Fixing Your Eyes Upon Jesus, Part 1

Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. These lines from Helen Lemmel's famous hymn couple well with our text for today. Hebrews 12 to 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, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In this message, Pastor Rich challenges us to follow closely behind our leader and our trailblazer, Jesus.

Let's listen in. So we're going to look today at Hebrews chapter 12 in verse 2. I'm going to read it and then I will ask you to stand with me to seek the Lord's help as we hear and heed His word today. Hebrews chapter 12, let me read the first two verses. Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 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 sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. So verse 1 says that we are to run with endurance the race that is set before us. Isn't it interesting that it is in fact a race? It's not a leisurely walk.

You see the difference there? We are running a race. It is not a leisurely walk. If we think we're just out on a pleasure cruise as a tourist, then we are missing the point of our very existence.

And we will end up being, if we think it's just a pleasure cruise, we will end up being, as the apostle John says, ashamed before Him at His coming. We are running a race. It is rigorous. It takes endurance. And so we have to run the race that is set before us, but we do so looking unto Jesus. You've probably run before, haven't you? So many of us have been in races.

We did so in school. When you're running, where do you look? Are you looking at your feet? What happens with when you're running and you're looking at your feet?

Something not pretty can happen, right? And you follow your loose stride. You're not looking at your feet. You're not looking at the runner behind you.

You're not looking at the crowd around you. When you're running, you're looking ahead. You're looking towards the destination.

You're not looking at the destination. Our run, our running the race, our walk of faith is not blindness. We have revealed to us the objective of our faith. And we are instructed to look to Him.

He provides for us an example. He provides for us leadership. He provides for us a reference point so that we have direction, so that we're not distracted. It is so important that we have such a reference point and that we have such a leader because as it has been pointed out, if we just simply run and we don't know where we're going and we cannot see where we're going, we don't have a leader or we don't have a fixed reference point, we will run in circles and we'll end up right where we began. Nobody has really figured out why we can't go straight.

There's an inherent problem in us, isn't there? And this is why the Lord says in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 2, looking unto Jesus. We need someone to lead us.

We need someone to guide us. We need a reference point that will take us to the destination of our intent, which is why He says looking unto Jesus. Now let's look at this word looking. Looking unto Jesus. The word looking means to fix your eyes on the object of pursuit. Fix your eyes kind of like radar lock, a military concept, radar lock on the object of pursuit. There's another sense here that it's not just locking your eyes on it, but also that's implied in this is in the sense of turning your eyes away from other things and fixing your gaze only on Christ.

So it's looking away from everything else that you might focus on and locking your gaze on the object of your pursuit. Now there are some intricacies in this. I want you to consider this because when we trust God, there are certain benefits that come with that. There are certain benefits that just come from God in all of life. And if we recognize the benefits from God, then we might have a tendency to look at those benefits. But in order to focus on those benefits, we have to take our gaze off of God Himself. That will still lead us astray.

That will still leave us wanting. I want you to, you know who Corrie ten Boom is, I want you to consider what Corrie ten Boom said. Listen to this. She said, I looked on Jesus and the dove of peace entered my heart. I looked at the dove of peace and lo, off he went. You see, is my focus on God or is it my focus on His stuff?

Even the benefits of God are not the focus for me. It is God Himself that is my focus because He alone is absolute good. You've gone target shooting. You shoot for a goal in basketball, hockey. When you're shooting, where are you looking? You're looking at the goal. At least I hope you are if you plan on hitting it, right? Because your focus is your aim. Your focus is your aim.

You know one way I know that? You're traveling on the interstate and there's a lot of trucks, in particular, like if it's raining, they do a lot of splash up and you have to pass this truck, you know, because you want to beat that truck to the next hill. And so you're having to pass this truck and you're kind of going around a curve or something like that and you have a tendency, when you're passing this big rig, you have a tendency to do what?

Look at it. If you look at the big rig, what are you going to do? You're going to drift right into it. Believe me, I know, okay?

I came very close a couple of times. I don't know why I'm wanting to look at it, but you have to keep your eyes focused on the road, on where you are going. You keep your focus is your aim. And so the Bible tells us here that Christ is, ought to be, our focus.

And if He is our focus, our focus, then He is our aim. A good illustration of this is the six-day ill-fated mission of Apollo 13. Never made it to the moon. Somehow they had to try to make it back to earth alive and in order to do so, they needed to make a critical course correction on their way back to the earth. Failure to do so would mean that they would be off into space forever. To conserve power, they had to turn off all onboard computers and the computers that steered the craft. All right, so yet the astronauts had to make, they had to conduct a 39-second burn of the main engines. They fire the main engines for 39 seconds for this course correction. And yet somehow, how are they going to know that when they were burning these main engines for 39 seconds, how are they going to know if they're staying on course?

They had one small window and out through that window, guess what was there? Earth, their destination. And He said, if I can keep earth in that window, then I can know that we are steering this thing correctly.

And that's exactly what they did and they made it back to earth safely. So in this text, we are instructed to keep our focus, to keep our gaze fixed on Jesus. And He is called the author of faith, the author of our faith, it says. Let's consider this for a moment, what this word means, the word author. The word is archegos, and it comes from two words, arche, which means first and ago, which means leader. So it can be translated chief leader, pathfinder, trailblazer. All of these are included in an under appropriate understanding of this. If you look back in chapter 2 verse 10, the same word is translated captain.

He is the captain of our salvation. Here's one way to illustrate this in the Marines, the special forces, they have commandos and sometimes they have to attack with the element of surprise. So they attack at one of the most difficult points where the enemy would consider that they wouldn't even be coming from. So this often included coming up in the water to a very steep cliff. And in practice for this, they would come up in their rafts to the steep cliff, and then they would shoot a rocket up to the top of the cliff. And in that rocket, it was attached to a very thin line.

And at the end of that thin line was a hook called a grapnel. And then they pull that back gently until it grabs onto something, hopefully something secure that's not going to move. When it does, and they're tugging on it, then they have special guys that are trained and instructed how to climb, and they call them Spidermen. And they climb up these small ropes. They're experts at it. They know what they're doing. And as they're climbing up these small ropes, they have another large rope attached to them. They climb up to the top of the cliff. And when they get there, then they take that larger rope and they attach it, tie it around to something that is definitely secure that they know is not going to move.

And then the rest of the commandos can climb up these ropes exactly the same way, the same place that these Spidermen did climbing up to the top. In the same way, Jesus is like one of those Spidermen. He is the pioneer, the trailblazer of our faith.

He has gone on before, and we can follow him exactly the same way that he is gone. So he is the preeminent example of trust far surpassing all the examples that were just given us back in chapter 11, people living by faith. But Jesus is the preeminent example. That's why he is called the captain of our salvation back in verse 10.

Now there's more to it than that. But in this sense, when it says looking unto Jesus, the author of our faith, it's the same word, archegos, trailblazer, pioneer. Robertson quotes Moffat in saying he is the pioneer of personal faith. To understand this correctly, because it can be misunderstood, let me quote Barnes here.

I think he puts it very well. Albert Barnes says, he is the head of all those, he is at the head of all those who have furnished an example of confidence in God. So you have all the examples of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is at the head of that crowd. They were following him because he is the one preeminent to follow. The expression does not mean properly that he produces faith in us or that we believe because he caused us to believe, but that he stands at the head as the most eminent example that can be referred to on the subject of faith.

Jesus was the second person of the Trinity. And when he was here on earth, he said, I do nothing on my own. We're so glad you've joined us for Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. You can hear this message and others anytime by visiting our website, www.delightingrace.com. You can also check out Pastor Rich's book, Seven Words That Can Change Your Life, where he unpacks from God's word, the very purpose for which you were designed. Seven Words That Can Change Your Life is available wherever books are sold. As always, tune in to Delight in Grace weekdays at 10 a.m.