The Four Helps to Faith, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. It is faith that gives you the ability to obey even when it doesn't make sense to forgive somebody who has hurt you. To hope even in the dark chapters. It is by looking to Jesus who has endured such hostility for you that you begin to say, now I want to leverage what I have.

I want to give what I have for the joy that drove him. Have you laid it all on the line in faith? Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. From day one, Christians have faced ridicule, torture, and even death because they refused to give up their faith. And though Christians in America may not always face physical attack, those who truly want to live for God still face intellectual and emotional attacks being labeled as radicals and lunatics. In fact, Richard Dawkins once argued that teaching a child about God should be considered child abuse. So in a world that's opposed to everything we believe, how can we stand strong?

Pastor J.D. answers that question today on Summit Life with a message from Hebrews chapter 12 called The Four Helps to Faith. Faith is the belief that God, what God has revealed about himself in the Bible is true and that following him is worth it. Without faith, the writer of Hebrews says, you will never please God because you will never go all the way with Jesus. Remember that the people to whom the author of Hebrews is writing are people who are struggling because the Christian life has gotten hard for them. The writer of Hebrews offers them four helps for their faith in difficult times. Four helps for their faith in difficult times.

Look at how he sets it up. Chapter 12, verse 1. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. The writer here says that the Christian life is like a marathon. The point is the Christian life is hard. So he gives us four motivations to keep going.

Here they are. Number one, he tells us to consider the witnesses. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses now, therefore always points backwards.

So in this case, what is it pointing backwards to? The answer is Hebrews chapter 11 to the list of people that he has given in Hebrews 11 who risked all of it on God and his promises. These Old Testament saints are people just like you with the questions that you have. And he says that they are like people in a marathon who started before us and now they're standing along the sides as we run, telling us, keep going. I know you feel like you're about to die, but you can make it. It's worth it. You'll make it.

I made it. So that's your first help to faith is that you should consider the witnesses. Here's your second help to faith.

It's in verse 2. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Looking unto Jesus.

In Greek, what it literally says there is, look away to Jesus. As if, look off into the distance. It's not something, listen, that you look at him doing right now.

That's very important. Not something you're looking at him doing now. You're looking out of your pain and out of your darkness. So look away to Jesus. Because the cross shows you that he's committed to seeing this thing through. The resurrection shows you that he is able to see it through.

The cross shows you that the pain you are experiencing now is to be expected. But don't lose heart because God only brings the power of resurrection out of the pain of the cross. That's your second help to faith.

Here's your third help to faith. Verse 5. Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My sons do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God, good news, is treating you as sons. Jump down to verse 11.

For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. 12. Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees. Write down your third help.

First one was consider. The witness to the second one was fix your eyes on Jesus. Third one, trust the fatherly sovereignty of God. Now, there's actually two metaphors that are at work in these verses.

Here's the first metaphor that he uses in these verses. It's that of a coach. You have a coach that knows what is coming. In fact, I've told you sometimes that the way God answers your prayers is by giving you what you would have asked for had you known what he knows. Just because it's not your plan doesn't mean it's not a good plan.

But just because it's not your plan doesn't mean it's a good plan because God's plan is to mold your image into his character and to increase your faith and your delight in him so he is tearing you down in your strength so he can rebuild you in his. Which leads me to the second metaphor he uses in these verses, which is that of a father. The word used for discipline in verse five is a different one than the one in verse 11. In English, they look the same.

But in Greek, it's the word pidea from which we get our word pidiatry. It has to do with how a good father disciplines a child. A good parent disciplines his child for wrongdoing, not to pay them back for their wrongdoing, but to form their character. God is committed. He's not punishing you. But he is committed to growing you up in him. And a lot of times he uses pain and disappointment to do it. Some of you have only learned to think about God as a precious moments God who coddles you or gives you warm fuzzies. Or he's, you know, even worse, a celestial pinata that you whack with a faith stick.

But God is not a celestial pinata and he's not a fuzzy sentimental God. He is a father. His is a fatherly love, a tough love, a love that forges your character and a love that grows you up into maturity. You know, I've often, I've heard it said that the difference in a mother's love and a father's love, and this is way oversimplification, but the difference in a mother's and father's love is that a mother shows her affection by pulling a kid close and a father shows his affection by pushing a kid out. Our kids get hurt.

My wife Veronica, she's all over them, pulling them in, comforting them in the pool. I am showing my love for my kids by pushing them out. Both of them are love and God does both to you.

He is tender like a mother in this illustration and he is tough like a father. Do you trust that in all things God is disciplining you as a son or daughter? That an all-knowing, all-powerful God is in control of all things in your life and he is using all of them for your good? Because the writer says that is key in developing faith. Because it means that you can know, listen, you can know that in every situation, every difficult situation, every frustration, every inconvenience, every disappointment, every broken heart, every tragedy, God is at work forging your character. I'm not saying that he is the one doing those things to you. What I am saying to you is that God is in all things working for your good and he is taking even the disappointments in everything, even the small mundane things. He is taking everything and he is forging your character so that you become like Jesus.

Let me show you one other textual thing that's just too good to pass up. All right, verse five, look at this. You see how the writer says don't take lightly God's discipline? You see that in verse five? The Greek word translated take lightly is the exact same word translated despise in Hebrews 12 too, where it says Jesus despised or took lightly the shame of the cross. In English they look the same, or excuse me, in Greek they're the same but in English they get translated differently.

So you might not realize it's the same word but there's a reason he uses the same word. On the cross Jesus took lightly the pain and the scorn of others. We are told not to despise or take lightly the discipline of God.

Now here's the irony, we usually reverse those don't we? We despise the pain in our life but we put value on the opinion of others. What we should put value on, the discipline of God, we take lightly. And what we should take lightly, the opinion of others, we put value on. And that's just because we don't esteem what God esteems.

We don't honor what God honors and that is the growth of our faith. As I told you at the beginning there is nothing on earth more valuable than faith. There is no greater gift that God could give to you than faith. So sometimes God will take away things of lesser value from you to work in you the thing of greatest value which is faith. Sometimes he withholds earthly blessings from you so he can teach you about the real blessing which is God himself. Many of you have thought of God again as this pinata that if you just ask him just right he's going to give you all these things that you asked from him.

But he's from him. But Hebrews 11 says this, without faith it's impossible to please God because he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Now what does he reward them with? What does he reward them with? What are they seeking? That's the other way to ask that. What are they seeking in that verse?

They're seeking him. So the reward is him. God is his own best reward. God doesn't reward you with just a celestial palace or a BMW on earth. I mean if he does then thank him for it. But he is his own best reward.

Right? You don't hit you know God the pinata and get out goodies. He is the goodies that comes out of his own pinata. And the greatest thing that God can give to you is an enlarged understanding of how good he is and to treasure and delight in him. You're number four. Here's your fourth motivation to keep going. Focus on the joy.

Focus on the joy. Let's go back to that phrase we skipped in verse two. Verse two, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross? He despised the shame and is seated now at the right hand of the throne of God.

Well what was it? What was it that held Christ to the cross? Was it the nails? Of course not.

Be serious. He raised the dead. He calmed storms. He walked through walls.

He could have gotten out of the nails. What held him to the cross according to verse two was an emotion you may not be expecting. Joy. Joy is what held him to the cross. How does a man go through the pain of a cross with joy?

Simple. He looked forward to it. He looked and grabbed hold of the joy that awaited him on the other side. The joy of what was that joy? What was the joy that awaited him?

Well think about it. What was it that Jesus would have on this side of the cross that he didn't have on that side? The approval of God? Is that what he would have? You already had that.

Kingship of the universe? Already his. The adoration of angels? His from eternity past. What is the one thing that he would have after the cross that he didn't have before?

You. He was doing all that to save you. You were his inheritance. For the joy of reconciling you and me to himself, he endured the cross with joy.

And here's what the writer is getting at. If Christ felt that way about you, doesn't that make you long to see him? And what the author says is look and grab a hold of this joy. If this is the God who gave it all up to save you, doesn't that empower you to give up what you have for him? Doesn't that make you willing to suffer for his sake? And furthermore, if Christ gave himself up so that you could be saved, doesn't that make you willing to give up what you have so that others could be saved? When you were lost, Jesus made your rescue his joy. If that is true, can't you make the rescue of others who were in the same condition that you were in before Jesus saved you?

Can't you make the rescue of them your joy? People of faith are joy-driven. That's the difference of somebody who's religious and somebody who's been transformed by the gospel. People who are religious are duty-driven.

They're like, oh, what do I got to do now? But people who've been touched by the gospel are joy-driven, even in a cross. They're driven by the joy of knowing and pleasing the one who gave up everything to save them and the joy of rescuing others just like they have been rescued. Why is it that a believer gives up their possessions, their time, their lives to see people reached?

It's not because they've taken a vow of poverty or they don't enjoy nice things. It is the joy of what you will obtain by giving away those things that is greater than the joy you derive from those things you're giving away. We'll get right back to today's teaching with Pastor JD in just a moment. But first, let me tell you about a daily email devotional that's available to our Summit Life family. I know we all get spammed with lots of stuff we simply don't care about, but this is one that you'll not only come to appreciate, but actually experience growth from as a result. The devotionals even follow along with whatever our current teaching on the program is, so you can stay plugged into these messages regardless of your schedule.

To sign up for this free resource, visit us at jdgrier.com slash resources. You can also learn more about our brand new monthly resource available with your gift to the ministry today. Thanks for being with us. Now let's get back to the final moments of today's message. Here's Pastor JD. Verse one, let us also now lay aside every weight, the sin which clings so closely.

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. See how he distinguishes sins and weights there? For a lot of Christians, their life is only about getting rid of sins.

But when you understand the joy that drives you, that leads you to new questions. That's like not just what is sin, but what is also weight. You know, I mean, in the Olympics, in swimming, as far as I know, as far as I know, you are allowed to swim in jeans with a full beard.

I don't think there's any rule that says you can't do that, but I've never seen one do it. They strip themselves down of everything, body fat, hair, right? Decent clothing, they wear things that like, why would a man wear that?

But they're doing that because they're stripping everything down because they don't want anything that slows them down. When you start being driven by joy, the question is not what is sin. The question is, what is keeping me from knowing Jesus and delighting in Jesus? What is keeping my life from being used for the mission? People of faith are those who are so consumed by the vision of eternity that they would gladly give up their lives here for joy of what they obtained there. And I'll just go ahead and tell you, there's a lot of you that have hobbies and possessions that are fine in and of themselves, they are not sin, but they are probably distracting you from the mission. They're not sins per se, they're just weights. And you'll know that you're being transformed by the gospel when it becomes less, am I allowed to keep this?

And it becomes now, how can I give this away? Because I want to be, I want joy of seeing people come to Christ. I want the joy of pleasing Jesus. That's what faith is. Faith is being driven by that joy of what you obtained there. It's living in a way now that you know 100 years from now, you'd be glad that you did. In Richmond, Virginia, at the headquarters of the International Mission Board, there's a wall of panels on which are inscribed the names of every Southern Baptist missionary who has died on the field in the past 150 years.

It's very moving if you've ever seen it. Fathers and mothers and wives and children and grandparents who gave up everything and paid with their lives. Some of them dying of disease, some of starvation, some through violent acts of persecution. And at the top of that plaque is just inscribed one verse, Hebrews 12 two. Looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despised the shame, and then sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. These people did what they did because they believed the joy was greater. They kept their eyes on Jesus. Let me share one story with you given to me by a member of our church, a member of the Summit Church who lived in Afghanistan for many years.

I asked him to write this down because I want to make sure I got it right. He writes, in January of 2008, a friend of ours, Clara, was kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Clara, which is not her real name, but Clara was a humanitarian aid worker and Christian woman who had moved to this far off country to help serve the poorest of the poor. She worked for over five years in some of the harshest areas of the country leading a women's skills training program and being light for the gospel in a very dark place. Her presence in the city was a threat to radical Islamic religious leaders for several reasons. For one, she was bringing education to women, which they didn't believe should learn skills outside of the home. Second, she was a Christian woman and they were threatened by the idea that women would be exposed to outside ideas and they wouldn't be able to control what they thought. She had gone to serve Afghans out of a desire to be a witness for Jesus. The only reason she was there in southern Afghanistan was because of the gospel. It was her understanding of what Christ had done for her on the cross, how he'd made himself nothing taking the form of a servant that left her to leave her life in suburban Richmond to move to one of the most forsaken places on earth. A place where dust storms are a daily occurrence, where windows have to have blast film because of the risk of explosions. A place where there was no electricity to even run a fan in the 100 degree heat in the summer, where she would have only sporadic internet access to write emails or get news from home.

A place where an armed Islamic group that is hospital to the gospel operates with impunity. She did all of this because she understood that Christ had come to earth to face even greater dangers for her, even more separation from his father, even more discomfort for her sake. I and a few others from our team ended up negotiating with the hostage takers for six months. During that time we received news that she was being moved around from place to place to keep her hidden. The U.S. military tried several rescue attempts. In fact, it was the same unit that did the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, SEAL team six, that was tasked with trying to rescue her.

Twice they got very close. One of these times she'd been moved to a neighboring house as the troops arrived. Another time she was hidden in the basement of the house and the rescue team just missed her. You can only imagine the frustration Clara must have felt to hear her rescuers just feet away and then to realize that the attempt had failed. From knowing Clara, though, I can tell you that despite these disappointments she did not lose faith in her real savior. When news of Clara's kidnapping was heard in the streets, Pushtuned women from the southern stronghold of the Taliban were outraged.

For the first and only time in the history of that oppressed place, 300 women marched to the governor's mansion to demand that he do something to free her. These women had benefited from her project and they were not protesting because Clara had just taught them a few skills. They demonstrated because of the incredible witness of humble service that Clara had had among them.

They protested, you might say, because they saw Christ in her. I wish I could share with you this story ends happily, but this story has no ending. We don't know what happened to Clara. She kept being moved from village to village, handed off from one group of rogue men to another. The last we heard, she was handed over to a nomadic group of armed smugglers that wandered through the desert of death in southeastern Afghanistan and then she disappeared. We don't know if she was killed. They had threatened to kill her because they knew she was a Christian, but we have no proof and nobody that she's not been heard from in over two years.

She simply disappeared. Is she an extraordinary hero of faith? Well, in a sense she was. I, along with several members of the Summit Church, knew her well. She is a woman of faith, but if I sit and remember her as she was, she was a regular girl from Richmond, Virginia, a friendly smiling friend, a person who struggled along with the rest of us when it was hot, a girl who loved to go on vacation, a regular American girl who decided to step out in faith and obey a calling from Jesus to go to a place that she wasn't sure she could handle. I saw God's grace and strength enable her to develop an amazing project among these women in southern Afghanistan and I know that God's grace and strength were with her when she was taken by the Taliban. Faith is demonstrated in times of adversity, but its work is manifest long before that.

Sometimes faith is quiet, working humbly in love, but it is that same faith that makes a regular girl like Clara stand up to one of history's most vicious regimes and say Christ is better and the mission is worth it. Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life and so I end asking you the same question I asked you last week. Apart from faith in Christ, is there an explanation for your life? Is yours the kind of life that we would say if there's no God and these promises aren't true, none of what they're doing makes sense? Because if not, you're not walking by faith and your life is not pleasing to God.

You're just a suburban cultural Christian. It is faith that gives you the ability to lay it all on the line. It is faith that gives you the ability to obey even when it doesn't make sense, to forgive somebody who has hurt you, to get back up after you fall, to pray when things seem hopeless, to hope even in the dark chapters, to leverage your life and your skill into places that are not advantageous for you but are solely advantageous for the gospel. It is by looking to Jesus who has authored and finished this, who has endured such hostility for you that you begin to say now I want to leverage what I have.

I want to give what I have for the joy that drove him. Have you laid it all on the line in faith? And if not, the answer is, or the question is, will you? Will you lay it all on the line in faith, all of it? And will you say, God, if this is not true, the gospel is not true, I'm going to waste everything, but I believe it is true. So I'm going to leverage everything on it. Have you leveraged everything on Jesus? While that may not look the same for every person, the call is still the same, total and complete surrender. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor and author J.D.

Greer. J.D., we are offering this new Bible study this month to our faithful supporters. Can you tell us how this resource, Christ is Better, will help us grow in our faith? What you'll find is that these heroes of the Hebrew Bible were not so much examples that were supposed to emulate as much as they were signposts that pointed us to a savior. That pointed us to a savior that we were to hope in and adore. I think what you'll find is that Hebrews can inspire you if you learn to read it correctly.

If you read it as a, as a bunch of examples to emulate those examples will crush you because you'll think like, well, I could never be an Esther and I could never be a David. But when you see that they were just broken people like you who trusted in Christ, you'll learn that the same savior that empowered them can empower you. I think this Bible study that we're offering alongside of our teaching here on Summit Life, I think it'll take you deep into these examples, take you back into the stories of some of these people that the writer of Hebrews references and show you how not only you can learn from their examples, but you can, can learn to receive the same power of the savior that they received. When you give to support this ministry today, we'll send you this brand new Bible study that follows right along with our current teaching series here on the program. It comes with our thanks when you join our mission to spread the good news of the gospel to the ends of the earth. The suggested giving level is $35 or more. And remember, every penny you donate is used to advance the gospel message through this ministry. Give today and ask for your copy of Christ is Better when you call 866-335-5220. It's even easier to give on our website. Go to jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. Thanks for being with us this week and be sure to join us next week as we continue this study in the book of Hebrews right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.