The Ultimate Giant Slayer - Part B

Joy helps you endure the race. A little bit of faith can take your soul to heaven. You realize that. All you have to do is look to Jesus. You believe in him. You trust that his work is enough.

That's enough to save you if you really believe it. When Jesus endured his suffering on the cross, there was something surprising motivating him. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how you can prevail over life's obstacles with that same motivation. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that encourages dads everywhere to step up and fulfill their God-given calling.

Your gift to this teaching program has helped us grow, and we want to do more in 2023. This month, with your gift of $50 or more, you'll receive a download or DVD of a new critical issues video hosted by Skip, Where's Dad? The problems are clear. Teen crime, drug abuse, youth suicide, abortion, and a host of others. The question is, where's dad? Where's the man of the household when their boys are making life decisions about their treatment of women, their worldview, and their morals?

Why are legions of energetic teens channeling their time towards self-destructive and socially destructive behavior? And where's dad to guide them, to correct them, to be in relationship with them? We realize that single-parent families are not exclusively a male issue. Fathers who do not take responsibility for their children are the critical problem. Where's Dad? looks at the problem of missing fathers in the home, tells stories of people who have been impacted by this plague, and looks at the possibilities of reconciliation at any age or stage of life. Get your DVD or download of the full-length video, Where's Dad? hosted by Skip Heitzig and featuring Josh McDowell. To receive your copy of Where's Dad?

when you help us expand Skip's teaching with your donation of $50 or more, call 1-800-922-1888 or go to connectwithskip.com to get your copy of Where's Dad? Now, we're in Hebrews chapter 12 as we join Skip Heitzig for today's message. Look at verse 1, let us run with endurance, and then verse 2, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, second time. Look at verse 3, for consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners.

And then if you were even to Skip down to verse 7, which we're not going to cover, He says, if you endure chastening. So it's pretty clear that one of the things that He wants His audience to do is to endure. Let me tell you what the word means. The word endure is often, the same word is often translated in our Bibles, endurance, patience, or perseverance. They kind of all mean the same thing, endurance, patience, perseverance. The word in the original Greek language is hupa mane.

It comes from two words, hupa, under, and mane, from meno, to abide. It means to abide under or literally to bear up under, to bear up under the pressure of something. That's patience. That's endurance. So it means to preserve under difficult circumstances with a steady determination to go on. A steady determination to go on. Endurance is like a postage stamp.

It sticks to one thing until it gets there. I've always loved the story about Thomas Edison, the inventor. It is said that Edison tried 200 different substances to find the right substance to make a filament for his light bulb, his incandescent bulb. He tried 200 things and failed 200 times. Failed, failed, failed. Finally, his assistant said, I think you should quit. I don't think this is going to work.

I know what you have in mind, but I don't think it's possible. So just quit. Edison's response was classic. He said, quit?

I've just discovered 200 things that won't work. And then he said, and I will find one that will. And he did.

And the only way he did it is by endurance. So four times in this little section of seven verses, he says, endure, endure, endure, endure. Why is that? Because he's writing to young Hebrew believers. The book of Hebrews is to young Hebrew Christians who have discovered the Christian life is hard. That's why.

And why was it hard? Because they're surrounded with people who hate them. They're surrounded with people who oppose what they believe.

They're surrounded by people who want to cancel them and persecute them. And by the way, this is why people backslide. This is why people fall away from the faith. If you wonder, why do people apostatize from the faith? It's like they love Jesus one day and then they want nothing to do with him the next.

Why? In a word, because it's hard. It's not easy. And whatever expectation they had, that expectation wasn't fulfilled.

Whatever line they were fed or told, that didn't happen. So by, Jesus said in Matthew 13, he who received the seed on stony places is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. That's why.

Skip, wait a minute. You've been telling us all the time that you get peace and joy and purpose when you give your life to Christ. You do. You get all of that, but at the same time, it's hard. And two things can be true at the same time, right? You can have peace and joy and purpose. I experienced that every day, but I'm here to tell you it's hard at the same time. Remember, Jesus said, narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life. So brothers and sisters, you and I need endurance.

It's a good word for us. By the way, the only way to develop endurance, you know how you develop endurance for hardship? Have hardship.

That's how you get it. You get it through hardship. There's no such thing as three easy steps toward endurance.

Nothing easy about it. You don't get endurance and patience and perseverance by reading a book about it or going to a seminar about it. Romans chapter five, verse three says tribulation worketh patience. Now that's an old King James rendering.

I think a newer version says tribulation produces perseverance. I've told you before about the young, impatient man who went to the older saint, the older believer and said, would you pray for me? I'm so impatient. Would you pray that God will give me patience? The old guy said, sure, I'd love to. He laid his hand on him and said, Lord, send this young man trouble, tribulation, trials, heartache, and hardship. And the guy pulled back and said, whoa, I asked you to pray for patience, not problems. The old guy quoted to him, Romans five, three, tribulation worketh patience. That's how you get it. So you want patience?

We're not so quick to raise that hand after that, but you need it. You need endurance because the Christian life is not a jog. It is not a sprint. It is not a 50-yard dash.

It is a marathon. It is long obedience in the same direction. So Jesus furnished an example and he faced the intolerable. Let me give you a third aspect of his sacrifice. He focused on the joyful. It's odd, really, when I read this verse for the first time years ago, and continues to be odd every time I read it since, that it sort of looks out of place when it says, 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.

Now, let me do something here. Death by crucifixion was regarded as one of the most painful methods of execution known to man. In fact, did you know the very word in English, excruciating?

We talk about excruciating pain. The word excruciating literally means from the cross. And it is because crucifixion deliberately delayed the victim's death so that the victim would receive maximum torment.

That's why they did it. They did it so that he would live on in suffering for hours and even days. So, what do we know about Jesus' crucifixion? Well, he was arrested in a garden after sweating gray drops of blood. In that weakened condition, he stands before authorities for not one trial, not two trials, but six individual trials. When he is finally convicted, he carries the upper part of this cross, known as the patibulum, weighed about 75 pounds. He had to march with that toward his place of execution.

Didn't make it all the way. He was so weak. When he finally got there, they took long tapered spikes, and they stapled them in between his radius and ulna, the two bones that form a hook in the wrist, so that he wouldn't just tear the flesh. And they did the same placing spikes in his feet. And then when that victim is placed upright, it doesn't take long before muscle cramps set in, and it's difficult to breathe. And the only way to breathe is to pull up on those spikes to get a breath and let it out.

And usually, the victim will die of suffocation. On top of that, Jesus was forsaken by the Father, for he said on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now, I have a simple question after that description. How can there be any joy in any of that? Where's the joy?

Well, let me piece a few texts together for you to answer the question. When is this text? Who for the joy set before him? It makes us wonder, okay, I don't get it.

Where's the joy? Now, back in the Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 53, you're familiar with that? It's the most complete prophetic description of what would happen in Jesus' suffering on the cross. It says in Isaiah 53, verse 11, He shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied. My righteous servant shall justify many. In other words, Jesus looking at what that death would accomplish in making people justified before God brought satisfaction. Let me give you another text, Jude, verse 24. Now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

Don't misread that. It's not talking about your joy or you'll have plenty of joy. But it's not talking about your joy. It's talking about his joy. The joy that Jesus will have in presenting you to the Father as a trophy of salvation. So, putting all those texts together, the joy that was set before him was the joy of anticipating your salvation. Even though you were yet unborn, he knew that one day you would believe and be his disciple and that one day he will have the joy of presenting you to the Father as a trophy of salvation. That's the joy that was set before him. Now, keep in mind that is for a point that the author is making and that is this. He's encouraging his audience to joyfully endure a very hard life, a difficult life.

By the way, I didn't even tell you this yet. He talks about running the race here. There's a word that he uses for race. And when I tell you the word in Greek, you're going to hear a word that it sounds like in English. The word for race here is agona.

What does that sound like? Agony. It's where we get our word agony. So, it's a hard, difficult race. It's a competition. It's where you sweat. That's the race we're in.

It's an agona. Now, I used to run, but I'm not like a real runner. But I had plenty of guys that I knew and gals I knew who were so serious about running competitively.

And I always noticed it was hard. I look at their faces when they run. They're not smiling. It's ugh.

And they work out, and they don't eat fun stuff, and they train their body so hard. And so you've got to wonder, why are you doing that? I mean, there's got to be some joy somewhere.

There's got to be some payoff for that. And what is the joy of running a race? It's winning, right? So, the joy they have, or joy that a runner has, is deferred joy. It's not joy while you're running the race. It's joy when you have completed the task, and you've won the gold. That's the joy. It's deferred joy. We understand this principle. Anything in life that is hard to do has to have some payoff.

Otherwise, you don't do it. Why do women have babies? It's not because they're thinking, I cannot wait for labor.

I've always dreamed of that pain. No, it's deferred joy. Jesus spoke about this.

John 16. A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come. But as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for the joy that a human being has been born into the world.

Now, here's my exhortation to y'all. Learn to put something joyful before you to motivate joy as you suffer. Put something joyful before you so that you can endure the suffering. It'll take the edge off. It could be a simple thought of, I'll become more mature when I get to the other end of this trial, or I'll become a more patient person. I've been praying for patience. This is going to happen.

Or once I get through this hardship, I'll be more understanding and compassionate to people who are suffering in a similar manner. Do you remember when Paul and Silas went to Philippi, and they got arrested, and they got beaten with whips, and they get chained to a prison? It says, at midnight, Paul and Silas did what? They sang. They sang. They what? They sang praises to God? There's blood on their back. They didn't get what they expected. They're chained up.

They can't go anywhere. And it's midnight. It's the darkest time of the evening, and they sing. You only sing in prison if you're a dork, or you have some joy that is set before you. And Paul wrote about that joy. He goes, I believe everything that has happened to me has happened for the furtherance of the gospel. God's behind this. I think something's going to happen. And it did.

The prison guard got saved, et cetera. Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote these words. Any fool can sing in the day. It's easy to sing when we can read the notes by daylight, but the skillful singer is he who can sing when there is not a ray of light to read by.

Songs in the night come only from God. Joy helps you endure the race. A little bit of faith can take your soul to heaven. You realize that. All you have to do is look to Jesus. You believe in him. You trust that his work is enough. That's enough to save you if you really believe that.

A little bit of faith will take your soul to heaven, but a lot of faith will bring heaven to your soul. It brings joy. So he furnished an example. He faced the intolerable. He focused on the joyful. I'll give you a fourth and final essential, and we'll close this series out.

He finished the essential. Because look what it says in verse 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 has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Now we read through that, and we don't really pick up what that means, so I want to explain that to you because to me it's maybe the best part. There's a word in the book of Hebrews. Just trust me when I tell you without reading through it all, it appears 13 times in the book.

It's sort of the theme. It's the word better. We have something better than what anybody else had before us. We have a better sacrifice in Christ. We have a better covenant in Christ. We have better promises in Christ. And we have a better priesthood in Christ. He is called our great high priest in this book. And why is he a better priest?

What makes Jesus better? He sat down. He sat down. Why did he sit down? Because he was done. He was finished. Now keep following me.

Don't let me lose you. In the Old Testament, in the tabernacle, remember that tent structure where they worshipped in the Old Testament? There were articles of furniture. So there were altars.

There were labors. There were tables. There were curtains. There was all sorts of pieces of furniture in the tabernacle, but there was one piece of furniture that was not in the tabernacle. You know what it was? A chair.

You know why? Because priests never sat down. They'd go in every day, kill an animal, take its blood, sprinkle it, say prayers, light a candle or the oil lamp, go through their ritual, go out, do it again, do it again, did it morning and evening, every single day, every single week, every single month, and then there were festivals like Passover where they killed, it was like a butcher shop, they killed lamb after lamb. Josephus, the Jewish historian said, at one Passover during the time of Christ, in a two-day period, the Jews killed 250,000 lambs. It was endless. It was like Groundhog's Day. Every day, get up, kill the lamb, kill the lamb, kill the lamb, kill the lamb.

So they were standing up until now. I want you to turn back really quickly to Hebrews chapter 10. Just go two blocks to the left, Hebrews chapter 10. We'll piece this together. We'll bring this to a close. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 11, and every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, notice this, which can never take away sins.

But this man, after he offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. He sat down because he was done. It's finished. There's no more work to do.

It's over. That's the significance of on the cross, Jesus saying, it is finished. It's another way of saying, I can pull up a chair. Judaism was a stand-up religion. Your salvation is a sit-down salvation. Some of you are still on your feet working hard, working hard to get safe, working hard to get right with God.

I want to invite you to forsake your stand-up religion for a sit-down salvation, one where Jesus said, you don't have to do anything I've done at all. I want to give a word in closing to my fellow giant hunters. This is war. We have made that pretty plain in this weekly Bible study of hunting giants. We face enemies every day. We have to endure.

Here's why. We're following the one who was crucified. You can't follow the one who was crucified without getting some battle wounds. Jesus did say, listen, if they hate me, they're going to hate you.

If they persecuted me, they're going to do it to you. If the world is against me, don't be surprised when they're against you. There is a poem that I've always loved by Amy Carmichael, the missionary to India. She gave her life there, and she wrote so many great things. She wrote a little poem that I've loved.

If you don't mind, I'd like to close by reciting that poem to you. It's called, Hast Thou No Scar? She said, hast thou no scar, no hidden scar on foot or side or hand? I hear thee sung as mighty in the land.

I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star. Hast thou no scar? Hast thou no wound? Yet I was wounded by the archers spent. Lean me against a tree to die and rent.

By ravenous beasts that compass me, I swooned. Hast thou no wound? No wound, no scar. Yet as the master shall the servant be, and pierced are the feet that follow me. But thine are whole. Can he have traveled far who has no wound or scar? See, if you follow Jesus, you're going to get scarred up.

Wear them as a badge of honor. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series, Hunting Giants. Now, we want to tell you about an opportunity you have to take your knowledge of God's word to a deeper level. Going to church is a great way to learn about God. But what if you want to learn more?

Go deeper. This spring, Calvary College is offering classes in spiritual growth. Classes like Spiritual Foundations. Learn how to joyfully walk with Jesus. Take evening classes on campus or online. And transfer credits to Calvary Chapel University or Veritas International University for an accredited degree that will impact your spiritual life for the rest of your life. Apply now at calvarychurchcollege.com. Thank you for joining us today. Connect with Skip Heitzig. We exist to connect listeners like you to God's truth, strengthening your walk with Him and bringing more people into His family. That's why these teachings are available to you and so many others on air and online.

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Thank you. Come back tomorrow for Connect with Skip Heitzig as we hear from a special guest who shares how your courage can help make an eternal impact on the world. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.