You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, when I was learning to drive, my driving teacher used to say, look where you're going or you're going to go where you're looking. That's good advice, because every time when a cow goes by the side, I like to look at the cows. Look, squirrel. So, you know, the book of Hebrews says the same thing. Look where you're going. It does. Well, where are we supposed to look?
We'll find out today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning to you. It's a wonderful fall day. I'm Jim.
And I'm Dorothy. And we're just so glad that you're with us, and you slogged through with us on the book of Hebrews. Just really a very worthwhile thing to be doing. We are really coming close to the end here. Yeah, so he's tying up a lot of loose ends. He's getting to the point of the entire 11 chapters we've done. And there's only 13, so we're starting with chapter 12. So we're really getting close to the end on Hebrews.
But, boy, what a great thing it is. And he is starting off today with the word that always causes us to go backwards. It's the word, therefore, the first word in Hebrews 12.
So it's worth asking the question here before we move on, why is it there? And if you recall, he just went through all of chapter 11, giving us a bunch of examples of people from the Old Testament who preferred the city that is to come from God. Who preferred the best of life, which is after this life. And he demonstrated for us how all of these people, like way back, all of these people preferred to say, you know, I'll put up with a bunch of compromised living right now for the purposes of holding out for what God is going to bring.
And that was the whole point of that whole parade of people that he put there. And he says that the thing that allowed them to put their hope in what's to come instead of what they see right now is this word, faith. Faith. Yeah, faith is believing God's promise. He said he was going to bring us to that. And what they did, they said, okay, I'm taking at your word, even though things look bad right now, I'm holding out for that. And that actually is the bigger message of all of Hebrews, is this creator God wants us to have abundant life, but you've got to believe his promise for it or else you'll fail like the Israelites who didn't get in the promised land because they didn't believe his promise.
Right. So, you know, Hebrews 11 begins with that definition of faith, and it's that settled confidence in the reality of God's promises, even though you can't see them as completed yet. Yeah, and they're often not seen.
They're often invisible. That's the whole point of faith, that there is an unseen reality that is more concrete, more real than what we are experiencing here and now. And these people he just prayed before us were people who were willing to put off what they could see for what they couldn't see, and faith told them it was going to happen anyway. And to endure, to live in all kinds of unpleasant circumstances and to do difficult things for the sake of what they could not yet see, but they knew was coming because God had said it was.
Right. And that's not a unique message to Hebrews. The entire Bible is like that. The entire Bible is like that. Well, we saw that, right, in chapter 11 when we saw him list everybody from the beginning of Genesis clear through until he just runs out of steam and says, time's failing me.
I can't say anymore. But there's more, right? And so he begins this chapter by saying there's this huge cloud of witnesses.
Yeah, and that's how he starts chapter 12. If all those people were willing to put up with hard living right now because they're putting their hope and their trust in what God's going to bring, then how about us? Are we in that position? You know, it strikes me that we so often get discouraged because we think we're alone in our circumstances. And we just forget that we are standing on the shoulders of all those who went before this great cloud of people who walked enduring in faith, and if we take the time to look back at their faith and how they came through what they endured, that's a tremendous encouragement to us. Yeah, and especially for a Hebrew audience in this particular case. I mean, he's talking about all these people who, well, they're all Jewish, right?
They're all Hebrew. And you would be tempted to think at the time of Jesus, around the time this was written, that they got their reward. They got to the Promised Land. And he's saying, but they didn't. They didn't.
And we were talking about people like Abraham and all those guys. They didn't. And it never was. Well, they didn't in this life.
In this life. Exactly. Yeah. And so basically, if you look at all your Hebrew ancestors, talking to the Hebrew audience, they were waiting for something much better. Right.
They were looking ahead. So we should too. So I mean, it's really, it's a great idea. So let's just jump into 12. Okay.
You want to start us off and read? Absolutely. Chapter 12, verse 1. Okay. Therefore, and then we're in Hebrews, chapter 12.
Hebrews 12, verse 1. Exactly. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter 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. Yeah.
Okay. So in classic ancient style, again, he gives us the conclusion of the whole chapter. The conclusion. This is his point, and he's going to embellish it some, but this is his point. So what's he saying? This cloud of witnesses.
Right. All these people that just paraded in front of us in Hebrews 11 in the previous chapter, these people were waiting, you know. They were waiting, and so they ran with endurance. They were waiting for what God has come to promise to us.
So if they did that, we should do that too. No, but his practical advice about how to do that, how do you wait, it's interesting that he puts sin in the middle of this picture. Well, and weight. The New American Standard here says encumbrance. An encumbrance.
Everything that holds you back and gets in your way. Yeah. So like if you were going to run a foot race. Right. I used to hate running foot races in junior high.
If you were going to run a foot race, you don't carry extra weight, and you make sure your feet are not all tangled. Right. And he's saying there is stuff that you're carrying that slows you down and that tangles your feet, and that thing is sin. Well, and the word for sin, of course, here is missing the mark, right?
Missing the mark, yeah. Aiming at the wrong target, not knowing where the finish line is. Right, right. Right? If you are running a long race, and you don't know where the finish line is, and you run real hard off course, you're not going to finish. Right? So he says lay aside all the things that are entangling you, distracting you, weighing you down, and the sin that causes you to miss the mark.
Aiming at the wrong target. Yeah, and he doesn't expound on a lot here. The rest of the New Testament does. Right. But it basically says that sin is something that entangles you and keeps you here. And I've talked about this a lot, where sin basically promises you life, and it really doesn't provide life. It's an entanglement to you keeping your sight at what's promised in the end. Right. So that's exactly how he's using it here as well. Don't let that stuff weigh you down.
Sin is a false promise, as opposed to the true promise, which is God saying, I have a better life for you. Well, and he says run with endurance. Well, endurance requires training, and it requires keeping going on, even when something attempts to entangle you. Yeah. Yeah, and in fact, this word endurance, I had to look it up, is more often translated patience.
And literally in Greek, it means to remain under something. Right. So what he's saying right here is you need to stay on in this direction and remain under whatever it is that you're under. Right. And just stay under that and get to the end.
So that's what he's saying. And that's what you do in a race, too. Again, in a foot race, halfway through the 400 meter, I think I'm pushed. I'm just going to quit and go in the infield.
Just quit. And not just remain under that until you get to the end. But in a good foot race metaphor, he says look into Jesus.
You always look to the finish line. But in this particular case, Jesus isn't so much the finish line, he's the one that allows you to run the race. He's the founder and the perfector of your faith.
And those are two both really good words. You know, Jesus in Revelation says he's the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Well, when it comes to your faith, he's also the beginning and the end. The founder here is the first leader.
It means to lead first. He's the one that starts that process in you. And the perfector, again, that's our word, tell us. He's the end of it, too. So he's the one that gets you on the track and allows you to stay focused at the end goal because of faith.
And he does that for you. He's the founder and the perfector of our faith. Well, and this actually does harken back to, I think it's in chapter 6, where the writer says he is the forerunner.
The forerunner. He came before us into the Holy of Holies and anchored our souls, left the way open for us. Or he was called what I called the captain. He's the leader.
He's the first charge. He's out in front and we just follow him. And it says he's our example here, too, in the end of verse 2 because for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despised and ashamed. So he stayed under all that stuff. As people may know, he stayed under all that stuff because there was something much better at the end for the joy that was set before him. Yeah, you know, that idea of the joy was where his attention was fixed. So he went to the cross, but he went through the cross because he was fixed on what it would accomplish. That was his goal. Because of what was to come.
Right, yes. Even though it was yet unaccomplished until he went through the cross. Yeah, so Jesus didn't set up shop to have wonderful life in the world. Thank God he didn't. He was someone who was in transition through the world for something much, much better. Well, and he sure could have. That actually was one of the temptations that Satan offered him, right?
Worship me and I'll give you all of this in the here and now. Right. Right? And he said, no, I've got a different goal. Yeah, and using the race metaphor again, Satan had offered him a cozy little mansion in the infield of the racetrack. It's a great distraction. This is not the end.
The promise of God is still to come. Well, and this idea of looking to Jesus in the process of running. You know, when I was learning to drive, one of my driving teachers says, now look where you're going or you're going to wind up going where you're looking. Right? So that's just a great picture here. Where are your eyes fixed? Where are your eyes? Yes.
Because we are on a track that God has laid out for us. Yeah. Where are our eyes fixed?
Where God has said, now focus here. Focus there. And we get in trouble emotionally because we focus here. Yeah. I mean, that's always the case. Right. Either on our circumstances or on ourselves. We complain about the problems. Right.
He'll come to that in a second. But I think that's probably the most important thrust of this section is he says, where are your eyes placed? Where are your eyes? What are you aiming towards? What are you looking at?
What are your goals? Are you going through this place or are you setting up shop in this place? Right.
This world's not my home, as we've said before. Right. This is really what he's getting at and that's what he demonstrated with all these people in Hebrews 11. They were passing through clearly because they believed God's promise of something much, much better. The thing that he earlier in Hebrews called rest. This wonderful place that God's providing. And then he adds to that metaphor not just a place of rest and pasture.
But he adds this idea of a city, which is just a wonderful idea of a great orderly place of peace and joy and provision. That's going to come up in the second half of this chapter next week. Right.
These are all, this is the promises of God fulfilled. So consider him. That means employ your mind. Right.
That's the beginning of verse three. Right. Think about it.
Fix your attention on this. Yeah. And before we move on to verse three, I want to, this made me think of something Paul said in Romans 8, in Romans 8 25. He says, we hope for what we do not see.
Right. We wait for it with endurance, with patience. Patience.
This word right here. So we hope for what we do not see. And the thing that allows you to do that is faith.
You look forward. Faith is as much, you know, where you're looking as much as anything else. Right. It's the ability to see what God's doing. Right.
Because he said he was doing it. Yeah. The assurance of things not seen. Yeah. Hope for. Yeah. So there we go. So let's move on to verse three. Okay.
Am I reading? Yeah, I guess so. Okay. Consider him who endured from sinners. Oh, so he endured. Yes. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted in your struggle against sin.
You've not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? Okay, so he's going to open this whole idea of remembering who we are.
Yeah. We're sons. So here we go. My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It's for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. What son is there who his father does not discipline? If you're left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness.
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who've been trained by it. Oh, we have to stop there. Yeah, that's a lot of stuff. But he does address the fact that people during his time, his audiences, as well as the people in Hebrews 11, as well as us are dealing with what do I say about the fact that my current situation is really bad.
Right. I mean, look at that. Did God stop loving me? Did God renege on his promise for good? I mean, what does that all mean? And he encourages us like Jesus not to grow weary.
Don't be faint hearted about that. You need to just push on. But have you ever thought about the fact he's saying that the difficult times you're going through are in some way a sign of God sort of trimming you up, of disciplining you? God's purpose for us is to become like his son, Jesus. And so all of this that we endure here is that training, that disciplining process. The root idea with discipline is training. Yeah. And you talk to someone who's been spoiled their entire life and they grew up in adulthood and they're bitter about the fact that their parents never did that. They never actually trained them.
They never pruned them in that sense and they were left unattended. And so this is what he's saying, a good father does this with his children. So if you're in the middle of what are tough times, without question tough times, have you ever considered the fact that this is just like a father disciplining his child and in a way pruning and trimming you up and gradually disconnecting you from this world so that you'll be ready for the eventual promise to come true? Wow, and this phrase that we may share his holiness stops me every time I read it. Through Jesus and through the process of making us holy, our sanctification, that $50 word, God is making us ready to live in eternal fellowship with him, sharing in his holiness.
That's a mind boggling idea. And we remind ourselves that holiness isn't just purity, holiness is separatedness. Separation. We're not part of this place anymore, which strongly implies we're not part of the influence and proximity of sin and the corrosiveness of it. So God's saying, I want you to be apart from that junk, like I'm apart from that junk. And so yeah, so very clearly with that word he's saying that this discipline, this hard stuff you're going through is actually preparatory for you being not a part of this place anymore. That just suddenly brings to mind when Jesus prayed for us in John 17, he said, Father, sanctify them, make them holy the way I am holy, set apart for God's purposes. And then at the end of that prayer, he says, Father, I want them to be where I am, that they may see my glory.
The only way we can be where he is and see his glory is by being made holy. And this discipline process is part of that. That whole thing speaks of our separatedness in this place. So the degree to which you're entwined with this place, it'll be a hard process letting go of this place.
So that whole sanctification and holiness process sounds just like it's making me a better person, but that's not bad at all. It's making me disconnected is what it is from this place. From this temporary place.
Right. And not just disconnected from something, but actually connected to him and his promise, which is yet to be. For God's purpose. For God's purpose. For his holiness and his glory to be seen in us. And in the end, it'll yield a peaceful fruit of righteousness.
I love that phrase. A peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who've been trained by it. So God's in the process of bringing you to peaceful fruit, to bringing you to a place that's much superior to this place right here.
That's the holiness process. So I would just remind our listeners, every time you see the word holy, think separated or apart from, because you're being set apart for something so much better, so much better than this place. Don't settle for second best. And this life is that second best. You can still be blessed by God here and great things can happen.
But man, like Paul says, you just haven't got a clue how much better it's going to be. So set your sights there. Turn the race to there. Endure. Stay under.
Hoop a minute. Stay under it. And get to there.
Because that's where your sights need to be. Not here. Well, and the reality of the suffering and the difficulty here is not being devalued by this statement, right? Because we do live here for this assigned period of time and life will unfold as it unfolds. And we must walk through it. And it's very real and very concrete. But there is a bigger reality.
There's a bigger reality coming. So yeah, it's like the theologians say, it's already but not yet. So you're already in this position where you can have fellowship with God, understand joy, understand what that's all about.
But you're still surrounded by the annoying presence of sin. So look where you're going. Yeah. Instead of going where you're looking. Look at that. Exactly. Put your eyes on the goal and don't be distracted from that and stay under until the very end. Because the staying under process, that endurance thing has great value in it.
And I think that's what we don't look at. We say, well, God promised me good life, but I'm not having good life right now. Well, this isn't the fullness of his promise to you. But if you stay under, you'll be prepared for that.
You'll be ready to go. So then the writer encourages us, therefore, in verse 12, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet. So that's what's lame, may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. So that discipline process is part of the healing and making right what has been so wrong. Right. Verse 14, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled. Oh, we could talk about that for a long time. Forever. Verse 16, that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal.
For you know that afterward when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. Okay, so that actually relates quite a lot to what we just were talking about when Esau was fixed on the here and now. Yeah. I'm starving hungry, give me that bowl of beans. Yeah. I'll give you my birthright. Sure. Well, yeah, because if you remember his exact words, if I recall it exactly was, I'm about to die.
I'm about to die. So what use do I have for a birthright? Right. His horizon was his own death.
It wasn't the promise of God which was to come. Oh, his horizon was his own appetite in the here and now. Exactly. Yeah. So that's where he really went astray.
Yeah. And when you talk about, compare the two brothers, Jacob and Esau, and we look at all the scallywaggy, you know, under the table things that Jacob did. Esau's problem wasn't really so much that. His problem was he just didn't believe in the promise. He didn't believe that there was a definite promise. He didn't put value in it. No.
Nope. And so he was willing to trade it away for a meal one day. So yeah, so here at the end here for our today at least, from 12 to 16, he's really giving us sort of a corporate exhortation. You know, you need to figure out how to strengthen one another's hands, how to lift up, how to keep the sight amongst you toward the Lord, strive for peace with everyone.
It's kind of the bottom line explanation between he says, you know, you shouldn't put away your meeting together. You need to encourage one another. Right.
He had already said that back in chapter 10. And encourage each other for the purposes of talking about the problems that we're going through and how to keep our focus on the end promise and how to do that. That's exactly what he's saying right here. Lifting one another up, making the path straight. Right.
But, you know, what we do from going from here to there, which he'll do much more in chapter 13. Right. But see, you know, do you want to spend just a little bit of time since we do on this root of bitterness that springs up because we come back to this a lot because we see a lot of people who are very bitter. Oh my gosh, bitterness is so utterly disabling and it has those little hair fine tendrils that penetrate so deep and then suddenly something inflames them and they spring up and the bitterness spews out all over everybody in earshot. You all know what I'm talking about because you've either been the spewer or the spewee. It's such a vivid metaphor when you think about a root that's hidden underground and all of a sudden it springs up with this plant and you go, man, where did that come from?
Right, when the conditions are right, it becomes not invisible but exceedingly visible. Yeah, yeah. So there really is, I think that in this specific context, he's talking about the fact that people have this expectation that God said I'll bring you good life and the root of bitterness says, yeah, well, I'm not having it right now.
So what's going on? He connects that to failing to grasp the grace of God. Yes.
Right? So that no one fails to obtain the grace of God so that no root of bitterness will spring up. It's almost like that's an opposite to the bitterness. Yes, it is the grace of God that heals our bitterness that allows us to forgive and to let go of the things that we bite down on that are so painful. Yeah, we could spend days on this.
We could maybe spend a whole show talking about this. Almost like he says at the end of that phrase in 15, and by it, oh, many become defiled. Yes. Isn't it true when you give vent to your own deep rooted bitterness and finally plop it out there, that poison gets all over everybody and it incites others to own your bitterness and then they feed their own.
Yeah. Bitterness is a toxic poison. It's toxic and the root of the root of bitterness is actually dissatisfaction with God giving you what you thought he was going to give you. He didn't do what I expected him to do and he didn't give me what I wanted and so I'm just going to chew on that and suck on that bitter little pill. I married this person who I thought was a gift from God and now we're divorced, so what happened there? That expectation just gets dashed and you think, this isn't right, this isn't what I signed up for. You become bitter and then you start having weird expectations from God and then it ends up infecting almost everything with your relationships with others. We could talk about this for days, but we don't have time. I think that's why the writer just implants this picture, that root of bitterness.
A root is hidden below the ground, but it's feeding life to something. That's what bitterness does. You counteract that by leaning on the grace of God. God will give to me regardless of my worthiness. It's coming anyway. His promises are good.
I'll just cling to that. I probably need to say just a quick word about Esau, not being able to find a place for repentance. Esau experienced genuine remorse. He mourned. He was sorry that what he had done caused trouble in his life, but he did not repent. He didn't repent. Just acknowledging his having wronged God.
His sin was against God. Go read about it. It's in Genesis 27.
It's famous. We're out of time. We need to address that at another time. So we're going to look at the rest of this chapter next week, and we hope you're with us because he brings to such a great conclusion.
It's pretty much a conclusion of the whole book before he gets to some practical tips in 13. So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. We're so glad you're with us. We hope you're kind of catching this because this is profoundly central to the message of the entire Bible and what God's intention for you is. So join us next week on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. That was hot. Let's just leave that alone.
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