Clough Hebrews Lesson 63
Jesus the Perfect Model – Hebrews 12:1-2
We start tonight in Hebrews 12; and since
we are starting a new chapter it’s well to review the basis of where we
stand. Chapter
In Hebrews 10:19-12:29 we have a broad section that deals with the person and work of Christ as an incentive to remain faithful. So he’s dealing with Christ, not so much in theory as he had previously, but now he’s dealing with the person and work of Christ from the standpoint of motivation. If you feel dried up and tired and don’t have the motivation that you know you ought to have, this is a section well worth reading. We’ve covered chapter 10 which was a warning passage, chapter 11 which gave us a series of fantastic models of the faith technique, and we have found that this author has three ways of exhortation, or three approaches that he constantly uses over and over and over again. And so we deduce that these three ways are three ways that we can used today to motivate ourselves as well as to motivate other believers, and none of these three ways involve working up an emotion; none of the three ways involves all the gimmicks that are usually found, but each of these three ways does demand some understanding of doctrine.
One way that this author uses over and over is to motivate believers by virtue of the plan of God. This is their position in Christ. And he’s in essence saying, and the Holy Spirit is saying to us, look, I put you in a perfect position in Christ, I gave you all these assets, I regenerated you, I indwell you, I baptize you, I seal you, I give you at least one spiritual gift, I make intercession for you, I do all these things for you and what has been your response? Now that’s the motivation from the standpoint of the plan of God. God the Father can say to us, I foreknew you, for all eternity I foreknew you, I predestinated you, I called you, I justified you, I glorified you, all these things God the Father has done.
Jesus Christ can say the same thing along the plan of God. He can say listen, I lived a perfect life so that you could have My righteousness, now I gave that righteousness to you at a point in time. When you trusted in Me My righteousness was completed credited to your account. Now what’s been your response? Has your response been like legalistic believers trying to add to My righteousness as though My righteousness is not sufficient in your case, that you have somehow committed a sin that is beyond My righteousness? Has that been your attitude, and this would be some of the things that Christ could say, operating in the same concept of motivation; motivation being based on the plan of God, what God has done. Notice it is not based on your past spiritual experience. It is not based on how you feel; it is not based on what you think about Jesus Christ. It is based in fact upon what Jesus Christ has done for us. All right, this is one thing that He does.
But then there’s a second way of motivation and the second technique that he uses we have seen used in chapter 11 and that is the technique of modeling, not modeling clothes but modeling spirituality, modeling the faith technique. And he cites examples out from the Old Testament that would be similar to the believers that he is facing. Now the believers to whom Hebrews was written were a group of very, very discouraged people. They had become very passive toward circumstances. They had begun to blame God; God, why did you allow this in my life, why did you allow that in my life and all the rest of it, and so because these people were so passive this author was called upon by God the Holy Spirit to take up the slack and show them what was wrong, and he uses modeling.
Tonight as we study the first several verses of chapter 12 you’ll see this technique being used on yourself. As you study the Scriptures and as you seek to discern God’s will for your life and look at the text, you yourself will be the recipient of this very tactic of exhortation, the tactic of modeling. Basically the argument is quite simple, the argument goes like this; if these people can do it with less spiritual assets than you have, then you can do it. And we have seen tremendous believers in chapter 11; we have seen men and women, for example, Sarah, and even the remark that he made about Sarah, even Sarah could do it, and if Sarah could do it, he says, any one of you could do it.
And then we came to verse 32, we found Gideon and Barak, two flunkies, two people that the Old Testament portrays as weak individuals. Barak was so out of it that he had to let a woman lead the army: I’m not going to go to battle if you don’t come with me Deborah. That was Barak. But nevertheless, Barak, somewhere along the line did believe a little bit and so therefore he is singled out in this passage. Jephthah was a bastard son and he came from what we would call a disadvantaged home; nevertheless, he believed in spite of his circumstances. And then we have Samson and he was always presented as kind of a street fighter, he is presented as a professional goon that started wars, that was Samson’s career. So you have quite a lineup in verse 32, two flunkies, a bastard and a goon, and these are picked out of the Scriptures in order to provide exhortation for us.
Now that’s a tactic that you can’t use unless you know the Scriptures. You can’t exhort another believer using the modeling technique if you don’t know where in the Scripture to go to find the right model. So you’ve got to have a command of Scripture in order to know where to go to pull out the stuff that will be needed when the person that you’re called upon sometime to minister to is just completely out in depression, they’re upset, they’re nervous, they’re out of fellowship, and you are part of the body of Jesus Christ at that point in time and the responsibility falls on your shoulders at that point to use your gift toward that other person. So you’d better be prepared and know where to get these models from, just like this author was prepared and picked these men out who perfectly fit is readers.
And then the third way in which the exhortation proceeds, one which we have seen in all of the warning passages and that is the concept of reward and punishment. It’s a downright threat is what it is and threats can be used to exhort. Sometimes this is the only language believers understand, is a threat that if you do not get with it and start applying some of the Word that you already know, or start getting into the Word and learn something that the Lord is going to beat you and you know where. Now if that’s the situation and it takes that kind of thing to motivate people, the Holy Spirit is not beneath using threats to motivate believers. So all three of these are tactics of motivation. And they can be used by any believer on any other believer, providing, of course, that they are used properly, that they are used with a grace attitude and that they are used wisely and skillfully.
Hebrews 12:1; verses 1-11 of this chapter deal with Jesus as the ideal model for the child of God. Jesus is now going to be held up as a model. So far we’ve had all the great saints held up; we’ve seen, for example, in Hebrews 11:34 the tremendous statement, they “Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness they were made strong,” these men of the Old Testament weren’t strong people by their personalities, they were made strong by the Word of God and by their trust in the Word of God. They were the toughest people the world has ever seen and they were tough because they took in the Word and they applied it consistently. “Out of weakness they were made strong, they waxed valiant in struggle, and they turned to flight,” or they routed “the armies of the aliens.” All are military metaphors, all refer to the struggle and by application refer to the Church Age in our struggle against the principalities and powers of darkness.
We found out in verse 37, men “were stoned,” I read you a passage out of 2 Maccabees of a 90 year old priest during the Maccabean war who went up and it says in many of these places where they had trials, scourgings and so on, and they were sawn asunder and they were tempted, they were stretched out on racks, and they had this torture system where they’d tie your two hands up and tie your two feet down and then they’d hit you with sticks and break every bone in your body and you wouldn’t die, this would just create tremendous pain because you’d have these sharp bones in your flesh. And while this was going on, they made sure of course they broke your back in 3 or 4 different places and when they did this, this paralyzed you and of course you lost some feeling when that happened, and this was how this 90 year old great priest in 2 Maccabees died. And he died under a situation where he didn’t have to, he could have said oh well, I’m not that gung-ho, and got out of it. But he didn’t because this 90 year old man, as he looked around at the point of death saw some young men and he said if I forsake my faith in front of these young men, they will have nothing to live for, and so therefore the sake of the younger men that were watching this 90 year old man met his death.
Then we found the men “sawn asunder;” tradition has it that Isaiah was sawn in half with a wooden saw, it took a long time so it would rip up a lot of flesh while it was cutting and this was how Isaiah died. Now this is gruesome but this is the way the believers have been treated down through history. And the fact that we haven’t been treated that way is an exception to a longstanding rule; it may not go on forever.
Hebrews 12:1, now we have some details about our mental attitude. Verses 1-3 let us in on the way Jesus Himself thought and so if you pay attention to verse 1-2 you’ll learn things about your own thought system, how you respond to pressure, how you meet situations in life and then you can compare how you meet the situation with how Jesus met the situation. There are a lot of things to learn and to apply in these verses. We begin with the word “Wherefore,” those of you taking Greek, and if you’re looking around for a few courses to take sometime at University, take Greek, at least you’ll learn something that you use. Toigaroun, these are three particles and they are all hooked together; oun is the Greek conjunction, usually “therefore,” and then gar is “for” so when you hook all these together as this does it’s a very strong indicator of a conclusion coming up. So the “wherefore” is one of the strongest words in the Greek for a conclusion. And this conclusion obviously is in the light of chapter 11, all of those great saints that have gone on in the past.
“Therefore” he’s saying, “seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. [2] Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. [3] For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”
So this provides a way of thinking and a way of responding to pressure. I don’t know if you ever thought about it but oftentimes when you’re in a pressure situation the only thing you can think of is oh God, how long is this going to keep up. And as always, your eyes are on the pressure. Now just suppose you got an answer back, oh, it’ll probably keep up for about six or seven months. And you’re about ready to fold if it didn’t quit by the end of the day. Now just suppose that you knew that it was God’s will that you be under pressure the same kind that has bugged you, for six or seven months continuously. Now that’s not unreasonable; we have people on our prayer list that are dying of cancer and they’ve been under pain for a lot longer than six or seven months and they have met that pain magnificently. Now how do they do it.
All right, what Jesus is saying is that here we are and the pressure is upon us. All these are different ways, different situations, different frustrations. The pressure is not the issue and we’re going to see this in this passage. You’re wrong if you’re looking at all these pressures and you’re saying how am I going to keep with this, how long, how long, how long is this going to continue, how long am I going to be under this frustration. The answer is, probably, until you learn how to cope with it. The issue the Word of God places is not upon the pressure but on what you are doing with it. Now you can’t do anything about a lot of the pressures in your life. You can’t change those things. You may have been born with congenital weaknesses; you can’t do anything about that, maybe the best surgeons in the world can’t help you out; you’re stuck with the body that you have. Now you can be miserable all the rest of your life fussing because you are disadvantaged, or you can make changes where you can make changes and that is on how you cope with that situation. So instead of directing your attention to the impossible, direct your attention to the possible, to that which can be changed. People sit and they look at pressure and they get ulcers and they get bitter and they have all sorts of problems.
Now isn’t it interesting that the Lord Jesus Christ did not get an ulcer on the cross, even though He was mistreated; even though He was double-crossed by one of His associates, even though He was beaten up in an unfair trial, Jesus never got an ulcer in spite of the pressure. So obviously, therefore, it can’t be the pressure, it must be our response to the pressure. And that’s going to be the point as we see here.
Now looking at verse 1, what is the main verb? Those of you who do not have a King James will be at an advantage tonight. The King James makes one translation error here, not really an error but the way they put the thing together it’s going to mislead you. Somebody who doesn’t have a King James. [someone says something] What translation you got? That’s what it says. Well that’s not the main verb; there’s one other choice; “let us run.” Okay, now look at the main verb; we’ve had the conclusion, “Wherefore, let us run,” and we’re going to get into the parts but let’s first look at the main verbs here. “Let us run,” this is a hortatory subjunctive, it’s a present tense which means let this be your lifestyle. That’s what the present tense means. It’s not an aorist subjunctive, it is a present subjunctive, let this continually be the mode of your life, “run.”
Now why is sanctification made analogous to running a race? Because of the mental attitude. You run, or jog, and get around to the second or third mile and you wish that the marker would hurry up and come on so that you could get over this thing, you wish it would be over. All right, that same mental attitude, as you run, as you jog and you realize you have that temptation, I wish this would be over, I wish this would be over, hurry up, get it over with, that’s the same attitude that is so often present in your soul in sanctification. From the time that you trusted in Jesus Christ until the time you die, which we call phase two or sanctification, that period of time is viewed in Scripture as a time that challenges you in the same way you would be challenged physically in running a race. The tendency is to give up, so if you’ve had that thought more than once I’m sure, in the Christian life, consider yourself a member of the club. Because the fact that he addresses it this way in verse proves that a few other people besides yourself have had that attitude in their Christian life, how long, oh Lord, do I have to put up with this stuff. So don’t be discouraged if you’ve had that thinking. Now from this passage learn how to conquer that kind of thinking.
The equation of sanctification with the
race is made 15 times in the New Testament; the athletic metaphor is important,
second only to the military metaphor. So
the two key metaphors or methods of illustrating doctrine in sanctification are
military illustrations and athletic illustrations. The 15 times are: Luke 13:24, Jesus uses it;
the second time it is used in 1 Corinthians
So it obviously shows you that the metaphor we face as we run a race is not at all foreign to the New Testament. In fact, F. F. Bruce says that such language is common in Christian martyrology, it was used even before the time of Jesus for the great martyrs during the Maccabean period. Now what does that mean? What does this tell us, before we go any further in the verse, “Let us keep on running,” even though you’re tired you haven’t died yet. Now there are times when you get so out of breath that you think you’re just going to not make it, that leg isn’t going to come up one more time, the lung and the diaphragm isn’t going to work the next breath. But in some way it does and in some way you do make it. Now you come close to quitting and it’s the same thing in the Christian life, he’s saying these believers are come close to quitting; they think they can’t make it and he says yes you can, you haven’t died yet. That’s just what he says in verse 4, “you haven’t resisted unto blood,” you’re not dead yet so keep on running. It also shows you that the faith technique involves doing as well as resting, it involves motions, decisions and attitudes.
Now let’s go for details on the verse; that’s great, “Let us run,” but that doesn’t tell us anything how to do it, how to get the proper mental attitude to the whole thing squared away. So let’s look at some of the details of verse 1 and part of verse 2 to see what kind of mental attitude accompanies this “Let us keep on running.” The first one, “seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,” “so great a cloud of witnesses.” Now let’s look at the word “witness.” There are two ways of taking this word “witness.” Can you think of what they are? Think of the word so and so is a witness. Now there are two ways you can take this, and this is an interpretation problem that we have to work on, on our way through verse 1. [someone answers] All right, one way is somebody is a witness to something, we say that person is a testimony to what the human body can do, and we refer to his skill. On the other hand you can be an onlooker, so and so was a witness to the accident. So you can use the word “witness” two different ways. Do you all see that, it can be two different ways and we’ve got to decide which way is meant here. Does it mean onlookers or does it mean an example.
First, who do you guess the cloud of witnesses to be? The Old Testament saints, chapter 11. All right, so we know the Old Testament witnesses equal chapter 11. Now let’s think; what function do these witnesses in chapter 11 perform, are they onlookers, is that the central thought, running the race with them watching us, or is it that they are examples for us as we run the race. Which one do you think? Don’t be shy because really, men have debated this one back and forth ever since the second century on what the author here is working on. [someone answers] You say examples. What would sway you to that view? [someone answers] You’re swayed because of chapter 11’s usage of these men; they’re not used in chapter 11 as lookers, they are used as people that we look to. [more said] Okay, another reason, they are not our judges, they don’t evaluate us.
Now we have onlookers, by the way; you know
who they are? Angels, Ephesians
Okay, example is probably the best way of taking this. Take it as example, the reason’s been given, it fits with the context: examples. So he says, “We have a cloud of examples,” now that immediately gives us a clue as to how to get our minds straight in making it through the Christian life. Now where are these examples located? Where do you go, if they are examples for us where do we go to benefit from them. The Bible. So what is the purpose in that very point? You can’t make it unless you continually take in the Word of God, because that’s the only place where these examples are. So, people who are inconsistent in taking in the Word of God in their life are going to live inconsistent lives. That’s why we have so many flaky Christians running around; they’re flaky because they can’t stay in the Word for five minutes. We have people high up in Christian organizations, the only time they open the Bible is 11:00 o’clock; I wonder about some people around here, they come trotting in here at 11:00 and you never see them any other time and they’re not tapes during the week either, and they’re flaky and the reason they’re flaky is because they are not steadily taking in the Word of God. You have to take in the Word; it may be by a tape, it may be here, it may be some other place but it’d better be consistent or you are a loser when it comes to spiritual life. You can’t make it. Now I didn’t write this, the Holy Spirit did this through this man. And that’s what he’s saying, “Therefore, seeing we are compassed about with such a great cloud of witnesses,” the assumption is that the Old Testament is being read by these people, or they are not compassed about with a cloud of witnesses.
That’s the first thing we notice about this running, and you’ll notice too that “seeing we are compassed about with a cloud of witnesses,” this is in a present tense, and it means that as we run, which is present, “run” equals present, so that’s a continuous action, “we have continually the cloud of witnesses.” Now we can’t have the cloud of witnesses continually as we run unless the runner is constantly looking at the text of Scripture. The whole concept of the present tense breaks down unless that’s true. So here right from the verb tenses we obtain a tremendous truth, that you must take in the Word daily, over and over and over and over. This is to be your source, this is to be your standard.
[someone says something] It isn’t defined, it’s just with “such a kind,” it’s not “so great,” this is what the translators do. In the Greek it doesn’t say, it just says “such a cloud of witnesses.” Now I would guess that based on chapter 11 what he’s talking about when he uses the word “such a kind,” that’s what it really means, “such a kind of a cloud of witnesses,” he’s talking about men like verse 32, flunkies, bastards and goons, people who faced those situations in life and they made it. And if they made it you can make it. So the Scriptures are to be the source of your encouragement. What does that tell you if you have the gift of exhortation? What will you be using chiefly in exhorting? You’ll be using Scripture, not your experience. Now you can share your experience with another believer, this puts a freshness or a crispness to the doctrine; it makes it contemporary, so there is a place for using your spiritual experiences, but never give your spiritual experiences the weight you give Scripture.
Just be careful that when you encourage another downhearted believer that you place the primary thrust of your talks, you counsel with this person, “the Scriptures say” dot, dot, dot, dot. Now the reason why we say that is because the temptation is going to be when you’re dealing with a depressed believer is they’re going to say yeah, I know the Scripture says but…” And so the tendency is oh gee, they don’t like that, so then you shift gears and you’ll start sharing your personal experience with them. Don’t; there’s where you make your mistake. If you have a depressed person, I know that’s what the Bible says but, but, but, but, but, motorboat Christians, and they get like that situation, you just but, but, but, but right back, the Bible says this, the Bible says that and the Bible says this.
If you allow yourself to be backed off the Scriptures you have lost the exhortation. You’ve lost your opportunity; it’s like witnessing to somebody and they have objections to the Christian faith and then you back up from answering the objection, instead of holding your ground and firing back, and that way you’ve lost the open door that you have. So in exhorting someone, do it like this man, stubbornly stay in the Scriptures, so the person has to fight you all the time; he will try to push you back off the Scriptures, a depressed person wants you to be depressed too. It’s misery loves company. And you are a threat to someone who is depressed and downhearted because you’re rolling along and you’re in the Scriptures and so they know that something’s wrong and the best way of doing it is pull you off the track. Well you have to hold onto the track and reach over and pull them back but don’t let them pull you off. That’s what happens, there is a spiritual tug of war that goes on in exhortation and if you haven’t been around a really depressed person you don’t know what it is, to be in this thing hour after hour after hour after hour, constantly have to push back with the Scripture. So be stubborn at this point, remember what he’s saying. He’s saying there’s “such a kind of witnesses,” the kind that you find in Scripture. Now notice he’s not referring to his own experience in verse 1. Verse 1 doesn’t even touch the author’s personal experience, he could have used it, but he didn’t choose to; he chose to use the primary source of exhortation which is the Scripture.
“Wherefore,” he says, “seeing that you continually have these witnesses,” you continually have the text of Scripture with you, “let us run,” now there are more things said in this sentence. It says “let us lay aside every weight,” the reason most translations translate this as an indicative verb is because it’s just easier in the English but in the original it’s not, it’s a participle and it means “having stripped,” it’s the word to take your clothes off. And it’s aorist, and it is therefore referring, in contrast to the present tense which is continuous action, it’s referring to a point action. So “having at a point in time taken off every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset, let’s run.” Now it’s a picture of a runner getting ready for a race and he’s taking off things. The Olympics originally run with completely nude runners; they did it for speed. And it’s a picture of getting away from all encumbrances.
Now this kind of thing happens again and again in your sanctification experience. There will come a time in your spiritual life, if you diagramed your growth it’d be something like this. You’d go up, you’d have you time of growth, you’d kind of plateau out for a while, maybe go down, and then all of a sudden the Lord will deal with you and you will have victory over some area of life and you’ve put away something; all right, now you’ve begun to run again; this time you’ll run faster than you did before because you’ve gotten rid of something, you’ve solved the problem, you’ve discovered a new truth, you’ve become more wise, more effective in the Christian life, and so more production, then you plateau out here, have some problems, go down, and then again the Lord deals with you and you go up again. So in these troughs, when God the Holy Spirit puts up with us for a while and then He comes in and He strips whatever the problem is off, then “let us run.” So watch the tenses now, it’s referring to a point in time.
Now we have to decide, what are those two things that are taken off, “every weight,” and literally “the easily encircling sin.” Now remember the metaphor is the early Olympics, they were the first streakers. All right, the weights in a spiritual application would be things that are not sinful in themselves but things that are kind of these blocking things. In other words, things that aren’t outright sinful, but nevertheless they get in your way spiritually. It could be loved ones that you prefer over the Lord Jesus Christ and it’s screwing up your priority. And you, if they chose to go the human viewpoint direction you go with them instead of going in the divine viewpoint direction. Now the loved one, there’s nothing sinful about the loved one but what has become sinful by you allowing them to call the shots instead of you calling the shots. That’s an example and there can be many various things that you can get overly involved in life, too many interests; not one of the interests may be sinful scripturally but combined together they’re “weights.” They are inhibitors, they are preventing you from keeping in the Word, television sets, a tremendous thing, once in a while you get something on it that causes you to think above the fourth grade level and it’s good, but for most people it’s a waste, they’re busy home Sunday evening watching the great shows instead of taking in the Word of God, so it has become a waste and a problem.
And there are all sorts of other things, sleep, that can be a weight too, you know, decide you want to sleep around the clock. There’s nothing wrong with sleep but sometime you have to get up. Food, that’s weight for some people in more ways than one; drink, all these things aren’t evil in themselves but they can become so, and so the Hebrews is warning us to inventory your life and look for the weights; see what it is that could be dropped and might improve things spiritually. They might not be sinful things but they are just things that are impediments to your spiritual growth. Those are the weights.
Now the “sin which easily encircles” refers here, “sin” singular, to the sin nature, now we can’t get rid of the sin nature because that’s perfectionism, but what he’s talking about is the effect of the sin nature in various areas, –R learned behavior patterns, areas that we automatically sin without thinking, that’s a learned behavior pattern, you have to… you know, what shoe did you put on first before you came here? You couldn’t tell because it’s a habit, unless you have some unique system where you always put the right one on first or something but most people couldn’t tell. And you couldn’t tell because you don’t bother with that trivial stuff every day, it becomes habitual, you don’t think about it, just do it. Now the same thing happens spiritually in our lives, we get these learned behavior patterns that are just learned behavior ways of sinning; it can be responses, mentally, mental attitude, they can be learned behavior patterns, when somebody crosses you you go off into a fantasy, you sit there and look at them and you’re not there, you’re waltzing around inside generating all sorts of fantasies, visualizing a big long butcher knife going right through them, all sorts of things.
These are learned behavior patterns, resentment, hatred, anger, these kinds of things. And you catch yourself doing it before you can think about it. Your mind has programmed itself to act that way. Now that’s a learned behavior pattern and that’s what it means, “the sin that so easily encircles,” it’s a picture of a garment in the ancient world and when they ran they couldn’t get their stride correct because of the clothing that encumbered them; it encompassed their legs and cut their spiritual growth, and so what he’s saying, watch out for this—the easily encircling sin nature. And it can cripple Christian growth because of these –R learned behavior patterns. And the story of sanctification is working on one of these things after another; that’s what’s so bugging about the Word of God, if you’re reading the Word of God properly it shouldn’t be easy. If you’re reading the Word of God properly it should get you irritating because somewhere in the passage of Scripture the Holy Spirit will start pointing His finger at certain mental attitudes in your soul, certain things that you are doing and He makes you uncomfortable. That’s normal, that’s what the Holy Spirit is supposed to do in this area.
So that’s the two things that ought to be dropped, and if we do, then we can run more easily; see, he’s trying to tell us how to run faster, how to run further, how to have more endurance. So the first thing we discover tonight is a continual intake from Scripture, that’s how we get in contact with those Old Testament examples, the cloud of witnesses. So that tells us the first thing to do is continually stay in the Word, day after day after day after day after day. Now in this American culture of ours we want everything yesterday. We’re a very impatient people and we have failed to see that sanctification takes time. Now I’ve noticed over the years that I’ve been pastor a very interesting phenomenon happening; let me give you two interesting cases here, we’ll just say X and Y because these will be typical, they’ve been through this congregation many, many times.
Let’s take believer X. Believer X became a Christian at five years, lived in a solid Christian home; the parents had the authority concept down, they loved their children, they mixed the discipline with love, this kid had a fantastic home, he comes to college and maybe now he’s out in the business world or something, but he’s had 20 years or so in a good healthy Christian environment. Not that there wasn’t problems in the home but basically it was a solidly Christian home, and by that I mean in practice.
Now here’s another kid, he’s all over the place and in some ways by the time he became a Christian, if there was any way to sin and he didn’t know about it, it was an exception to the rule. All right, he became a believer and he’s really with it because he knows, there’s no problem here with grace, and he’s not legalist; you can’t argue with him and he’s not going to stand up and tell you that I don’t need grace, because all he has to do is think back, gee, look at that… you know. And so he’s very, very certain that grace is needed for him. So he starts off with a bang in the Christian life, and he’s growing like a weed, tremendous. Now he’s been growing, say five years.
Now both these believers say now are 25 years old; he became at age 20, he became a Christian at age 5. Now this person has studied the Word and studied the word, for five years he’s been in the text. Contemporary evangelical Christianity would say this guy is ready for a leadership position and so on. Yet, if you look at this person, this person may have less formal teaching in the Word but this person has something, has character. Why? Because it took decades to develop that character. Now that’s the tragedy of American home life. Yes, college students can be won to Christ but the character will take decades to replace. Even with the filling of the Holy Spirit it takes years to do what ought to have been done in the home. Now these people can be wonderful Christians and can assume leadership positions but if you have become a Christian late in life just realize spiritually you have a disadvantage compared to someone who became a Christian earlier. Now you have an advantage in many ways because you lived life on the other side and you know the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence, so from that point of view you have an advantage. But you also have a disadvantage in the fact that you do not have a solid, stable character that’s developed over time. So just keep that in mind.
All right, this race, then, takes time. Now let’s look at what else he tells us. “Let us run” he says, “the race by means of patience,” dia plus the genitive equals “by means of,” instrumental, “by means of,” now that argues that the greatest quality that you can have in sanctification is mental attitude of patience. Patience with yourself. One of the first places where you’ll get off the track as a believer after you trust the Lord is you get impatient with yourself. You’ll see yourself violate the Word of God and then you start sitting there and condemn yourself, condemn yourself, condemn yourself, condemn yourself. Now, you’re just leaving yourself wide open because Satan, if he sees a believer condemning himself, boy, that’s great, that’s just like a lightening rod to attract his kind of encouragement. He’d love you to sit there, condemn yourself, condemn yourself, condemn yourself, condemn yourself, condemn yourself, go ahead baby, keep doing it. He likes that. So patience. Jesus Christ is not going to blast you off the map because you sinned.
Now if you have personally trusted in
Christ your sins have been paid for en
toto at the cross. Now Jesus Christ
is the great leader and the Father is a tremendous Father, and they will
discipline you at points in time, but it is progressive. Think in the Old Testament; in Abraham’s day,
let’s visualize this as all mankind.
Here’s Abraham, here’s Moses, here’s David. Now look, it took centuries for God to teach
things to
“…let us run with patience the race that is set before us,” and notice this last point that the race is set, we don’t set the race, the race is set for us. We don’t enter the contest, our entry blank was signed by God Himself. Now that’s a little point that’s hard to get used to because there’s a point in the Christian life where you will resent the fact that you are running… how’d I ever get in this, and you’ll begin to resent that God entered you in that race… meany! And you can’t give thanks to Him for the things that happened in that race, for the number of times that you fall down and if you’ve fallen on cinders while you’re running, it’s an experience. So all these kinds of things are challenges for us to get with it in our mental attitude. “…run with patience the race that is set before us,” and that means we have to get to that point in our life where we say thank you Lord for entering me in this race, and that’s an awfully hard position to get into. Don’t think you can just waltz into that position; there will come times when it will take you days of studying, meditation and prayer before you can honestly look God in the face and say thank you for this mess. And don’t try to fake it and say well, [can’t understand words] God isn’t interested in phonies so don’t give thanks unless you mean it. It’ll take time. So “run with patience the race that is set before you.”
Now one further technique in verse 2, a participle that accompanies the verb “run,” we’ve had one present participle and that is having that great cloud, we’ve had one, put it off, that aorist though, that refers to a point, and we have now “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was et before Him endured the cross….” Now “looking unto Jesus,” that is the second thing. What do you notice about these two verbs, “having a great cloud of witnesses” and “looking unto Jesus?” Not grammatically but what do you notice about the content of both of those? What is the content of this one? Old Testament. What’s the content of this one? New Testament. See they didn’t have a New Testament text yet, it was still being written when this epistle was written. So they looked unto Jesus, so therefore, again how do we look unto Jesus. The New Testament text. So both of the present participles that accompany the main verb “to run,” both of them in practice mean concentration on the text of the Word of God. Constant attention to the Word of God! Now don’t ever worry that you’re going to get to that point where you’ll know everything in the Word and it’ll be boring reading. It’ll never be boring; it was written by an infinite mind and therefore there’s always vast depths to plume.
All right, “looking unto Jesus,” this word in the Greek looks like this, apoblepo, blepo means to see and apo means away. It means to gaze off and what it means to do is here we are in the Christian life and surrounded by details, and apoblepo means look, you reject the details and look off, apo, look away from, and you focus on the person of Jesus Christ. So He should occupy your … and notice it doesn’t say look unto Satan, it’s not Satan centered, it is Christ centered, “looking unto Jesus,” and the fact that the word “Jesus” is used, it means that we are to focus upon His humanity as well as His deity.
Now just to show you the power of apoblepo, and how much weight this verb must have had when this man preached, I’m going to read a passage from IV Maccabees, which again is part of the apocrypha and I want you to listen for a phrase, “looking unto,” and then when we finish the statement I’ll ask you what is the obvious and how do you explain… if a person had read this passage that I’m about to read to you from IV Maccabees and they’d heard it and they’d heard it and they’d heard it, and then someone came along and said “looking unto Jesus,” what kind of weight would it have?
Here’s the statement, from IV Maccabees 17:9-10, this is in the passage that is talking about writing a gravestone, carving a writing in a gravestone for the great martyrs of the Maccabean period. And so the man says this is what we ought to write on the grave: “Here an aged priest, and an aged woman, and seven sons lie buried through the violence of a tyrant who wished to destroy the Hebrew’s polity; these men verily vindicated out nation keeping their eyes fixed on God, and enduring torments until death.” The word here is apoblepo and since we know from the vocabulary that these people had studied the martyr literature; in the martyr literature apoblepo always had the object God. Now, imagine what happens when this man gets up in a Jewish synagogue, which had read this martyr literature that had circulated in the first century and he says apoblepo Yesous, what is he claiming? That Jesus takes the place in your practical experience that God had, so this is an affirmation of the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Tremendous, one of these places where it comes across if you know a little bit about the history.
So therefore he says, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,” the “author” means… this is a tremendous point. What is that doctrine called that speaks of Jesus humanity and His deity? The hypostatic union. Remember the definition of the hypostatic union; what is it? True humanity and undiminished deity united without confusion in one person forever. All right, now that took centuries to develop that into a sentence. And that sentence gathered together all the great facts about the person of Jesus Christ. Now think of this a minute: “undiminished deity and true humanity.” Now we’ve already said that in verse 2 we’ve got a situation where he views Jesus, instead of Jesus Christ, or instead of Kurios, Lord, he’s used the word Yesous, Jesus. Now then he uses the word Yesous, here’s your hypostatic union, true humanity, undiminished deity, but Yesous is point to true humanity. But the way he sets it up with the verb, apoblepo Yesous, he is talking to undiminished deity.
Now we’ve got something else. He says this God-man is the author of our
faith. Do you know what this is
saying? The author means the originator
or designer. And this verb attributes to
the Lord Jesus Christ the faith technique, the whole concept, that in eternity
past when the plan of salvation was designed it was God the Son who said the modus operandi of this plan will be the
faith technique. Jesus is the author of
the very concept of faith itself in history.
Jesus said in the counsels of God in eternity past, Father, let this plan
be a plan grounded from one end to the other on faith so that when Jesus became true humanity as a
creature, He became the finisher of our faith, it means He completely once and
for all demonstrated the faith technique, perfectly, so much so that Psalm 22
says that as He died on the cross people looked up at that cross and they said
yeah, He trusted in God, where’s God now.
But the very fact is that hundreds of people that watched the
crucifixion knew that this Jewish carpenter from
So Jesus was the One who designed the faith technique and Jesus was the On who used the faith technique, so one can accuse Him of designing something impossible because He can turn right around to us and say yeah, I designed it but I also used it and I used it in My true humanity and what is the other doctrine that we’ve learned about Jesus that would protect us from the temptation to say well, Jesus had an easy time. Remember what that doctrine is? Kenosis. Now do you remember what the doctrine says. Jesus gave up the voluntary use of His divine attributes; He didn’t give up all use, but the voluntary use of His divine attributes. What does this mean as far as Jesus’ temptations go? When He was hungered, when He was tempted to belt the Roman soldiers. And He probably could have done a good job because he was a carpenter and they didn’t have power tools. So Jesus Christ was quite strong. We know He was strong because after He was beaten so badly He was able to carry a cross weighing many hundreds of pounds by Himself. So Christ was not this little thing that you see hanging on the cross in art; Jesus was a solid man physically.
Now if that’s the case, and we look here and we see Him tempted, the doctrine of kenosis says what, to the believer who would argue Jesus had an easy time? [someone answers] All right, every temptation that Jesus Christ faced He had to rely on the same thing you have to rely on, the use of trusting in His Father’s provision. Jesus never faced a trial in which He could call upon His divine nature; He always had to trust upon exactly the same assets as you have. That’s why He qualifies as the author and the completer of our faith.
“Looking unto Jesus the originator,” then, “and the finisher of our faith.” Now in the rest of verse 2 we find the mental attitude; “for the joy that was set before Him.” The word “set before Him” is the same word used in verse 1 for the race set before us. Now what is “the joy?” What is that joy? The joy that Jesus had ultimately goes back to the fact that he looked forward to a victorious finishing of the Father’s plan; that was His joy, “I delight to do My Father’s will.” So the joy that Jesus Christ had came about by being spiritually successful. And there’s no finer emotion that you can enjoy than success. And that is a bona fide emotion and if you don’t have joy in that sense, it’s because you haven’t successful; it’s that simple. The feeling follows the success and Jesus enjoyed being spiritually successful.
Now He also told us how you can the joy. Turn to John 17:13. And He didn’t say that we get it by singing Joy, Joy, Joy. In verse 13 of John 17, in His high priestly prayer, Jesus said: “Now I come to these, and these things I speak in the world that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” What are the things that Jesus spoke into the world? Where do you get them? The New Testament. Where are we now? Back to the same thing we’ve been in verse 1, the Biblical text; “these things” Jesus says, I have spoken into history and I have had the Holy Spirit record in the canon of Scripture so that believers might share My joy. Where does the joy come from? From knowing doctrine and trusting it, not just knowing it but trusting it.
One further place in the Bible, 1 John 1:4 talks about joy; same concept, notice how it always winds up in the same place, going in the same direction. “These things write we,” that’s the apostles, “unto you,” believers, “that your joy may be full.” The implication is that we can’t enjoy life without doctrine. That’s the implication.
Let’s finish Hebrews 12:2, we’ll just finish one more clause and that’ll be all tonight. “…for the joy that was set before Him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame.” Now the main verb here is what? “Looking unto Jesus” and so on is part of the other sentence, but now look at the clause that begins with “who.” What is the main verb that goes with “who?” Endured, and in the Greek this is built from a similar word as the word patience. He endured, “He endured a cross” literally, “a cross,” not “the cross,” “a cross, despising the shame.” Now the word to despise the shame, katafroneo, froneo means to mind or be occupied with or think about, and this means down, to think down upon. In other words, on Jesus priority… everybody has a priority list, it’s in your soul; it’s not on your papers, it’s in your soul and every day you consciously or unconsciously work according to this priority list. And Jesus, on His priority list, He sat down. In other words, he rated shame down here, he rated the joy of being spiritually successful up here. And that was the mental attitude that enabled Him to endure the cross.
Now why was the cross not only painful but it was shameful? Well, for one thing it was painful because Jesus had His face beat up so badly, according to Isaiah 53 you couldn’t recognize He was a human being and no artist has ever, with one exception recently in our congregation, has ever painted Jesus right, with a face beat in. Now what you have to do to be accurate in Christ’s crucifixion is put a bloody pulpy mess for the face and then you’ll have it right. The other thing the artists have failed to do is paint Jesus nude because He was completely naked on the cross.
And this is why, as He was hanging there,
Jesus Christ was in shame, for those reasons.
But here was even another one, the cross was itself a shameful way to
die. The
We’ll stop there at that point in verse 2
because there’s a lot of doctrine in the last part of that sitting down.