it in his life. God is for us, not against us.

As we submit to a loving, all-wise Father who directs us in the right way, that’s wisdom. Again, David writes in Psalm 119:67:71:

⁶⁷Before I was afflicted I went astray,
But now I keep Your word.

⁷¹It is good for me that I was afflicted,
That I may learn Your statutes.

Did you see the response that David had? He had a proper response to God’s discipline? When we learn that, we learn to be more aware of God’s presence in our life. You may ask yourself: well, Pastor, have you ever been disciplined by the Lord? Yes. I have several times. One time, it was for three months.

When I was in the church, the Pastor asked me if God had called me to preach yet, and my response was, "I’m never going to preach. I’m never going to get up front of people. There’s no way I’m doing that." Every time he had said that to me, that was my response. I don’t know what he saw, but there was no way I was doing that.

I was in the Marine Corps for four years, and I was never sick in the Marine Corps. I go to start my first semester of college, and I went to the doctor with a sore through. I thought, "No big deal. I’ll get some antibiotics and it will be over with." Then, the doctor says to me that for the next couple of months I had to stay home, so I went home.

 

For two months, I kicked, complained, grumbled at what was going on in my life. When I went back to the doctors, he told me to stay home for another month, so the third month I began to think, as I was reading through the Bible, "wait a minute… maybe God’s talking to me here." Once I made that shift and started thinking about what I was doing in my life and what I was refusing to do in my life, that’s when I began to get better.

When I came to that point, I was in church the next week, and I told the pastor that God had called me. That Thursday, I preached on University Avenue in Newark, and I did that for a couple of years. So, when sickness comes, or something comes into my life, the first thing I’m asking what do you want me to do? Do you want me to change? What do you want me to get out? Who do you want me to see? Amen, God is good. It’s all for good. Let’s pray:

Lord, thank You for Your people. I pray that You bless them. I pray, Lord, that You would give them a very sensitive spirit to listen to You when You have to step in and discipline them as a loving Father. I pray, Lord, they wouldn’t make the mistake I made. I pray, Lord, that they would quickly go to You in prayer for examination, and that You would show them what they need to drop off, what sin they need to repent of, or whatever You’re calling them to do in their life. I pray that You would show them clearly and bless them. I pray, You would help them to respond. Not in a way where they reject Your discipline or loath it, but in the way, they accept it. Do that for all of us, Lord, for we know that it would be more than one time that You discipline us. I pray, Lord, You would make us more sensitive to the word of God and to what You’re doing in our lives, so we can be used effectively in the Kingdom and the building of Your church. Again, thank You for being such a good Heavenly Father to us, such a kind Heavenly Father, and such a long-suffering Heavenly Father. Thank You Father that You didn’t withhold the greatest gift of Your own son to die in our place, so we can be set free from the wrath of God and be made right with You based on our Lord’s righteousness, not our own. Also, we can have a relationship with You in the family of God. Thank You, Lord, it proves to us when we’re disciplined, we truly are Your children and we thank You for this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Full Transcript:

Let’s take our Bibles this morning and let’s turn to Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12 is a great epistle that is in the Word of God. It debunks  almost every religious system.If not all religious systems to the true One.

Hebrews 12:1-3 says,

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 of the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you this morning for this Word. I pray that You would use it. To bring it to our hearts in a way that shows us the grand plan of God.

And the power that we have is believers to endure this race that You have called us to and to finish it. May you receive the glory this morning. In Christ name, Amen.

Last time I left you with the thought that we are God’s unfinished symphony. That the final movement of the symphony, that which completes the whole, will not sound forth until we stand before the Throne of God and of the Lamb in our glorified bodies.

This always must be kept in faiths site. That even faiths reward in this life is only partial fulfillment of the promise. The fullness of what God has in mind for us would not be known until we stand before God beyond the grave.

That’s why we need faith. We’ll never fully realize what God has for us in this life, only in heaven. If we look to the end of Hebrews 11:39-40 it says that they,

..did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.

It is our turn to live on this earth and to endure by faith to believe the unseen, to trust God promises, to wait and hope expectantly on our great God and Savior who will bring His promises to an ultimate fulfillment. I guarantee it based on His Word. Why? Because we have a great cloud of witnesses that have finished the race and are waiting for us to finish.

In verse one of chapter twelve it says,

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,

Those are all the people that I’ve mentioned already in chapter 11. All those people who have been listed there and that’s not all of them.

That’s only some of them. It’s the kind of faith the Ancients had and that faith enabled them to endure through all kinds of difficult situations. Not an easy life.

None of them. Difficult life right up until the end. Here in verse number one, we are grouped in with those who have gone before us. It says:

Therefore, since we have we have

so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us..

We’re grouped in with this whole group of those who have gone before us, who live by faith. And They did it, you do it. What they have, you have and we have more. Why? Because your many ways we’re like them. Our faith comes to us in the same way.

Our faith has the same object. The true and only God. The creator of the heaven and earth Who’s given us a special revelation in the scripture. Our conflicts are similar because we both live in a sin cursed world.

Its current thoughts are being pressed upon every generation to oppose god and oppose God’s rule. Our weaknesses are the same. We are blood and flesh. We’re going to die. We get sick we bleed.

We can get hurt. We need strength from on high. Our spiritual needs are the same. We need a savior. They were before the cross. We are after the cross. We both need a savior. Old and New Testament both looking at the cross. You’re saved the same way.

Abraham was saved by faith looking to Christ. We are saved the same way. Therefore, we both need a savior. All people need a savior. Our hope is the same which are God promises.

Our destination is the same, the city of God. In all the Old Testament figures, these were examples of enduring faith. Even though their life of faith is presented as unfulfilled. The goal of their journey and the fulfillment of their faith was to be found in the person of Jesus Christ and so it will be for us who live right now.

We are called to emulate their faith. We are called to press on, just like them. We are called to finish what God has called us. What has He called us to? He’s called us to a race.

All of us know something about races. Really, this is a foot race. Why are we to press on in faith? There are three reasons that I want to let you in on.

The first one is this, We are to press on because of the race. Look at the last part of Hebrews 12:1,

..and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Who is He talking to? He is talking to believers. He’s saying listen you’re going to race now. Before you were in a race as a hell bound sinner. You were in that race. Now you’re in a new race.

You all have to run it. God wants us to run it well, but there’s a way to run it well. There is a proper way to run a well. If you remember back in Hebrews 10:36, we all have a great essential need. What is that need? Hebrews 10:36 says,

For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done all the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

That is what we need in this life. We need endurance. He uses the word in that passage as a verb meaning to persevere. To absolutely and emphatically persevere under all kinds of misfortunes and trials. While you’re doing that to hold fast your faith in Christ to hold fast your faith in the promise.

Hear the word in chapter 12 is in its noun form. It means steadfastness. It means constancy. It means endurance. Ours is a strenuous race. That the mans steady perseverance, constancy, and endurance and you’re in that race.

Now if you are a believer. You will want to take special note about three important facts concerning the race. The first one is found in verse one. It says,

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us now.

The first reason why we run this race is because we have witnesses. Someone who’s bore witness to something for our sake. Cloud here refers to a large massive flock of faithful people that have gone ahead of us and they are now in a sense a large heavenly flock.

At any time on the earth there’s just kind of a small earthly flock. They have finished their in heaven, there in the great crowd of those who’ve gone before us and live by faith and their innocence waiting for us.

The crowd of witnesses they are not surrounding us like spectators. They have gone on to their heavenly rest, but their past life that has been cataloged for us in Hebrews 11.

Their death, the way they died, how they looked at the future, how they looked at eternity eternity still speaks to us about what it means to be faithful and what faith really is. That is what i’ve been preaching on.

That’s what it is, when you look at their life. This is what faith is, this is how it looks when it’s lived out in your life. They were witnesses who have gone before providing meaning to our present struggle. They were witnesses who have gone before us to bear testimony to the certainty of our success.

They finished. They are with the Lord in heaven. We can finish. See it is an encouragement to us. The certainty of success in this race is guaranteed to the believer, but it doesn’t mean that God just does everything for you and that He runs the race for you. He doesn’t that. He says you run the race. You learn to live by faith in the promises I’ve given you, in the word I’ve given you.

You learn to trust Me in this life and show it in your life. That’s what faith is. Show it. Let me see evidence of how you live by faith.

They bore witness to the possibility of a life of faith. It’s possible live by faith. Even though when you look in the Word of God and you look at your life, it seems impossible to do what you’re supposed to do.

Here is this great cloud of people in heaven who’s done it and they’ve done it on less than we have. They didn’t have the whole canon of scripture.

They didn’t even have the cross yet in the sense, we have it. We have way more than them. That means that our race is more informed than their race and they made it.

The possibility of faith and living by faith is real and they bore witness to the faithfulness of Gods promise. That’s before the incarnation. They showed living by faith in God’s promise and God’s presence and God’s power is all worth it.

I don’t think any one of them would have said, ” I would do it different.” Every one of them are not coming back. Why would you want to? Every one of them are there in God’s presence.

See we run this race because we have witnesses that have gone before us for our encouragement and have left us with tremendous legacy to carry on the baton and keep going.

There’s a second fact in this verse about this race and it’s the nature of the race. Look what it says in Hebrews 12:1,

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of

witnesses surrounding us,

let us also lay aside every encumbrance..

and then it says,

and the sin which is so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Now the nature of the race is simply this that it is a race and that you are in it. I’m in it. You’re in it. Where to give all the effort that we can to cross the finish line, but get this it is not a race to determine how fast you run.

Neither is it a race that is competition with others. It is simply a race to determine success or failure. Success or failure on reaching the goal. The point of the race is not the one who is first. Because we have a great cloud of witnesses already there. The point of the race is finishing. You started it out, you believe in Christ, You’ve discovered from the Word of God that you’re in a foot race.

The point is finish the race. You’re not done until you’re in heaven. Don’t worry about that that’s already covered. It’s your concern to be responsible. It’s your concern to run the race.

So you see we need to think that the Christian life is a foot race. It’s more like a cross country race than any other kind of race I can think of. If you ever ran cross-country, cross country races have ditches.

They have rugged fields filled with briars. They have hills and steep declines. They have briars and protruding roots that you trip over. A cross country race has has all kinds of obstacles.

That’s how life is. That’s how the Christian life is. God never said that He would give you a bouquet of roses. He never promised that in scripture. He never promised that you would be healthy, wealthy and fine scripture.

Never. He promised this, that He will give you faith and He would enable you to run the race so you don’t run it on your own will power and your own power of the flesh.

You can’t do that. He promised that He would run the race with us. The purpose of this race is just to finish the course. Finish this long-distance race, despite the hardships, despite the exhaustion, despite the pain, despite what you’re going to go through because you’re a believer in this world.

Just finish. Part of running this race well is removing those things which will slow you down and hinder you from making good progress. See there is a next thing that the Word of God tells us about this race. The nature of this race and that it has hindrances to it.

We have to remove those hindrances. In fact, there are two general areas, which we must pay close attention. Then be deliberate about and responsible about laying those things aside.

What am I talking about. In Hebrews 12:1 it says,

..let us also lay aside every encumbrance…

Let me just stop there. Every encumbrance and encumbrance is a weight. That’s the literal word for it.

Weight, bulk, mass. Here translated in encumbrance to burden. It’s really an athlete in the ancient times who would strip for action both by the removal of extra body weight by rigorous training and by removal of all clothing before he runs. Therefore, nothing would hold him back.

What must we do according to this passage? We must strip off everything that impedes performance in our life. If you’re going to travel far you travel light. You probably don’t do it the first time but the second and third time when you travel long you travel light. You know why? It’s a burden to carry all those luggages all over the place, right? If you can buy it there, you buy it there. If you can send it ahead, you send it ahead, but you don’t carry it.

I’ve learned that. I’m learning that. The first time you go on vacation with kids and carseats. There’s more stuff in that thing just to go and spend a week somewhere.

It’s amazing. You got to get rid of the stuff. Before you were a Christian. These things did not hinder you. These things were part of your life. Now that you’re in the race, they must be discarded.

A hindrance is something otherwise good that weighs you down spiritually. In other words, it is not necessarily in this part of the passage of scripture sin that were talking about here. We are talking about looking to yourself.

Looking at your life, you now have come into this race. You now have trusted in Christ. You are now a believer. You have the Word of God in your hands now. You have the spirit of God living in you. Therefore, now you’re beginning to look at your life.

The Bible is saying listen. These are the things you must discard from your life. What are they? There’s no list here. Just look at your life. You have to make a massive adjustment as to how you use your time? what you think about? How you use your talents? How you use your resources? You have to think about all those things.

In fact, just look at your life. Look at the habits that you had when you come into the christian life. You may have to get rid of that habit. It may be just a habit of being lazy.

It may be the habit of being self-centered about everything you do. It could be earthly pleasures. That you were so involved with. It could just be your desire to have a leisurely fun.

You work and on Friday, it’s fun time. It could be just being on Facebook all the time and trying to figure out everybody’s information. What’s going on IN everybody’s life. It just consumed your time.

You may have to get rid of that or scale it down to a manageable. Why because it impedes your spiritual growth. It holds you back in the race. In fact, it sometimes gives you negative information and information for gossip that you have to get out of your life.

It could be blogging, internet stuff and video games, craving for good times, entertainment or self indulgences, or prosperity you desire to get enough money. So you can what? Be comfortable, live nice, right? So all you do is work to get money and get game.

So you can have worldly ease and you can take the path of least resistance. Well, if you’re in this foot race, and it’s like a cross country race, you have to be ready for the ditch in front of you.

You have to be ready for the tree that fell down not too far along the way. You have to be ready for those things. If you got too many weights on you, you’re not going to get there.

You’re not going to make it. You’re going to fall on your face. You have to look at your life. You have to say, “what is in my life that is not necessarily sinful that needs to go because it hinders my spiritual growth.”

Hinders my testimony for Christ. It hinders how much time I give to the Lord into God’s people remember when you became a Christian is no longer about you. It’s about us.

That’s why He’s using in this passage of scripture us us us us. It’s the let us bowl scripture. It’s the church. It’s about us, together, running the race. Keeping each other in the race.

It could be that you need to lay aside associations. Clubs you belong to. Groups you used to hang out with and maybe still do. Friendships. When I became a Christian lot of my friends went.

I gave them the gospel and I never saw them again. My life was different. I didn’t do what I used to do anymore. I didn’t like and desire what I should do anymore.

Friendships have to go. It doesn’t mean when you get stronger and grow you couldn’t have contact with them again but inn this whole different way, whole different manner of relationship because now you know what you ought to do, you know, what’s going on in your life, you know, you’re in this race and you want to run well. Sometimes friends have to go.

You can’t spend the time you used to spend you know why? They are living a totally self-centered and worldly life and their pursuits are totally different than yours. If you hang around with them, you will become like them.

Doesn’t mean that you’re not a believer, it means that they’re holding you back from what you could be and the spiritual growth God wants to accomplish in your life.

It will finally go because you’ll finally realize that groups of friends or other people, whatever it may be, the list can go on and on, you better look at your life.

I don’t know you, you know you, It is different for you than me. Along the way start discarding the stuff. So that you can run the race and it doesn’t mess up your mind.

So that it doesn’t clog up your thoughts. So the cross ever becomes clearer as you dump off stuff yourself wanted all the time. See, these are all weights and they keep us back from running the race.

We must shed them as an athlete sheds their tracksuit. When they go to the starting mark, you always see the athlete taking off his tracksuit getting down to the skimpiest little thing possible.

Why? Don’t want any resistance. That goal line. That’s all they have in their mind. Is that goal line. They have in mind in a sprint race of just finishing quickly.

In a long-distance Race too, it’s about the long haul. It’s about the pace. It’s about the obstacles along the way. It’s about thinking about your strategy. It’s about listen I got to watch out for my body.

I got to watch out for what I’m doing. I got to watch out if I have enough water. I got to watch out for all these things . Why? Because the goal is to finish. That’s what the goal is and that’s what the Christian life is.

It’s like some long clean robe in those days. It would have been not a tracksuit. It would have been some kind of long robe. That probably went down to the ground to keep their body warm.

That robe would be restrictive and they would have to unravel it from them and they would have to throw it off so that they could run. Could you imagine running in a robe? You would be falling all over your face in just no time.  That’s the point. Get rid of those thing in your life. What are they? Start looking. If you haven’t been looking, look. This is practical stuff here.

Look in your life and get it out. Get it out. There is a second thing it says in verse number one, not only are we to lay aside every encumbrance, every weight, every burden, but we are to lay also aside the sin. Notice what it says,

which easily entangles us.

Little qualifier on that. We’re to lay aside the sin that easily entangles us. The word actually connected to this word

easily

means surround you.

Ensnares you. Just a few buttons need to be pressed and you’re off in the sin. It doesn’t take long. What is it? By way of illustration. An illustration from the sundew plant.

You may not heard of that. It has a great illustration of entangling sin. Sundew plant is really a plant that flies like because it has a sweet nectar connected to it.

It oozes with sweet nectar. Of course, you know anything that is sweet you will have a lot of flies. When we were over there in Algeria they told us it was fly season.

I didn’t see too many flies. I put my half-eaten apple in front of me and I looked over and I couldn’t see the Apple. It’s one of those pictures there. They all were drawn to the apple and in a desert place there are not too many apples you’re going to find anywhere. Here the fly lands on the leaf of the sundew plant to taste one of the glands that grow there. Instantly three crimson tip finger like hairs bend over and touch the flies wings, holding it firm by a sticky grasp.

The fly struggled mightily to get free but the more it struggles the more hopelessly it is coated with adhesive. Soon the fly relaxes. In the flies mind things could be worse.

It extends its tongue and feast on the sundew sweetness while it is held there more firmly by  more sticky tentacles. When the captive is entirely at the plants mercy the edges of the leaf fold inward forming a closed fist.

Two hours later. The fly is an empty sucked piece of skin. Isn’t that what sin is? Isn’t that how sin does it? Just kind of slowly get its sticky hands around you.

You kind of enjoy it, sweet, pleasurable. Then what happens? It entangles you and you can’t get out. Sin is bondage. That’s what it is. The Bible is saying to us here.

Listen, you need to

lay aside every sin that easily entangles you.

You must put it all, put off everything that hampers you from running this race.

These could be any sin, anything particular to you. That easily ensnares you. You have to ask yourself what sin easily ensnares me? Could it be anger? Little chip on your shoulder all the time and somebody knocks it off and you’re ready. You’re off.

That needs to be put aside. If you are a believer you can put it aside. Hatred may be?You always have the secret hatred going on for people in your heart.

They may not know it but you know it. I don’t like that person. I don’t like this girl. I don’t like that student. I don’t like this person sitting next to me.

I don’t like my coworkers. You do all that kind of stuff and yet you have to realize those are the very things you need to get out of your life.

Their sin before God. Criticism always. I never saw the spiritual fruit of criticism in scripture. Have you? It’s just not there. It doesn’t mean that we don’t objectively make arguments or in a good way help other people by correcting their behavior, by admonishment and rebuke. Criticism is different than that. Critical always critical about everything.

You’re the sun’s out it should be rain today. It is raining today the sun should be out. No matter what you say somebody will take the opposite approach. Maybe it’s covetousness.

You want what your neighbors have but you know, you probably will never get it, but you still covered and wish you had what they had. Maybe it’s laziness.

You’re just not motivated about anything. Especially not this christian race. Envy and lust. We live in a culture that feeds our eyes with images and sexual innuendo that temps both men, women and young people alike and it is entangling.

It needs to get out. It needs to be laid aside. Finally, why? because you know it’s holding you back. You know that it needs to be out. It could be slander, complaining, grumbling, hypocrisy, pride or just an unthankful spirit about everything. It could be greed. It could be as Hebrews brought out, unbelief. I know this is true but I really am not believing it. That’s not faith. That’s sin and unbelief leads to all kinds of sin. It leads to idolatry because you will end up making your own God and worshiping that God and call that God Jesus.

It’s not the Jesus of the Bible. It’s your own made idol Jesus. We have to be careful and cause a root of bitterness to rise up in us. Which causes a multitude sin to come out.

Whatever it is, whatever must be laid aside and left behind. Please do that. Why? It will hinder you from running the race. It will hold you back from running the race and no conscientious runner is going to keep that kind of burden in their life.

Many times runners who are really serious or going to take a long distance run, they don’t even have contact with people a week before they run. So they have no negative stuff coming into their mind.

Their full focus could be on running and seeing the gold and finishing. They lay aside those things for the purpose of finishing the race. The word of God often brings up, brings to the attention of the readers of scripture, these very principles.

For example, take your bible for a minute. Let’s look at a few passages. Romans chapter 13 Paul writing to the Roman church at the end of much theology that he is given in Romans begins in chapter 12, more and more in a  practical level.

He says to the church in Romans 13:12-14,

The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.

He’s staying there listen, if you want to grow and offer your body, in chapter 12, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable. You may know the good and perfect will of God.

Then you have to lay these things out, get them out of your life and lay them down for good. Lay them down and leave them there. Don’t go back and pick them up. A runner never goes back.

They always go forward. There’s another passage Colossians 3:8-10. Paul’s saying something quite similar to them and he says this,

But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him

Put on righteousness. Put on the right garment. You can’t be walking around, in a sense, spiritually naked.

There’s always the principle of lay this aside and don’t let there be a void. Fill that void with the right things. With the right way of living. In Ephesians 4:22-24 again Paul is writing to this church about living in the heavenlys. He says in 22-24,

that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

James 1:21 says,

Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your soul.

1 Peter 2:1 says,

Therefore putting aside..

He is saying, if you don’t want the sincere desire of the milk of the word to be distinguished or extinguished or put down, then you got to lay aside these sins. Sometimes you can’t hear the Word of God because you got all this garbage in your life.

You got all this stuff in your life that you have to drop off. He says this to them, 1 Peter 2:1-2

Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander, like newborn babies,long for the pure milk of the word,

He’s not saying here that a newborn baby longs for the put milk of word and that new born babies don’t need that anymore. He is saying that you, who are believers, always should be like newborn babies and long for the pure milk of the word. The unadulterated milk of the word. The word that hasn’t been fooled around with by men.

That’s what you need to desire. That’s what christians want. They want the Word of God. That’s what’s going to sanctify you and set you apart more and more to God.

In fact, it’s going to cause you to lay aside those weights. It says it says in 1 Peter 2:2

…by it you may grow in respect to salvation,..

This race. It’s far more important than you think because it has eternal consequences. It even shows who you are. It shows your desire on who you serve. It shows in your life what you love and what you’re not willing to spend your time and your money on. That’s what it shows All those things are very clear in your life and in my life.

Therefore, you need to lay them aside. Everything that handicaps you must be cast off and laid aside so that you are not needlessly hindered but run at peak performance.

That’s what he’s saying here in this book. These things, and things like them, can no longer be our focus. Look at Hebrews 12:2 We’re to look at ourselves but if we look at ourself too long, we’re going to get in trouble. He says in verse 2 very clearly that we are to press on because of the source and focus of the race. That is my second point. What is that focus? Simply this fixing our eyes on who? Jesus. Look to yourselves see what you need to drop off. Get rid of your sin and don’t keep your eyes on yourself. Now fix your eyes on Jesus. Focus on Jesus. The word actually warns us to be proactive.

It literally means to turn the eyes away from other things and fix them on something else. Look away from the distractions, look away from the sins and fix your gaze upon Jesus. Why?  because Jesus, our high priest, imparts to us everything necessary to help us finishmthe race. That’s why you’re not going to get your strength from anyone else but Christ Himself. What does the writer in Hebrews mean by that? The second thing we’re to focus is Jesus as the source.

Hebrews 12:2 says we are to fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of faith. He in other words the One who started it.

In Hebrews 2:10 it says there that Jesus is the author of faith. Another way of putting it is He’s the pioneer of faith. He’s the one who is the forerunner, the one who blazes the trail.

Hebrews 2:10 says,

For it was fitting for Him, for whom all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through suffering.

The son Jesus Christ had undergone infinite debasement in order to be in a position to meet the need of undeserving sinners. It was fitting for him because the grace that saves hellbound sinners does not come without a price.

Justice must serve a holy God. Payment cannot be simply overlooked. By the grace of God, it was necessary that Jesus fully tasted death for all of us. For what reason? So that He can not only be the starter of the process, but He will be the finisher.

That’s why it says it and verse number two that he is the author, the starter, the beginning but He is the perfecter the completer, and the one who finishes it.

The completer of faith. In Hebrews 5, the saving role of Christ as high priest accomplishes what no other high priest could have accomplished before Him. It says in Hebrews 5:9,

And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,

It was always through Christ that we would be saved. When Christ gives Himself as a propitiatory sacrifice He satisfies what God requires. God requires the death penalty for sin and is justice demands that life is poured out and Jesus is the one who pours out His life for us.

That means when a repentant person, sinner, obeys Jesus, the source of their eternal salvation, than God’s wrath and justice towards that person is satisfied. How? By faith. It starts by faith. It ends by faith.

Christ sacrifice then set aside sin. Purifies the people who come to Christ and makes them clean. Delivers men and women from judgment from God’s judgment and then averts the wrath of God and sends it off. Deflects it.

Jesus as the great and eternal high priest takes care of everything that pertains to our relationship with God. He also enables us to and empowers us to finish the race.

Hebrews 10:14 says,

For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

Jesus makes us complete and perfect before a holy God. Then sets us apart while we’re in this world for God himself.

The focus has to be on the cross and what the Lord done. Our focus is on Jesus but specifically Hebrews 12:2 It’s on His humanity. It says,

..who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame,..

That’s what He did. That’s His humanity. That’s what Christ came to do that Jesus is the supreme encouragement to persevere in the race. Because Jesus in His humanity  has something laid before Him.

He has joy set before Him. Some people may say what what is that joy? I believe it’s the joy of finishing. It’s the joy of what happens after the work is done. After the race is done. For Jesus to win His race meant the way of the Cross and that’s what Satan was trying to get Jesus not to do. Even speaking through Peter when he says get behind me satan.

He says you’re thinking like men. Jesus just told him I’m going to the cross. I’m going to suffer at the hands of sinful man. I’m going to die there and on the third day on the rise again, but they didn’t get it.

That’s the worldly way. Let’s avoid suffering in the cross and the hard way. Let’s avoid that. Let’s not go there, we will put our heads together and get another way going. That is what we try to do but to win the race Jesus had to go the way of the cross.

Are you willing to drink this cup that I’m about to drink? He said to his disciples. He meant the suffering and death on the cross. The joy set before Him was the glorification, the kingship, the enthronement and bringing many sons to glory once the cross was accomplished.

Abraham could not have been saved unless Jesus died on the cross. No one could have been saved if Jesus didn’t die there on the cross and satisfied the complete and full justice of the Father.

They could have never been saved. What does Jesus do? verse number two, He endures the cross. It’s a race. It’s suffering. It’s extreme suffering. It’s extreme pain. It’s extreme humiliation. For who? for His sin? No. For our sin.

That’s why we look to Jesus. It’s about what He did for us. What He did for us benefits Him. It says there too

despising the shame.

What is that? That is the shame of dying the death of a criminal. When you died on the cross you died as a criminal. As someone who has been found guilty, sentenced, and the penalty was death. It was a public humiliating shame before people who crowded around when someone was crucified. Not only that, the shame of dying the death of a criminal was only one part of it.

The other part of it was to be accounted accursed by God Himself. Cursed is everyone who dies on a tree. The curse of God. Jesus felt all that on the cross for us.

We can’t save ourselves. That’s ridiculous. No religious system that is void of the cross can save anybody. What God demands and what God says in His word is true. To persevere in the face of crucifixion is the supreme example for us. That Jesus sacrifice was so perfect,

so final, so sufficient that He gave all who believe in it a permanent justification before the Father and a continuous position before God that will be enjoyed forever. That cloud of witnesses, they don’t want to come back.

Do you want to leave this earth? or do you want to hang around? You know that it’s all about extending your life. Oh, I’ll live to 100 right? Is that no the gold today, but the problem is you’re going to die.

I don’t want to live that long. I’m going to  live as long as God wants me to live and so are you. Along the way I want to be used by God.

I don’t want to be so encumbered by all my stuff and all my sins that I like. That all of a sudden somehow the cross doesn’t mean anything. To look away from myself and look at Jesus, the cross means everything.

In fact, this is the next thing it means verse number two. It says,

..despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

The focus on Jesus is on His exaltation and His enthronement. He’s not only the crucified one but He’s the glorified one. He sat down and that’s in the perfect tense.

What does that mean? He’s still there. He’s still sitting there. Why? the plan of God’s not done yet, right. Thank the Lord it’s no. For many people have not entrusted Christ yet.

Jesus in other words

sitting down

means Jesus finished. The work of salvation is done. After the work is accomplished Jesus sits down and He takes and assumes the position of authority.

To sit at the right hand or left hand signifies mite, majesty, and deity. The seat on the right hand and the seat on the left hand of a king are just another way of saying this is the two most dignified stations in the kingdom.

Sitting on the throne at the right hand of a king indicates that that person sit there and reigns alongside the king. Jesus Christ bears this designation and is equivalent to saying that He’s the ruler of the universe.

He is the author of salvation. He is the perfecter of your faith. He is the one who finished everything. If He endured the cross, He will enable us.

In all this we will need the help of Christ. Why? So we don’t slack. You know why? We’re slackers. You’re a slacker. Sometimes we just gradually let down our effort.

Why? Because we got all the stuff we have to handle it. We have these sins that we are not getting out of our life yet. Sometimes we just give out.

Here’s the next thing we’re asked to do and the last thing. looking for Hebrews 12:3 it says,

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Now this is different then saying fix your eyes on Jesus. This is saying to fix your thoughts on Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is the goal. We are to press on in the race because of the goal. Jesus is the goal of our race.

He is the companion along our way. He has reached glory because He has already made the journey. Endure to the end and reach the goal. He is now a reigning king and the Bible says here

for consider him

and consider means to think over.

It also includes to weigh. This is not some light thinking it’s some heavy thinking. What are we to consider about Jesus? We are to consider, number one, the perseverance of suffering Jesus underwent. The endurance He went through and suffered for your sake. Secondly, we are to considered the opposition that He encountered from sinners against Him.

Everybody was against Jesus. Read the gospels. He had twelve guys one was a demon for satan. They were people but they weren’t jumping on the bandwagon to follow Jesus.

He endured such hostility by sinners against Him. It really means to carefully estimate one object with regard to another. In other words, compare His unparalleled sufferings with the little you and I pass through on the earth. Have we gone through what Christ went through? Are we going to ever go through that? Let’s face it, Satan kind of has us in America because he makes us so comfortable and so safe.

When you go to another country that’s not like European you immediately sense a military presence everywhere. When we were in Algeria every mile it seemed there was a checkpoint.

They have these big metal things in the road that you have to go around. It’s kind of frightening. They can check your passport and say we don’t like you and take out in the side  and shoot you and dig a whole in the sand and thats it. It’s over.

In America everything is just too soft and it makes soft Christians. I’m part of it. I’m part of that fight. That struggle. To want meaning in my life when it comes to serving the Lord with everything.

If I compare it and consider it in my mind, this is unparalleled suffering with the little that I have gone through, passed through, or will pass through. As it says in Hebrews 12:4 which I’ll pick up next time.

You have not yet resisted the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. We’ve not gone there. In a very real way we don’t have to go there because our Lord’s gone there.

If we’re elect in the beloved were elect in Christ, right? He’s done what we could never have done. We therefor are to rely on Him for support and help.

Did It not already say in Hebrews that He comes to the aid of those who are hurting as the high priest. Doesn’t it say there that He understands more fully what you’re going through because when He was tempted He was tempted to the fullest extend. He never gave in. We give in way too soon.

We don’t even know the power of temptation. We just sin. Jesus resisted, and never gave in. The forces of hell against Him and He never gave in. He intercedes for you and on behalf of you He prays for you in His position in heaven. We know He is the perfecter of faith, who is seated at God’s right hand having endured the cross and shame for us.

We know that and that is something we ought to think about every single day. Why? Why should we do it? Well, here’s the purpose clause. The last part of verse number three.

So that..

That is the purpose clause. Overtime you see that it always answers the question why. Why do I do that? For this reason the purpose for considering Jesus. For laying aside encumbrances and sin. For looking to Jesus is so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In what? In the race.

That’s why. By considering Jesus it will prevent us from growing weary and fatigued in our race. Jesus will enable you to remain under and hold out even under the most severe trial.

Remember He has His hands on you. He has His hold on you as a loving father does. If you don’t want to or if there’s some reason you haven’t gotten the encumbrances out of your life and you haven’t taken care of your sin.

You know what it’s going to say next in Hebrews 12. God’s going to chastise you as a loving Father. He’s going to say you’re one of my kids you’re in the race and you going to live like that.

I’m not going to let you live like that. I am going to spank you. I’m going to spank you until you get it out of your life. I’m going to spank you until you get rid of the sin and I’m going to get it out of your life.

Then once you’re done with discipline, you’re going to find the joy of living for God are of being holy. Hebrews 12:10 says,

For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

God is not just saying, “Listen, if you wanted to take out the encumbrances and the sin that’s up to you.” No,  He’s not saying. He says, “You better do it.” If you’re a believer you will do it.

You’ll want to do it. You’ll desire to do it. It’s holding you down in all kinds of ways in your life. It’s causing unnecessary guilt in your soul and it’s causing you to be ever so used by the enemy. To be a bad testimony to everybody around you. Christ starts our faith and lead it to its intended goal and confirmation. Christ fills us with faith.

Christ keeps us in faith. Christ perfects our face. Don’t slow down. Don’t sit down. Pace yourself and finish well. Lay aside everything that restricts endurance. Streamline your life and think upon Christ’s sufferings on your behalf and think upon His finish work and His exaltation on your behalf. As it says chapter 2 verse 10.

Why does He do that? Why has He done it for this reason. In bringing many sons to glory. What’s the goal? I’m going to glory. It’s based on nothing I’ve done or could have offered God in good deeds and works.

That is absolutely ridiculous. When you come to a passage of scripture like this. It’s by faith alone in Christ alone.

That’s how someone gets saved. It continues in faith. By virtue of Jesus suffering and death he has achieved the crowning glory, not only for himself but the crowning glory for us. I and you can finish the race. Can go to glory by God’s grace. That is by God’s blessing in Christ towards helpless sinners who only deserve His curse and wrath. By His grace, He’s given us His love. Amen. My friend, run well.

Run well the race and finish. If there’s one thing you can have on your tombstone. It should be this, “I finished well.” That would be a great one. Especially if it goes along with actually the evidence that you did finish well.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you. Once again for the awesomeness of Your Word. Lord, Your Word does cut down deep in our heart. It is sharper than a surgical knife. It does reach down to the recesses of our minds and our hearts that we don’t often go to. I pray, Lord, that you would bring to light, this morning, anything in all of our lives that would be hindering us in this race. I pray, Lord, this week that we would soberly think of what they are. Even list them and then pray, Lord, that you would enable us to make no provision for the flesh concerning that encumbrance or that’s sin. That we would put it to death by the power of Spirit who lives in us by the authority of the Word of God given to us and by our position in Christ Jesus.

I pray Lord that you would make us people who run well. Thank you. In Christ I pray. Amen.

Full Transcript:

That which completes the whole will not sound forth until we stand before the throne of God and the Lamb in our glorified bodies. That becomes a very important theme here for us because God is not done with you until you stand in glory. That is why we need to deliberately grow in faith. Remember, if you want your faith in God to increase, you must increase in your knowledge of God.

When you grow in the knowledge of God, you will know that the object of your faith can be continually obeyed and trusted, you will trust that He will continually be with you and not leave or forsake you, you will know that He can be absolutely relied upon and He can be emphatically shouted about and praised because what God says is true. His faithfulness is unending and His mercies are new every day for us. But it is a fight between now and glory. Do you understand that yet? We may be on the mountaintop once in a while, but most of the time in the valley.

Paul reminded the young pastor Timothy to fight the fight of faith. He says in 2 Timothy 4:7:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.

We are to have these convictions in which we are grounded in Scripture and firmly connected and therefore our faith will become impregnable and unbreakable. We all must fight the fight of faith as sojourners.

It was John Piper who said, “Our ministries ought to have a wartime flavor. It should have a strange mixture of tenderness and toughness that keeps people a little bit off balance, a pervasive summons to something more, something hazardous, something wonderful, a saltiness and a brightness about your life and about your church — something like Jesus.”

We are to be salt and light with the joyful embrace of suffering. That is what the world is looking for, people who are living their faith. Hopefully we can still find these people on the honor roll of faith, though they may be hard to come across. Young men and women who will hold their lives cheap, be faithful until death, and who will lose their lives for Christ. They will live wisely yet dangerously. Because the walk of faith is a dangerous walk.

We are walking on the precipice, and we can fall over easily because of our weaknesses and frailty but God keeps us. Our faith helps us to keep our eyes on Him. We are a bit reckless in our service, but in this time we are trying to find men in prayer. These are men who count God’s Word more important than their daily food. Men like Moses who commune with Him face to face, both God’s men and God’s women.

The people of the Church ought to never be like the world around them. John Piper continues on to say, “They are not impressed with us. Prosperous, wealthy, safe, middle class, do-what-everybody-else-does people. Don’t build a church like that. Don’t go there. Don’t spend your life like that. It will be wasted. You will have lived it.

“My desire and prayer for you is that your life would have a radical flavor — some extraordinary love, something risky, some crazy sacrifice that nobody can understand.”

What is the reward, or the prize at the end that creates this risk-taking? The reward is coming, and it should be everything to the believer. The reward is the incomparable glory that waits. It is for all who are faithful to the end. Paul says in Romans 8:18:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

It is also the imperishable inheritance prepared for God’s redeemed people. Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:4:

To obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.

This is of course the crown of righteousness which will be bestowed on all who love His appearing. Paul wrote to the young pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:8:

In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

There is a reward waiting for us and we cannot get that reward here. Those who live by faith treasure their future reward vastly more than they treasure this world, their wives, husbands, children, wealth, comfort, security, exercise, books, music, sex, leisure, vacation, houses, jobs, success, friendships, and much more. That is what it is about. We are to treasure our future reward a million times more than we treasure anything in or of this world.

Christ. He is the one precious and the one most glorious and He is our reward. If you abandon the struggle, you abandon the prize. I think one of the chief characteristics of true conversion is that you keep going no matter what and nothing can stop you. You may slow down, but you cannot stop.

That is a fruit of conversion that you will persevere until the end. But there is still going to be a struggle. Followers of Christ are to run the race in order to reach the goal in order to receive the reward. In the present we are looking at Hebrews 10:36, which says:

For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

The word means to persevere under misfortunes and trials. It means to hold fast to one’s faith in Jesus Christ no matter what happens. We will find out in this next passage that Biblical faith actually does something, it rocks the boat. Biblical faith has a flavor about it that is risky and radical. When those around you catch a glimpse of that kind of faith, it stupefies them. It astounds those who are in the world looking on to those who actually live by faith.

They feel uncomfortable living around those who live by faith, but at the same time they often admire them too. Otherwise, they ignored those who live by faith or they take out their weapons and they try to make those who live by faith look ashamed and ridiculous.

And of course, that leads to downright hatred which of course leads to other things. So now the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:32 comes and touches on this wide range of of incidence down through the centuries of Israel’s history. And this is how he started off in Hebrews 11:32:

And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets.

In other words he is saying that he can go on and on, explaining to people of faith about people who actually live this way radically and riskily. And that is what he does. But he does it in very rapid-fire succession now until the end of the chapter. So he brings people in from the entry into the promised land a group of people there and then through the times of the Kings, and then through the times of Exile and return, which are in other words the times of the prophets. And then he goes into the period of the Old Testament and New Testament, which are the intertestamental period, and finally he comes into the New Testament period.

He just picks out people and usually starts with the most important person within that category of time and he begins to lay it out before us and remind us that these people have gone before us and endured some real real heavy stuff and did not quit. They did not stop but continued to endure; this section is about endurance.

There are at least three things that we should at least consider when it comes to endurance, especially the endurance of our faith.

Here is the first thing to consider. When times are “a-changin,” endure by faith unto the end. We are always moving through a day and a time of change. When times are “a-changin,” it seems that people are backsliding from God and there is a bunch of apostasy, with people leaving the faith and not following God. When you live during a time like that, the answer to the question of whether it is impossible to endure is no.

What time am I talking about? Well take take your Bibles and turn back to the book of Judges. Judges 2:10 is definitely a time of backsliding and apostasy. Notice how the author packages it, because of course Judges was a horrible time in Israel’s history.

This is the reason why in Judges 2:10-11, it says:

All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel. Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord.

Then look in Judges 17:6:

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

Now when that happens, when there is no knowledge passed down to the next generation and everybody does what they think is right in their own eyes, what do you think living during that time looks like? How is that going to stretch your faith or my faith? We are kind of in that world situation today, it is not as bad as then but it is still like that somewhat.

Did anybody live by faith? Well, the first example that the writer of Hebrews gives in Hebrews 11:32 where he says:

And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets.

He lumps them all together now and that is a large time frame in Scripture. Let us look at Gideon in Judges 6:15-16 who had a phenomenal victory over the Midianites. By God’s command, he reduced his troops from 32,000 to 10,000, and then from 10,000 to 300. Look at what it says in Judges 6:15-16:

He said to Him, “O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.” But the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man.”

Now look over to Judges 7:12:

Now the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the sons of the east were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as numerous as the sand on the seashore.

So here is Gideon going up against two mighty armies. He is clearly outnumbered when God Himself reduces his troops down to 300, armed with nothing but trumpets. And what did he do? God said blow the trumpets and smash the lanterns. Now the lights were exposed to the Midianites and they took off. God did that. Gidian had faith in God that if God reduces the troops to almost nothing, God will win for them. See they are totally out numbered and God wins. He was a in a sense, an army of one because he trusted God. That is what faith does.

There is also Barack who is in the book of Judges 4:9 in the middle of the verse. Let me just give you something about Barack. He was with only 10,000 men and came against the great army of Sisera with its 900 chariots of iron and myriads of troops. He had to trust God to also fight for him. Look at what it says in Judges 4:9 in the middle of the verse:

The Lord will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman.

So how is God going to deliver to Barack Sisera? He is going to do it through a woman. I thought we had all these troops. What does a woman have to do with it? Well look at Judges 4:13-14:

Sisera called together all his chariots, nine hundred iron chariots, and all the people who were with him, from Harosheth-hagoyim to the river Kishon. Deborah said to Barak, “Arise! For this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hands; behold, the Lord has gone out before you.” So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him. The Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army with the edge of the sword before Barak; and Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot.

In other words, he got out of his chariot and booked it. He figured that was a dangerous place to be. Look at Judges 4:17-21:

Now Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said to him, “Turn aside, my master, turn aside to me! Do not be afraid.” And he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug. He said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a bottle of milk and gave him a drink; then she covered him. He said to her, “Stand in the doorway of the tent, and it shall be if anyone comes and inquires of you, and says, ‘Is there anyone here?’ that you shall say, ‘No.’” But Jael, Heber’s wife, took a tent peg and seized a hammer in her hand, and went secretly to him and drove the peg into his temple, and it went through into the ground; for he was sound asleep and exhausted. So he died.

That is pretty horrible stuff isn’t it? That is what happens when people do things in their own understanding and in their own sighT without knowledge of the Lord.

Then Judges 4:22-23 says:

And behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” And he entered with her, and behold Sisera was lying dead with the tent peg in his temple. So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the sons of Israel.

So what’s happening? Barak trusted God. How does God deliver him? Through a woman. That’s pretty humbling when you come to soldiers like this.

It was a time of backsliding an apostasy, but there’s a next section here. When people live in times when people do that, which is right in their own eyes, then that’s how it looks and now the next part of Scripture where it talks about Samson in Hebrews.

That was a time of foolishness. If you are going through the Bible now you should be reading through the sections of Scripture that talk about Samson about now.

And Samson is is kind of like a jerky kind of individual even though he’s really strong and powerful. Some of the things that are going on in that that book is the picture of foolishness and that was definitely wrapped up in the life of of Samson.

Yet he knew God, who made him a judge of Israel, and gave him great strength and power because he was the one that was going to deliver Israel from the Philistines.

He ended up of course being blinded and and regain his strength and an even his spiritual perspective. And the last act of his life of faith was when he pulled down the pillars of the temple of Dagon, who was the false idol that the Philistines worshiped. He pulled down the houses the temple upon them and thousands got killed in one instance.

And in fact, the Bible says listen, he killed more at his death than those he killed during his life. He was a judge, but he trusted God in the last minute.

After losing his eyesight and after really blowing it in some instances now delivered Israel by pulling down the pillars and the temple. Again, this was a time of foolishness. But who has faith? A guy named Samson has faith and trusted God and God delivered him. God is doing this all on behalf of his people. Why? There is no rule, there is no law, there are no kings. You just have these judges that God raised up with all their frailty, with all their weakness and God uses them as examples of faith.

And then there’s another one in this era of foolishness, that’s Jephthah. You probably haven’t heard much about Jephthah, but he was an illegitimate son and outcast. He was also a judge of Israel and he saved Israel in Judges 11. He conquered because of his faith in God and it says in the word of God in Judges 11:30-31:

Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, “If You will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.

That seems like a noble gesture before God to offer to the Lord, whatever comes out of his door when he comes back from a victory. He did have the victory because God gave him the victory. But look what it says in Judges 11:34-36:

When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing. Now she was his one and only child; besides her he had no son or daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are among those who trouble me; for I have given my word to the Lord, and I cannot take it back.” So she said to him, “My father, you have given your word to the Lord; do to me as you have said, since the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the sons of Ammon.”

Then look at Judges 11:39:

At the end of two months she returned to her father, who did to her according to the vow which he had made; and she had no relations with a man. Thus it became a custom in Israel

So again at time of foolishness God delivered the Ammonites into his hand and yet because of this crazy vow he made, he had to sacrifice his daughter.

See when people don’t do what God says, things get crazy. Where do you put stuff like that? There’s really no where even to put it. And then you also have a time of idolatry, worldliness, and rejection. When it’s recorded now in 1 Samuel 8, there comes a time where Samuel becomes the last judge of Israel and Samuel becomes the first prophet of Israel. He has a very unique position and what happens at the end of Judges is that the people finally reject God outright.

So it’s a time of idolatry. They worship the baals. It’s a time of worldliness. It’s the time of rejection of God. And if you want to look at it with me, turn to 1 Samuel 8:4-7, this is what happened:

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. and they said to him, "Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to judge us." And Samuel prayed to the Lord. The Lord said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day– in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods– so they are doing to you also.”

So the prophet feels the rejection of the people rejecting God as king. He feels that rejection too and God comforts Samuel who was a prophet since he was a little boy. His mom gave him over to be a prophet from his birth once he was weaned. So he was faithful right to the end and here the people say they don’t want God to be king.

We want a king like everybody else has around us and so it’s a time of rejection, a time of not wanting God to reign. Saul is not mentioned at all in Hebrews because he was not a man of faith. David that was mentioned and he’s the only king mentioned in Hebrews 11. He is the one, of course, who becomes the deliver. He’s the one who delivers Israel and becomes the good king, even though he is riddled with all kinds of sins. He becomes God’s man and then of course it leads into the time of the prophets.

Back in Hebrews 11:33, you have a time of foolishness, a time of worldliness and rejection, a time of backsliding and apostasy. Those times when people lived were endured by faith and the people went right to the end, and every one of those people mentioned did that.

But there’s also times in which God give his victories, and when it is a good time to live. It’s a prosperous time to live but that has its own dangers to it when it comes to faith, because when you get too comfortable or too lazy, you take for granted of the things of God and forget about what it means to live by faith.

When victories are at hand, we are also to endure by faith to the end. That’s what this next section is in Hebrews 11:33-35:

Who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection.

Who by faith conquered kingdoms? Samuel, David, Solomon, Asaph, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Who obtained promises? Abraham, Joshua, Gideon, and David. Who shut the mouths of lions? Daniel, Samson, and David.

When David was just a young lad, a shepherd boy, he took hold of the jaw of a lion and beat it with his staff. So David killed lions, Samson killed lions, and Bariah killed lions. They did this in the strength of the Lord, not in their own strength.

And when Daniel prayed to God according to his usual custom in the book of Daniel, he was arrested and thrown into the lions den and God miraculously delivered him by sending an angel to close the mouth of the lions.

Remember that Darius the king was all worried about Daniel and he came to him and it says the king arose with the dawn when Daniel was in the lions den all night until the break of day. He didn’t eat anything or have any entertainment and he went in haste into the lion’s den and then he says when he had come near the den to Daniel, the king cried out with a troubled voice. The king spoke and said, “Daniel, Servant of the Living God. Has your God whom you constantly serve been able to deliver you from the lions?

He’s waiting for a response. If you don’t hear anything, he knows it’s over, right? And this is what Daniel said in Daniel 6:21-22:

“O king, live forever! My God sent His angel and shut the lions’ mouths and they have not harmed me.”

See, that’s faith. Who can be in a situation like that without faith Without this risky faith, without this kind of understanding of who God is? And then of course in Hebrews 11 it talks about those who quenched the power of fire. Who did that? Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, right? God can deliver us but if you decide to do it, that’s all right to but we’re not bowing down to your gods.

That’s faith! Your life’s on the line! That’s faith. We need that kind of faith in our little lives that we have. With the little troubles we have, we make our troubles to be bigger than what they are. And therefore it crushes us, it weakens us, and God becomes a little thing instead of who he really is, which is this great God and Savior that we are to worship.

We have to be very very careful that doesn’t happen to us, because that is exactly what Satan wants to do to you. He wants to minimize your understanding of who God is and make him into an idol that you have to carry around, you have to help out, you have to feed, you have to offer things to.

That’s not the God of the bible, sorry. The god of the bible is mighty. And he’ll deliver you if he needs to deliver you, but ultimately in the end we are all delivered. That’s the point! Faith sees the invisible, faith sees what is beyond, faith believes the promise of eternal life. That’s what faith believes.

They escape the edge of the sword. Who did that? Elijah and David and many others. Those from weakness were made strong. Who from weakness was made strong? Sampson, David vs. Goliath. David was a little boy coming against a giant, Goliath, and with one stone flung it from his slingshot. And it sunk in his head and he fell face forward and then David struggled with his gigantic sword and cut his head off. He pulled the head off and brought it to Saul.

See these are real stories about real people. These are not fairy tales or fables. This is about the God whom we worship. When David came before Goliath, he said that “you may come with staffs and swords, but I come in the name of the God of Israel, in whom you defy.” And then it was over, it doesn’t take much for God to do what He has to do if we have faith.

Notice what it says in Hebrews 11:35:

Women received back their dead by resurrection.

Who was that in the Old Testament? That was Elijah when he was ministering to the son of the widow of Zarephath. In 1 Kings 17:21 it says:

O Lord my God, I pray You, let this child’s life return to him.

And then the same thing happened with Elisha and the Sunamite woman from 2 Kings. In the New Testament, the widow of Nain received back her child. Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, comes back to life by Jesus. It continues like this, and all of this shows that God’s power is much greater than the grave. Jesus is alive and working among His people in this world. The helpless people and the helplessness that we all encounter in the face of death is removed by the resurrection power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we see that no one is outside of God’s reach no matter how helpless they have become.

And of course you have the resurrection of Jesus, and many believers who have died who have come out of the grave. It says in Matthew 27:51-53:

And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.

Turn back to Hebrews for a minute. It tell us that others were tortured, not accepting their release so they might obtain a better resurrection. Look at the rest of Hebrews 11:35:

Others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection.

A better resurrection is contrasted with the other resurrections mentioned in the passage. In other words, the young sons restored to their mothers were given the temporary gift of life, only to die again. So in a sense, it was a resuscitation for a period of time only to die again. But by contrast, the better resurrection that they look forward to has to do with the final defeat and being raised to eternal life in Christ Jesus. That is what we all have to look forward to.

While we are in this world, we need our Lord to continually reduce us from the effects of the fall. The curse has been removed because of the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ the Lamb. Christ bore the penalty for our sins on the cross. But we who are saved will not be removed completely from the effects of the curse until we are home with Christ in the city of God.

So the key to successful endurance is faith. Your faith grows when your knowledge and understanding of God is correct. There is one last thing. When suffering and martyrdom is your lot, you ought to endure by faith until the end.

In Hebrews 11:36-37, the ill treatment that came upon these believers as a direct consequence of them having embraced the Christian faith because they became open followers of Christ. It says:

And others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment.

This was Jeremiah, Joseph, Micah, and Elijah. So many people could fit into this category.

They were stoned.

Zechariah was stoned to death because he told the people the truth.

They were sawn in two.

Some say this was Urijah the prophet, but there is uses just the word sword. There really is no connection you can find for this passage except for a Jewish legend. And it looks like it is Isaiah the prophet that this is talking about.

This is what it says in the legend:

Jewish legend has it that Isaiah the prophet was sawn in two. Hezekiah the good king died, and Manasseh came to the throne. He worshiped idols and tried to compel Isaiah to take part in his idolatry and approve it. Isaiah refused. He was condemned to be sawn asunder with a wooden saw. While his enemies tried to make him recant, his faith steadily defied them and he prophesied their doom. And while the saw cut into his flesh, Isaiah uttered no complaint and shed no tears, but did not cease to commune with the Holy Spirit until the saw had cloven him to the middle of his body.

I don’t doubt that about Isaiah. If you know anything about his ministry, God tells him that he is going to go to these people and preach but no one is going to listen. So if you preach the Word of God and no one listens, the people won’t like you. As a matter of fact, a lot of people will hate you and will look for an opportunity to win. That is not something you can substantiate by Scripture, but it sounds like that would happen to Isaiah.

And then back in Hebrews 11:37, it says:

They were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.

This section talks about how they treated the prophets. That is why when you get into the gospels, you see how Jesus kept bringing up how badly the prophets were treated. They were sent to give a word from God, and they were killed, abused, stoned, ostracized, and imprisoned. The people didn’t listen to the prophets because they already rejected God. And if they rejected God, they would have rejected the messengers who were there to tell them the truth.

As a matter of fact, Zechariah was stoned to death simply because he told them exactly what God wanted them to hear, the truth. They wanted to hear what they wanted to hear.

And then verse 38 if you noticed there it says:

Men of whom the world was not worthy.

The world here means humanity and rebellion against God. And of course men and rebellion against God judge God’s man as unworthy for this world.

And what are they? What do they do? They wander in deserts and in verse 38, in mountains and caves and holes in the ground. See if you don’t read this section with this thought that, “my life’s not that bad,” then that’s good. Most likely your life will not get that bad, thank the Lord, right? But it may get that bad.

But in any case whether God provides a time of blessing and victory whether it’s a time of apostasy and rejection, those are not the point. The point is that you can by faith in anytime you live endure right to the end, even if it means losing your life. Because you have not lost your life in Christ, you gained it. My loss is my gain.

In fact each one of these people mentioned here. There’s a striking similarity in their faith. And here it: is each lived in a time where faith in God was scarce. Each battled overwhelming odds. Each had to stand alone. Each had a flawed faith. You find no perfect people in this lot.

And you know what? The Bible puts it all out before us that there’s no perfect people that God uses. So in your flaws and in my flaws and even in my sin, God will use me. He will increase my faith. I can endure you can endure, and you have the victory because you are Christ.

This is radical and this is risky faith, but it’s the kind of faith that shows forth real conversion to Christ and resolve not to shrink back, not to apostatize, not to throw in that your towel, and not to sit on the bench.

You are to keep going, you are to keep pressing on, you are to keep growing stronger in the Lord. Look at Hebrews 11:39:

And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised.

Again an unfinished symphony. This verse has already been mentioned in Hebrews 11:2. He uses the same thing where men of old gained approval and the phrase “gain approval” spoke of the public witness to a person’s character.

And in this case, God testifies to their faith. These are mine. I’m going to keep them, they’re going to endure, they’re going to persevere to the end and in their life they are going to show the world that God is real.

This is the kind of faith the ancients had that enabled them to endure through all kinds of difficult situations right to the end. To live in this manner assumes that one has a living knowledge of God , and that they know how to gain approval of God. They know how to live for God and please God, that they know how to serve God.

This must always be kept in our minds, and in faith’s sight. Even faith rewarded in this life is only partial fulfillment of the promise. The fullness of what God has in mind for us would not be known until we stand before God beyond the grave.

You will never fully realize what God has for us in this life. Only in heaven. And if you look at the end of Hebrews 11:39, it says:

They did not receive what was promised.

Why didn’t they receive it? In Hebrews 11:40 it says:

Because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.

He says God provided something better for us. Now he takes us and he throws us into the mix with all the others who went before and he says that he provided something better for us so that apart from us, they would not be made perfect. In other words in the Old Testament, on that side of the cross, they had to be saved by the atoning work of Christ on the cross. We on the other side of the cross have to be saved by the atoning work of Christ on the cross and together, we’re going to be made perfect. No one can go without going through the cross.

So don’t forget, we are God’s unfinished symphony. The final movement of the symphony that which completes the whole will not sound forth until we stand before the throne of God and of the Lamb in our glorified bodies. But between now and then it may be really rough waters.

What’s going to get you through? It’s always faith. Faith always sees God’s way. Faith always looks to the character of God and the promises of God and no one can take that from you. Even if they take your life, they cannot take that.

So it’s turn. I said it before, it’s our turn to live on the Earth today with enduring faith, to believe the unseen, to trust God’s promises, to wait and hope expectantly in that which the great Savior Jesus Christ will bring to ultimate fulfillment in the end.

Why? Because we have a great cloud of witnesses. That’s why we have a great cloud of witnesses that have finished the race already and they’re waiting for us to finish.

So that’s what he does in Hebrews 12. Look at Hebrews 12:1:

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.

We are runners in the Christian race and the moment you became a Christian, you entered the race. There are no benches to sit down on. But there’s a great crowd in the stands cheering us on.

We’re waiting for God’s plan to come to a conclusion, to be consummated, and bring it all to a glorious end, and all the promises of God will happen.

So enduring faith works in any kind of environment and during any kind of circumstance, but it’s end has the same destination. So that ends Hebrews 11 on faith. And I pray that both you and I would learn daily to live that way and to trust God in that way, and to examine our environment and our circumstances to see what is keeping us from growing in faith.

What is keeping us in the rut? We’re not holding to our joy. What’s preventing us from moving forward? What encumbrance is holding us back from running this race. How come we’re not enduring? How come we want to sit on the bench more than we want to run? That’s what we are trying to answer and we’re going to try to answer that question in the weeks ahead.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank You so much for Your Word. Lord, just as we look at this rapid fire section of men of faith and women of faith. Those who have looked to you and kept to the promised and didn’t give up and didn’t throw in the towel, even in the face of incredible odds. When they were outnumbered and when they should have given in, they didn’t because they trusted in you they knew you had something better for them beyond this life. Lord, You do and thank You for it.

We want to praise You, and we want to give You glory because You are great God. Continue to increase our knowledge of you so that our faith increases, Lord. Let us always know that You keep Your hand on us and You’re causing us to persevere until the end.

So in our times of weakness, Lord, help us to know Your presence is there and I pray this in Your Name. Amen.

Full Transcript:

Already, we have seen that Biblical faith is alive, full of movement, full of action, full of conviction, full of struggle, full of decisions, and full of choices every day that passes. We are making decisions based on our convictions and our growing knowledge of God, which becomes a key point in this portion of Scripture. How much of God do you know?

How much you know of God will determine your faith. Choices that we make are in direct relation to our commitment to please and honor God. We are being led by God. The person who doesn’t know that they are being led by God is a person who is not moving. There’s a cliché:

God blesses a moving vessel.

Well, that is true. Columbia Space Shuttle guidance system only kicks in when it is several miles up in space. God’s guidance system kicks in when you are in motion. Meaning, you must get off the launch pad. When you are in a place where you are praying:

Lord, I won’t make a move until I hear from you

He is saying:

You will hear from me once you have done what I have already told you to do. You will hear from Me when you keep moving.

Sometimes we know what God wants but we don’t like it, so we pray hoping He will change His mind and rubberstamp our desires. Sorry, He is not going to do that. Bottom line, when we follow God, you will go out not knowing as much as you want to know.

Stepping out in faith means that there comes a time when you must move in the direction God is pointing. Will you have unanswered questions and unspoken concerns? Absolutely.

Just like your car head lights don’t shine around the corner or over the next hill, God will give you direction on a need to know basis. If you are walking and moving forward in faith, God will give you everything you need to know while you are walking, and He will give it to you at the right moment, which is what is amazing about the Lord. In 2 Corinthians 5:7, Paul writes:

for we walk by faith, not by sight

In fact, it is the only way to go. It keeps you close to God, dependent on God, and helps you to remember when the credit comes, where the credit belongs. God’s guiding system is infallible and understood by those who are pressing on in their faith.

When we are considering the life of Moses and the Exodus generation, immediately, you get the sense of the struggle of living by faith. The portion of Scripture we are examining displays the next three of the five instances of faith from the life of Moses.

Remember, the problem that the writer of Hebrews is bringing to, mostly a Jewish audience, is that he is trying to counter the real possibility that some of the recipients of his message were ready to forsake Christ for the safety and security of a religious system. At that time, that system was called Judaism, which includes Moses, God’s commandments, and the sacrificial system.

The author of Hebrews paints the picture, which he brings to the mind again, of the greatest example of someone who follows Christ is Moses himself. If you don’t want Christ, then don’t follow Moses, but if you follow Moses, he will lead you to Christ. Thus, the author gets this “catch-22” situation and removes all the problems in their minds. John 5:46 says:

For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.

Let’s examine the next three of the five acts of faith in the life of Moses. Up until this point, we have learned that a faith that endures overcomes fear. We overcome fear by faith in God and His promises. Secondly, a faith that endures chooses more wisely. By faith, God moves out will, He changes our mind, and He fixes our eyes upon our lasting reward, which is Christ.

Thirdly, a faith that endures sees God more clearly. A faith that presses-on through whatever happens sees God more clearly through the struggles, through the problems, in the problems, and in the struggle. They know who is leading them. Hebrews 11:27 says:

By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.

Some have had difficulty figuring out whether this passage is talking about Moses’ first flight out of Egypt, or his second flight out of Egypt, which became his final flight out of Egypt. Well, I am going to try to solve that this morning.

The first departure from Egypt mentions it quite differently than what is mentioned in Hebrews 11:27, and if you notice in Hebrews 11:27, he left not fearing. Let’s look back at his first flight and how he left in Exodus 2:14-15:

But he said, “Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and said, “Surely the matter has become known.” ¹⁵When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

If it was speaking of his first flight, Moses wasn’t ready because he was full of fear. He was afraid of him being exposed. He was afraid of Pharaoh. He was afraid of the Egyptian law. He was afraid, and he ran. When you are afraid, you run.

Now, he is forty years old, and as it says in Exodus 2:15, he departs to Midian. I call this faith boot camp. If you are going to live by faith, you will go through faith’s boot camp. Everyone of us must be taught who God is. Often, I say that everything you knew about God before you become a Christian is all wrong. God must get our minds on who He is if he is ever going to get us where we need to go.

Now, Moses is in the wilderness, which is the wilderness training, and God humbles him by changing Moses’ Egyptian world view. He drives the world out of him, and He drives the sin out of him. Pretty much, Moses lives as a shepherd, and He humbles him down to the lowest rum. Of course, He teaches Moses who he is, and what he wants him to do for the next forty years.

Brethren, forty years God keeps him in boot camp. That is a long time. However, what does God do there? In Acts 7, you will find that several things happen in the wilderness. First, he gets married and has children. In Acts 7:29, it says:

At this remark, MOSES FLED AND BECAME AN ALIEN IN THE LAND OF MIDIAN, where he became the father of two sons.

Remember, God’s people are people who realize that they are living in a foreign land. This world is a foreign land, and we’re aliens here. We are not home yet. So, Moses had to learn that, so he felt that he became an alien in the land of Midian. He got married, learned what it was to have a wife and raise a family. Secondly, he met God in Acts 7:30-33:

After forty years had passed, AN ANGEL APPEARED TO HIM IN THE WILDERNESS OF MOUNT Sinai, IN THE FLAME OF A BURNING THORN BUSH. ³¹“When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight; and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord: ³²‘I AM THE GOD OF YOUR FATHERS, THE GOD OF ABRAHAM AND ISAAC AND JACOB.’ Moses shook with fear and would not venture to look. ³³“BUT THE LORD SAID TO HIM, ‘TAKE OFF THE SANDALS FROM YOUR FEET, FOR THE PLACE ON WHICH YOU ARE STANDING IS HOLY GROUND.

Here, Moses sees a manifestation of the presence of God in this burning bush. Also, he hears God speak. When he hears God speak, he learns to tremble with Godly fear. He realized that he was in the presence of someone he has never been in the presence of, which caused him to fear; then, God spoke.

Part of the reason why he feared is because he began to realize, after God spoke to him, that in God’s presence is the presence of holiness. God is not like man. God is separate from man. God is pure and holy. God is a blazing light, and no man could come up against Him.

If Moses had to learn that, then so do we. We must learn Godly fear. We must learn God’s holiness. We must learn how serious God is about what He says. We must learn to listen to God, and to see God the way He has revealed Himself in Scripture. If Moses had to learn that, then of course we must learn that.

Then, God commissions Moses in Acts 7:34:

I HAVE CERTAINLY SEEN THE OPPRESSION OF MY PEOPLE IN EGYPT AND HAVE HEARD THEIR GROANS, AND I HAVE COME DOWN TO RESCUE THEM; COME NOW, AND I WILL SEND YOU TO EGYPT.’

He is learning that God sees oppression. He is learning that God hears the groans of His people. He is learning that God has a plan to rescue them. Isn’t that good to know about God? The Lord doesn’t do anything in a corner where we don’t know what is going on. He is right out there. In fact, God’s plan is so simple it is ABC and bullet point 1-2-3. You don’t have to miss it, and God doesn’t intend us to miss it.

So, he is learning that God is immanent, or close to us, not transcendent and illusive. God is close, near, and He hears. He hears your groans, your cries, and when you can’t put things into prayers, but knows exactly what is going on in your heart. He is our great high priest, so He understands those things. Also, Moses learned that God is a God of compassion, full of long-suffering, gentleness, and kindness.

In our passage of Hebrews, it says that Moses saw Him, who is invisible. In other words, Moses saw the One not able to be seen. Moses saw the One not able to be seen but exists. Moses must be firmly established and convinced of the existence of God. He mentions that in Hebrews 11:6:

…for he who comes to God must believe that He is…

Some say they are agnostics, and according to the philosophic definition, and agnostic is one who neither believes or disbeliefs in the existence of God, and the existence of God is a real, continuing open-question. This a doubter in the existence of God, but not as strong as an atheist, who believes that God doesn’t exist. Of course, an agnostic wants evidence to believe.

However, the problem is that you can stack up evidence between now and kingdom come, and they still won’t believe. In any case, the Scripture tells us that if a person has bad philosophy, then that is all they will have. In turn, they shut themselves off to any further and true revelation of God. They deny what their sense tells them and suppress that knowledge. They walk outside every day, see creation, and see that God is there, but deny it and suppress that by saying there is no evidence.

In the next forty years, Moses will come to know the Lord more intimately. He will come to know His light, holiness, presence, and compassion. Also, Moses will come to know and learn His name. Up until this time, the Lord has never told anyone His name. The fact is that God does exist, God does have personality, and He can be known. He tells Moses in Exodus 3:14:

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

When he goes back to Egypt, he tells the people God’s name, “I AM.” Remember, “I AM” means that God has always existed. He never had a beginning, He was never created, He was always alive, and He has always been and will always be the same. There was never a time where God did not exist. God will never die. Thus, he must go to Israel and tell them, “I AM has sent me.” Hebrews 1:2 adds to that:

in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.

A.W. Tozer said:

Faith is subjective, but it is sound only when it corresponds with objective reality. The man’s faith in the mountain is valid only because the mountain is there; otherwise it would be mere imagination and would need to be sharply corrected to rescue the man from harmful delusion. So God is what He is in Himself. He does not become what we believe. "I AM That I AM." We are on safe ground only when we know what kind of God He is and adjust our entire being to the holy concept.

Since true faith rests upon what God is, then it is of outmost importance to limit our comprehension of who is wrong. In fact, we could not trust God if we just understood God based on our own terms. It was the Psalmist who said this in Psalm 9:10:

And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, For You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You.

The name of God is the verbal expression of His character, and confidence always rises and falls with known character. In other words, we know the kind of God He is based on what the word of God says about Him, and we will put our trust in Him because of that. Because of that, our faith and trust will increase. We are made in such a way that we trust good character, and we distrust bad character.

Most, if not all of us, will not by a car from a dealership that bares the name, in reality or by word of mouth, lucifer’s shady car deals. That would be a bad choice of name for a car dealer. Yet, we know there are car dealers that don’t have that name, but they are shady. We distrust people who don’t have character, which is why unbelief in God is so wicked. It was John who informed us in 1 John 5:10:

The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son.

So, Moses met God and was never the same again. He understood things about the character and nature of God he did not know before. In fact, the Bible tells us that Moses saw the form of God. The song we sang where Moses desired to see the glory of God, which was Moses’ hunger growing for God. That is faith growing for God. Paul says in Philippians 3:10:

that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.

Faith brings you to the place where your hunger for God is so intense, it must be satisfied. You must beg God to show you more, and that is what Moses did. In fact, in Numbers 12:7-8, notice what God said about His servant, Moses:

Not so, with My servant Moses,
He is faithful in all My household;

⁸With him I speak mouth to mouth,
Even openly, and not in dark sayings,
And he beholds the form of the LORD.
Why then were you not afraid
To speak against My servant, against Moses?”

This word form means shape, so he saw God’s shape. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it is translated as glory, brightness, radiance, splendor, or majesty. He has seen the glory of the Lord. In fact, we can translate as:

He sees the Lord as He is, and he wants more.

The Hebrew word used in Psalm 96 means weightiness. When he uses the word glory it means importance or significance. Moses came to a place where he understood the weightiness of God. Psalm 96:1-4 says:

Sing to the LORD a new song;
Sing to the LORD, all the earth.

²Sing to the LORD, bless His name;
Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day.

³Tell of His glory among the nations,
His wonderful deeds among all the peoples.

⁴For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised;
He is to be feared above all gods.

Then, Psalms 96:6-9 says:

Splendor and majesty are before Him,
Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.

⁷Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,
Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

⁸Ascribe to the LORD the glory of His name;
Bring an offering and come into His courts.

⁹Worship the LORD in holy attire;
Tremble before Him, all the earth.

Simply, it is saying that when we see God, we should see God like this. We should see God as so great and indescribable that we get lost in who He is, and we begin to tremble before Him because we know the weight.

In a sense, it is heavy to learn about God. It is heavy to learn the terror of the Lord. It is heavy to learn about the compassion and plan of the Lord. It is heavy to learn about the character of God. However, when you learn, it changes everything about your life. You can never be the same again.

The secret of Moses’ faith was that he knew God personally. To every task, he went into the presence of God, and came out from the presence of God with the boldness in his God. He learned to face God before he learned to face people.

It was told, before a great battle, Napoleon would stand in his tent alone. He would stand there and send for his commanders to come to him, and one by one, they would come. When they came in, he would say no word, but look them in the eyes, shake their hand, and they would go out prepared to die for the general, whom they loved. Exodus 33:11 says:

Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.

Here’s the key to all of it: the source of true faith is God. No matter how difficult or impossible, why is Moses able to face all things that came his way? Moses lived as one who sees Him who is invisible. In Hebrews 11, now he can face the king of Egypt. Now, he is ready to stick his finger in the face of the kind of Egypt and say:

Thus, says the Lord, let my people go.

In Hebrews 11:27, this is the second departure from Egypt. In fact, Moses comes back to Egypt and prepares the people. He is not fearing the king because he just spent forty years in boot camp, training for this moment.

He knows that God is greater than Egypt. God is greater than the powerful Egyptian army. God is greater than the Gods of Egypt, especially since all the plagues were against the God of Egypt. God was greater than Pharaoh, god on earth. Moses had to know that, or he would have still been shaken in his boots.

The word left that the Holy Spirit used, in Hebrews 11:27, means to leave behind and never to return. This word is setting up the context to point Moses to his second and final departure from Egypt. Exodus 10:28-29 says:

Then Pharaoh said to him, “Get away from me! Beware, do not see my face again, for in the day you see my face you shall die!” ²⁹Moses said, “You are right; I shall never see your face again!”

This is not in the context in which Pharaoh was talking about, but in the context in which what God was going to do to him. See, that is boldness. Again, Moses did not fear, and when Moses did not fear, the people did not fear. The leader didn’t fear, and the people didn’t fear. Psalm 78:50-53 says:

He leveled a path for His anger;
He did not spare their soul from death,
But gave over their life to the plague,

⁵¹And smote all the firstborn in Egypt,
The first issue of their virility in the tents of Ham.

⁵²But He led forth His own people like sheep
And guided them in the wilderness like a flock;

⁵³He led them safely, so that they did not fear;
But the sea engulfed their enemies.

See, they didn’t fear. Not just Moses didn’t fear, but a bold, growing faith causes other people to have bold, growing faith. Where they see God high and lifted up, they see God the way He ought to be seen and they learn to live that way. By cultivating the knowledge of God, we, at the same time, cultivate our faith. We overcome fear by faith in God and His presence.

Fourth, we learn a faith that endures relies entirely upon God’s remedy. He says in Hebrews 11:28:

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.

By faith, Moses started something that would become the most important celebration of the Hebrew calendar. The verbal term he kept is in the perfect tense, which means he attended to a celebration that was the inauguration of a divine institution. What God was doing here was going to have eternal effects.

In other words, what was done in Egypt was to be repeated as an annual memorial, and that memorial is called the Passover. On this special holiday, the Jews would eat a special meal, similar to the one their ancestors ate, as they prepared to flee Egypt. It included a lamb, and the lambs blood was put on a doorpost as Moses had instructed them. This becomes a very significant event for both Israel and the church. Exodus 12:1-3 says:

Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ²“This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. ³“Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household.

Then, Exodus 12:5 says:

Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

Then, Exodus 12:7-8 says:

Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸‘They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

Then, Exodus 12:11 says:

Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste—it is the LORD’S Passover.

In other words, eat and get ready to be delivered. Every year, this holiday is celebrated around March or April, and the Passover became the most important holiday in the Israelite calendar. It commemorated one of God’s most powerful interventions in the nation’s history.

The Passover marked the time when God brought a final plague upon Egypt. In the plague, God destroyed the firstborn born of the Egyptians, and He spared, or passed over, those Israelites, who have followed the command to place the blood of the Lamb on their doorpost. Exodus 12:12-14 says:

‘For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the LORD. ¹³‘The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. ¹⁴‘Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance.

Now, we know that its final fulfillment is in the complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Christ’s blood fulfills the prophecy of the Passover lamb, or it is Christ’s death that protects from the wrath of God. It is the blood over us, in which God passes over in judgement, to us who know Christ. Someone who doesn’t know Christ and who does not have the blood of Christ over them, then they are still under God’s wrath. Christ did die on the Passover. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:7:

Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.

Don’t miss it, ignore it, or refuse Jesus as the Passover lamb. Notice the warning given, in Hebrews 12:24-25, based upon the sprinkling of the blood of Christ over those who believe in Jesus Christ alone for their eternal salvation:

and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. ²⁵See 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.

In other words, all of God’s messengers and prophets warned, from earth, so what about God, who warns from heaven? Eternal life cannot be found outside of Christ. Deliverance from judgement is only found in Christ, and Scripture affirms that the work of Christ is the only necessary means provided by God for eternal salvation for all peoples, all times, no matter what religion influenced them prior. Jesus Christ is the Passover.

When you get to a book like Revelation, it combines Moses and the Lamb of God in the same sentence. It says in Revelation 15:3:

And they sang the song of Moses, the bond-servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,

“Great and marvelous are Your works,
O Lord God, the Almighty;
Righteous and true are Your ways,
King of the nations!

In other words, Moses becomes very significant because Moses is a type of Christ, looking forward to what Jesus Christ would do, and he lived that way by faith. Those who follow, even today, will believe in Jesus Christ as the only way to be made right with God and delivered from the wrath of God because it is the blood of Christ that washes away our sins where God’s judgment passes over us.

That is where faith brings us. We overcome God’s wrath by faith, God, and His provision. Moving and growing in faith, in the character of God, always brings one to understand quite emphatically that nothing is too hard for the Lord. It brings us to what God told Abraham: is anything too difficult for the Lord? Job learned this in Job 42:2:

“I know that You can do all things,
And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.

You know that by faith in the invisible God, who has made Himself known. There is one fifth thing, in Hebrews 11:29, which is a faith that endures moves through difficulties victoriously:

By faith they passed through the Red Sea as though they were passing through dry land; and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned.

The most powerful, skillful military, in the world, is a very small thing against God’s immense power and wisdom. It may have appeared to be bad military strategy to place the weak Israelites between the Egyptian army and the Red Sea with no place to go. In fact, that would be bad military strategy, and no General would even attempt it.

If the King of heavens army is God himself, then there is no problem. If the King of heavens army is for you, then who could be against you. How can you lose? No one could be against you. Whether the Egyptian military attempted to pass through the Red Sea, as the people of God did, they were overwhelmed and consumed by the waters. In fact, they failed, and God very simply allowed them to drown.

Faith brings us to the place where we realize that we overcome difficulties by faith in the power of God. There is nothing impossible with God. When you get to that place, the doubt, wondering, and questions are gone because you simply trust Gods character.

You trust in what God has promised, and if He has promised it, He will bring it to pass. This is what it means to walk in faith. You learn to trust Him, who is invisible, yet who exists. Someday, because of your faith, you want to know more of Him, you want to please Him more, serve Him more, and then, knowing that you live as an alien in this world, you want to finally depart from here to be with Him.

That is the natural flow of growing, moving, and enduring faith. It will bring you right into the presence of God, in which you always wanted to be in the first place. See, that’s where I want to grow too, and I know anyone who knows the Lord, Jesus Christ, as their Savior, wants the same.

If Moses went through this process, then so must we. We cannot go around the wilderness, but we must go through it. We cannot say, “I can’t go through the boot camp.” No, you must go through it, but when you go through it, you will come out the other end a person you weren’t before. You will come at the other end to a place where you really love and trust the Lord.

I pray that this example of faith would bring us to the place where we overcome difficulties by faith in God’s power. That we overcome fear by faith in God’s presence. Also, that we over come God’s wrath by faith in God’s provision, the very Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Let’s pray:

Lord, I Thank You that Your word is clear, convicting, and honest as anything. Lord, I pray that it’s to be desired more than the sweetness of honey. I ask You, Lord, that You would increase our faith. I pray that we would all desire what You gave Moses. I pray, Lord, that we would all come to the place where we understand these things by experience. I pray that they wouldn’t just be theory, but they would be the way we live. You are great, Lord, and You are greatly to be praised. Let us never take lightly what the Bible says is heavy. Lord, let us all come to You with the desire to know more of You. Even Paul says, “the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.” O, Lord, we want to know more. Lord, even though sin sidetracks us, confuses us, and puts us in a place where we get deluded, Lord bring us back. If we are not saved, save us, Lord. Let us put our faith and trust in the Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ. Lord, do Your work in us, by Your spirit, and make us a people of faith. I pray this, in the name of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Full Transcript:

Let’s take our Bibles this morning and turn to Hebrews 11:23-26. While we are looking there, I will also be in Exodus and Genesis. Background information is needed for these passages, especially if you have never read them before and know nothing about the Old Testament. We need to learn how to use our sword, which is the Word of God.

Hebrews 11:23-26 says:

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank You for the privilege to hear the Word of God and to have it explained. Weld it on our hearts and memories so we don’t forget the teaching of what it looks like to live by enduring faith. This is so we can do the same and follow in the footsteps of a bunch of people who have gone before us in your presence. Help us to be found faithful, Lord, by understanding what it means to be faithful. In Christ’s Name, Amen.

So in the honor roll of faith, we have seen God’s faithful, believing followers putting their faith into action, displaying to us what faith is and what it does. Biblical faith is alive and is full of movement, action, convictions, struggles, decisions and choices. Once you start growing in the faith, you start developing deep convictions in your heart based on the Word of God and promises of God. Every day that passes, we are making decisions based on those convictions from what God is teaching us. The choices that we make are in direct relation to our commitment to please and honor God.

Either we are going to please and honor someone else or God. Life and faith is all about pleasing and honoring Him. The Holy Spirit is leading you and I to include the Lord’s will in our decisions. Which we did not consider before we became believers. I did not even care about God’s will because I didn’t know about it. Once we know about God’s will, we want to accomplish it! Is there a struggle in that, absolutely! But God gives us the strength to do it.

If you know the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you need to endure by faith. How does that look in real life? What does an enduring faith actually do? Well the life of Moses in the Exodus generation can help us make sense of those questions. The portion of Scripture we are examining today display five instances of faith from the life of Moses. I’ll just cover two of them today. Moses is definitely a major player in God’s plan of redemption.

It maybe that some of the recipients of the letter of Hebrews were ready to forsake Christ for the safety and security of the religious system, Judaism. This religion included Moses, God’s Commandments, the sacrificial system. There was organization and familiarity. But the author of Hebrews paints Moses as one of the greatest examples of faith in Christ, which puts a problem in their theology. In other words, he says that if you follow Moses’ example of faith it will lead you straight to Jesus Christ. So then they would have a real problem if they’re going to forsake Christ for a system they feel comfortable in. Just as Jesus said to the multitude in John 5:45:

Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.

In other words, this group of people that were following Jesus at this time were setting their hope and putting their stock in Moses alone. But look at what Jesus says to them in John 5:46:

For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.

As a matter of fact, Moses wrote a lot of the Old Testament. So if you forsake Christ you would actually forsake Moses even though you claim him. Or you would forsake Judaism or the Old Testament or whatever else it is. Christ is saying no, if you listen and follow Moses, he will lead you straight to me. And then it says this in John 5:47:

But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?

You cannot have Moses and not have Christ. They go together and are in God’s plan of redemption. Moses was in the chain link that God has designed from the beginning of time until the cross. So let’s examine two of the five acts of faith in the life of Moses today. Notice that the first instance of enduring faith in the life of Moses is that a faith that endures actually overcomes fear. Now look at Hebrews 11:23 and notice what it says:

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

The point of faith for Moses’ parents was that they were not afraid of the governmental authority over them. They weren’t afraid of that structure. Moses’ parents are unnamed here in Scripture, but they may represent all the common people of faith. It was their faith in action that was highlighted in verse 23. The action of their faith is that fear did not deter them from carrying out the will of God. Now what was the king’s edict? We need to find out what they actually were not afraid of doing to see what should have caused fear. Turn back to Exodus 1 where we’ll see plan A of the king of Egypt.

In the community of Egypt, Israel was living in slavery under the Egyptians. It’s been a long time, probably 390 years or more, and they are beginning to think that the prophecies of God delivering them will not happen. This is trickling up to the authorities of Egypt. So what does the Egyptian king do? Look at Exodus 1:15-16 which says:

Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other was named Puah; and he said, “When you are helping the Hebrew women to give birth and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.

So here it is, a pretty strong edict. You can see how it would cause fear that if you did not put a Hebrew child to death, in turn you would be put to death. That kind of edict can cause great fear. But notice the midwives and their response in Exodus 1:17-22:

But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them, but let the boys live. So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and let the boys live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them.” So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied, and became very mighty. Because the midwives feared God, He established households for them. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you are to cast into the Nile, and every daughter you are to keep alive.”

Moses’ parents clearly and deliberately disobeyed the Egyptian king’s edict in lieu of obedience to the greater King of Heaven, the God who made the covenant promise with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In fact that’s what he says in Exodus 2:24-25 where it says:

So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them.

The reason for hiding their son was because they saw he was a beautiful child. That’s in most of the translations we read. But it would be more helpful to know that this Greek term is a more general one and means favored, approved, and unusual attractiveness. One translation says it like this:

They saw that God had given them an unusual child.

The point is this, that the parents of Moses hid the child because they saw an indication that God would do great things through this child. Now with that in mind, we also cannot forget the fact that the prophecy spoken of Israel being under bondage for 400 years, so that they were aware they were close to the time when God would intervene to deliver them. They were close to that time. In fact, let’s look back to Genesis 15. God said to Abram, before changing his name to Abraham, before there was an Isaac and a Jacob, before Moses, this in Genesis 15:13:

God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.

This was a told to him a long time before it ever happened. This is before Jacob moved to Egypt during the drought. Exodus tells us that the time the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. They had not only the promise of God, but also the bones of Joseph from Hebrews 11:22 which says:

By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel, and gave orders concerning his bones.

Genesis 50:25 says:

Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, "God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones up from here.”

After 390 years in Egypt, Moses is born around 1530 B.C. in which God provides a deliverer and Moses remembers Joseph’s request, recorded in Exodus 13, and brings his bones out of Egypt.

Moses’ parents were not afraid because they were emboldened by the fear they had toward God. They were emboldened by the anticipation of the promises. They were emboldened by those things when they could say they would not listen to the king, and rather listen to a greater King.

If you look at Genesis 15:14, it says this:

But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.

In other words, God was going to hold judgment upon Egypt at a particular point and when they came out, they were going to come out with a lot of gold and silver that the Egyptian people would give them. That served a purpose later on in the wilderness to be melted down and be used to make the tabernacle to worship God.

Remember, fearing God is an appropriate response and is in line with a faithful response. Proverbs 1:7 says:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

To fear God is to stay away from sin and know what He wants us to do and what He is going to do next. Biblical faith fears God and so we overcome fear by faith in God and His promises. All other fear would be less than nothing than the fear that we ought to have for the great and almighty God in whom we serve.

Through their suffering, their faith did not weaken. Through their suffering, their faith became so strong that the powerful edicts of the king could not push it over and move it. That’s what God is going to do even in our lives in a very real way. It’s going to be through the trouble that we experience in our lives that brings about a strong faith as we respond in the correct way.

You see, God must exercise sovereignty over the evil hearts of men to fulfill His promises and to carry out His will. Now look at Acts 7:18-19 because it gives us a bit of information that is important to show where I’m going next. It says this:

Until there arose another king over Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph. It was he who took shrewd advantage of our race and mistreated our fathers so that they would expose their infants and they would not survive.

So a king rose up who knew nothing the exploits of Joseph, which is hard to believe. But this is what happened. This is the point I want to make, God allowed that to happen. Why? Remember when Israel went to Egypt? They were going from a drought to a place of plenty. According to the math, Joseph was still around for 70 more years while the people were living there. For about 70 years they lived in the best part of Egypt, they had the best land and they were multiplying there. The pharaoh at the time loved them and they were living like kings in the land! Who wants to leave when you live like that?

So here’s the mystery, that none of us can adequately wrap our minds around. I’m talking about the inscrutable wisdom of God that we can not follow on our own. We think we understand what God is doing and then he takes a left turn and we lose the clarity of the way He is doing things. And yet, that is what God has done. He has used this evil kingdom Egypt and turned pharaoh’s heart for His purposes, so that pharaoh would hate this people. God allowed His people to suffer greatly under pharaoh. In fact, the psalms say this in Psalm 105:25:

He turned their heart to hate His people, To deal craftily with His servants.

Why has God done this and why does God still do this? Before I get back to the text in Hebrews, this background information is important. Well the only adequate answer is this, it is the only way that God make it so that His people are delivered. The children of Israel came out of Egypt during a time of great blessing so the people prospered in the best part of the land. They enjoyed being there and they did not want to leave. But remember the promise of God is that He would bring them to the land of Canaan and the land of promise where He would bless them and give them the land. They couldn’t stay in Egypt or would not be able to fulfill His promise and His will.

Isn’t it true of anyone of us that when things are going well and we are prospering, we want to hang around. We want to ride that wave! What happens when we get to the place of prosperity? Of course we tend to forget what God wants us to do. We tend to forget the plan of God and the promises of God and we start making excuses why we haven’t been around and faithful to the Lord and His Word. That’s what prosperity and materialism does to us. It makes us spiritual comfortable and mushy and not strong. We become pushovers!

That’s not what the Israelites did! They stood up to the king because the King of Heaven said to do that. So just think before you became a Christian and things were going well and you were prospering. Back then you did not think of God or your eternal soul. You probably thought only of getting the most amount of pleasure on this side of eternity. You were enjoying the land of the walking dead, as did I. We were enjoying the good things that come from the common grace of God. You were enjoying the food, drink, partying, and the indulging of the flesh. You were probably thinking to yourself that life is pretty good! We still are prosperous despite the fall outs.

It is not until God disturbs you, frustrates your plans, and until you suffer persecutions and trials that God ordains the circumstances that get you to long for Him. Because other than that, neither you or I would seek God unless He intervenes and does something. Do we ever seek salvation on our own? Not until God Almighty disturbs our souls and comfort zones. That is when we start realizing what God is doing and we begin to ask the right questions.

How does God disturb us? Well He allowed a king to rise up that knows nothing about Joseph or his faith. All that this king wanted to know is how they could use this people who were multiplying quickly as slaves to make their nation wealthier. The Egyptians gave the Israelite children over to exposure and left them outside until they died. What was God doing there? He was making them unhappy so that they would want to get out of Egypt and out from under bondage. In order for pharaoh to despise the children of Israel and rid them from his kingdom, God had to change his heart. He also had to change the hearts of the Israelites and of Moses.

This was all to fulfill His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He has to disturb us and cause us to be restless in our souls and fear where we are gonna go when we die. We have to start thinking like that. Thank goodness God does that in us otherwise we would just sit back on our easy chairs with a tropical drink and just enjoy life. Thank the Lord He disturbs us. I praise Him for that.

So it looks like God’s people, at least in Egypt, were doomed. Even on their way to extinction and right at the perfect time, God provides a deliverer. There’s a fundamental principle that we all must learn if anyone is to be saved and be made right with God. If anyone is going to grow spiritually and become a person of enduring faith then they must remember the matter of divine disturbance. Some of the puritans talked about it like that. What do you think brethren? If God is going to set His heart upon you what do you think He is going to do?

Will He not choose to take away from you and I everything that is keeping you from Him? Will He not choose to make things uneasy and uncertain and insecure so that you will begin to ask the right questions? Sometimes He may cause you to lose your money. He may you cause you to lose your health or a secure job. Sometimes He may even take a spouse or a child. He may send trouble upon trouble in your life. That is the matter of divine disturbance to get your and my attention.

But the main reason that God will ever allow these things to be brought upon you and I is to make us low and unhappy. It is never for our destruction but only for our good and His glory. Once He removes from you and I those things that keep us from Him, then deliverance is at hand and we are ready to be saved. Then we are asking the right way, and this is what we see in our text. That’s the background of where I am going now.

So if we are going to fear God and make the right choices, then our hearts have to be changed. There is a second thing that we learn from enduring faith and it’s this, that a faith that endures chooses more wisely. Let’s go back to Hebrews 11:24-26 where it says:

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.

See we have Moses pictured here as grown up. At this point he was 40 years old. He was making choices based on experience, wisdom, and empirical data. In other words Moses saw what was happening around him and he knew he needed to make a choice. The book of Acts gives us a peek into the first forty years. It says in Acts 7:23-25:

But when he was approaching the age of forty, it entered his mind to visit his brethren, the sons of Israel. And when he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he defended him and took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian. And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand.

God was already showing Moses that He was going to be the one who did something about the people’s problem. The people weren’t looking at Moses and saying he was the one because to them he was an Egyptian in the highest level of government. How could he help them? They were a persecuted lowly people who were just slaves! It didn’t enter their minds at that time but he could not longer stay neutral. He had to pick what people he had to side with: the Egyptians or Israel. There could be no fence straddling for him. He had to flat out deny one or another.

Look again at what it says in Hebrews 11:24:

When he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.

He actually made a decisive choice to refuse something offered to him. His choice was to refuse to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and that meant a break with the family that schooled and raised him. This was 39 years and 9 months that Pharaoh raised him and had a great influence in his life. It says in Acts that Pharaoh’s daughter had nurtured him and had a good relationship with him. But Moses would have to make a choice to refuse his high position, his power, his honor, his wealth, his privilege, and of course the prerogative of being in the royal family of Pharaoh, which was the most powerful nation in the world at that time. It would be crazy to leave Egypt and forsake those Egyptians for Israelite slaves.

But God was already stirring his heart and moving inside him to change his volition and will. That’s what Biblical faith does, it changes your will and causes you to go in the direction that God wants you to go in. For that to happen, things radically go on inside your heart and the Spirit of God doesn’t leave you own. He begins to show you how wicked you are and how you have treated the God of Heaven. He shows you how you despised the cross and how you thought the message to be foolish. God changes your will and he did the same for Moses. Look at Hebrews 11:25:

Choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.

The Egyptians were not the people of God. They were godless and idolators. They were a nation without a true God, but rather had many gods. Now Moses realizes that and also that the Israelites were the chosen people of promise who served the real God. In verse 25 he chose rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God. This means to be treated ill with a group and to get in there with the people of slavery and suffer what they were suffering. He didn’t suffer as one who had privilege but one who was mistreated with the Israelites because they were God’s people.

If you look down to Hebrews 11:37 it gives you some sense of the mistreatment. It says:

hey were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.

Those are the people that Moses got in there with. He never thought that to retain his high position, power, honor, wealth, and privilege was an advantage. That good be a great noose, a millstone around your neck. It had to be a clear cut off and he turned his back on all of it. But in choosing one thing he had to deny himself another thing. He denied himself the passing pleasures of sin. The very word used here means pleasure based on the satisfaction of one’s desires. We want our passions and desires to be fed. We are all hedonists, we want pleasure and everything to be nice and smooth.

The pleasures set before Moses were not only fleeting, because that was sin is, but they were sinful. That’s what we usually choose. We live for the moment and for pleasure, not considering that the pleasure of sin is only temporary and always comes with a consequence. Both temporal consequences and eternal. And then there’s God’s judgment. Only fools live lives of pleasure while denying and ignoring the reality of death and judgment. There’s this quote by Ravi Zacharias:

Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.

But for Moses his sin would have been apostasy. His sin would be the disowning of the people of God for the purpose of enjoying the privileges of high position for the short lived grandeur of Pharaoh’s palaces and courts. That means that Moses would have placed himself outside of the purposes of God. But that’s not going to happen. By faith, Moses, as well as you and I, can make choices not on the things that please ourselves but on that which pleases God, exalts Christ, and helps our brethren. And that’s where real, enduring faith will take you.

So don’t commit to sin, like Moses, to apostasy and leave once you know the truth. The faith given by God is one that moves the will. But it also does something else. It changes the mind. Look at what it says in Hebrews 11:26:

Considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.

See that word “considering”? It means to think deeply, to examine and compare. What is he comparing? He is comparing the riches that go with Christ to the riches he has known in Egypt. It is a picture of what we have available to us, to know that there is a comparison to be made. Do we want to live for ourselves and our own goals? Or are we going to live for Christ? That’s always the question. A mind that thinks spiritually and considers God’s plan of deliverance and salvation not just for the people of Israel in bondage of Egypt, but also for Moses. This would actually be the picture of the one who would come after him to be the greatest of all Deliverers. The One greater than Moses is Christ.

So Moses is choosing hardship, which is actually a foreshadowing of the Perfecter of Faith. It says in Hebrews 12:2:

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.

It is through suffering that Jesus Christ redeems and delivers His people from the spiritual bondage of sin. His mind pondered the eternal plan of God the spiritual deliverance through the suffering of the Messiah. How much did Moses know about Christ? It seems like way more than anyone ever gave him credit for in Scripture. He considered the reproach of the Messiah to be greater than all the riches of Egypt! The reproach of Christ is all the shame that was piled on Christ leading up to His death on the cross as a crucified criminal. Hebrews later on refers to it in Hebrews 13:13 this way:

So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.

The Lord had to be crucified outside of Jerusalem because His death was a defilement. He was crucified as a criminal, as someone who was guilty. Whoever comes into contact with Christ by true faith must bear His part of the reproach. If our Lord suffered, we must suffer in some way too. We will bear some of the stigma that goes along with being a Christian. It says in Luke 14:33:

So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.

And then Philippians 3:7-8 says:

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.

When you gain Christ, everything else that anybody can offer you is just a pile of dung. That’s what Paul is saying. “Rubbish” means stuff that goes in the pots that are unworthy vessels, the stuff that you go to the bathroom in. He says everything else is just a pile of dung compared to what you gain in Christ. Why would you want to make that switch? It’s absurd to even think of it! This is what is going on in Moses.

See the question is, what or who is of greater value? The treasure of the world or the treasure of Christ? When the great treasure of Egypt is placed along the lost-suffered in reproach for Christ’s sake according to Moses constituted in infinitely greater treasure. Moses was driven by the conviction of a greater wealth than the treasure of Egypt, and he knew the wealth of Egypt greater than anybody. He knew the power of Egypt and the power of temptation to stay in that position. He also knew that people depended on Egypt to get their needs meet. He realized that it was all fleeting, just a passing time of sinful pleasure.

By faith Moses came to realize that abuse suffered for Christ was of greater value eternally than anything this world could ever offer him. So the faith that is given to us by God is a faith the not only moves our will but it changes our mind about God’s plan. There is a third thing that he mentions here. It is also a faith that fixes our eyes on the right thing. Look at what it says in Hebrews 11:26:

He was looking to the reward.

It means to turn the eyes away from one thing to another and then to look at that thing with a steadfast mental gaze. Moses turned his gaze away from the present suffering to what was Heavenly and lasting and true. It even uses an imperfect verb that emphasizes the continual action in the past time. In other words, once Moses looked at Christ he never took his eyes off of Him. He never looked back. He understood the difference, but he knew what it would take.

It’s like an artist fixing his attention on the object he is reproducing whether in a painting or sculpture. He has to look intently at it to get it right and to get the details. If you remember back when we were in Hebrews 10:34 when the believers looked at past sufferings. Six things became evident so that they would gain something greater in their suffering. This is what it says in the verse:

Knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.

This knowing is to know positively. If you think seriously about what you have gained by being in Christ, you will conclude that it would be utterly foolish to throw away so precious and so valuable a gift as salvation. How shall we neglect so great a salvation? And if you are a believer and know that Christ is your Savior, you know this to be true. We all get tempted every single day to forsake Christ and to get the pleasures of the world. When we get tempted, we get slaughtered with temptation.

But someone who is growing in enduring faith says that they don’t want it. All of my fulfillment and pleasure is found in Christ. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain because then I’ll be in the presence of Christ and I’ll be removed from this world. That’s the way we must think and live. That’s enduring faith. When you have that kind of faith, no one is going to push you around. No government authority is going to cause you to flinch. You are going to stand on the Word of God and you are going to know that Christ delivers from spiritual bondage of sin and gives eternal life and no one else can do that.

So we choose more wisely by faith when God moves our wills and changes our minds and fixes our eyes upon our lasting reward. And ultimately our reward is God Himself. How could He compare with anything else? He cannot. We must have a high view of God, and if we do then we’ll believe that the Word of God is sufficient for life and godliness. We will have a correct view of man, what the church ought to be doing, and what leadership in the church ought to be doing. When we bring God down to our level, then He will become just like us, and that becomes idolatry. Don’t let that happen.

So whom are you living for? The world, yourself, or the Lord Jesus Christ? And do you have enduring faith works that proves that? So today you may have to make a decision to come to Christ and know Him. If you are a believer and you’ve been riding the fence and doing your own thing, you may need to come and get saved also. You today you may need to throw yourself before the Lord and ask Him to take you and use you as His servant. Believe me, God will never disappoint you. We will never be disappointed. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank You so much for the Word of God. You have been to me a great Lord and Savior. You have placed upon my life many trials and tribulations. But Lord You have been found faithful. I’ve known Your love and compassion. I know when You take a hold on me when all I’ve wanted was to leave and do my own thing. I know when sin and temptation was so strong and yet your Spirit was stronger. Lord, Your Word has been a mighty tower. Thank You, Lord, for the faith You give us. It’s not a common faith, but one that can only come from God. So Lord I pray that You would build us and make us strong. Help us to see what You are doing in our own lives. Use us, with the time we have left, that we would not waste the space we have on this earth but instead use it for Your glory. Lord, this morning whatever choices people have to make, move them to make a choice according to Your will. Convict them of their sin and unrighteousness, that they would realize they are under Your wrath and the only way they can be removed is by Christ. Oh Lord, please strengthen those who are weak in faith and embolden those who need it as they face great trials. I thank You, Lord Jesus, for all the things You are already going to do. Make us a people of God that make a difference on this side of eternity. And I pray this in Christ’s Name, Amen.