963. How We Are to Run the Race

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, Dr. Steve Pettit, longtime evangelist and now president of Bob Jones University, is continuing a study series entitled, Run the Race, which is a study of the book of Hebrews chapter 12. Let's now listen to today's message, where Steve will show us how we as Christians are to run the race. Well I'd like to ask you to take your Bibles and turn with me please to the book of Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews chapter 12. We have been looking at the theme of running the race and we've taken some time to establish just in a small way the theme of the book of Hebrews as it exalts and lifts up Christ and as it exhorts us to be faithful. And so last week we began with Hebrews 12.1 as we just talked about the Christian life is a life of a faith race.

We are running a race. And this morning I'd like us to look more carefully at the first two verses in a little more detail as our, my message this morning is entitled, How is it that we are to run this race? Specifically, what does the writer tell us to do as a Christian living out this Christian faith? So let's look at Hebrews 12 verses one and two this morning. The scripture says, wherefore 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.

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. If you are able this coming summer to go over to Tokyo, Japan, where they're having the summer Olympics, the 2020 summer Olympics, and suppose you are able to get a ticket to go see one of the track and field events and let's imagine you're sitting in the stands and you take your binoculars and you're wanting, by the way, this is not Japan and this is definitely not an Olympic runner, but let's say you take your binoculars and you want to try to determine what's the next race, whether it is a sprint or it's a long distance run. Do you think you would be able to solely look at the body type of the runners and determine what's the race?

The answer is absolutely. How? How do you know that? Because the body types of runners and sprints and long distance are distinguishably different. So what does a sprinter look like? What's his body type? Well, generally they have powerful arms, they have ripped abs, and they have very thick legs.

Why? Because the sprinter needs strength for his race. So what does the body of a long distance runner look like?

The exact opposite. Lean, thin, long legs, skinny arms, somebody that looks like they need muscles. But what kind of strength do they need? They don't need the physical strength to burst out and run short distances. They need the ability to run for a long time. We call that stamina.

Or they need endurance. So you have to have a certain kind of strength in order to run a specific kind of race. We read this morning in Hebrews where the rider is telling us the kind of strength that we need to run the race.

What is that strength? Look at what he says in verse one. He says, look at what he says in verse one. He says, let us run the race with what? What does it say? Say it.

What does it say? Run with what? Patience. What is patience? Patience is not putting up with an irritating roommate. That's called long suffering. Patience means endurance.

It means to stick something out. It means to be able to do something a long time. So for example in Hebrews 10, 36, the rider has already told us that we all have need of endurance or we all have need of patience. So how do we run this race? We are to run the race with stamina or with endurance. It's very interesting and we'll be seeing this in the weeks to come that in verses four through 11 we learn that God actually builds our endurance like a trainer does in the gymnasium. God is an expert in spiritual strength conditioning.

God knows how to get us in shape. And so what we see here this morning is that we are to run the race with endurance. But the rider gives us two what I would say core requirements that are necessary on our part to be able to run the race with endurance. In other words there are some preliminaries, some things that we have to do in order to be able to get in the race and run the race. So what are those preliminaries?

What are those core requirements? And there are two of them. One of them is negative and the second one is positive. So what is the negative?

What are we to do? And notice what he says back in verse one, Wherefore, seeing also, we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us. So we have a negative command.

He tells us to lay aside. Now to be honest with you, when you study it and understand it, it's actually a bit of an awkward statement. Because in ancient times runners literally took off their clothes and they ran in their one button suit. That is they had no clothes on.

Awkward. But they didn't want to be hindered. They didn't want anything to get in the way. And that's the metaphor that's given to us.

There are things that have to be laid aside, things that have to be taken off. And since the Greeks were experts in the human body, how long would it take them to look at these runners to see if they're in shape? In other words, if they have what we call the love handles, obviously they're probably not going to win. In other words, they're not lean. They're not in shape.

If you have excess weight or extra fat, it will be obvious. And the point is that a runner has to be disciplined. A runner has to live a restricted, constrained lifestyle.

So what are the restrictions? One of the things that we are to lay aside, and he tells us, there are two of them. Notice what it says. Let us lay aside every weight. The first thing we're to lay aside is weight. Now, what does he mean by weight? Well, I think he means weight. How many of you have ever tried to lose weight?

Raise your hand. Come on now. How many of you have ever tried to gain weight?

That is weird. I mean, I've never, ever had to try to gain weight. Ever.

It's always the opposite. All athletic training requires getting a body in shape through intense conditioning. This includes, for a lot of them, losing weight. Maybe five pounds or ten pounds, cutting calories, getting to the optimum weight to maximize your performance, cutting out the things that are not necessary, things that don't fit into your purpose. So if you're going to play and you're going to be effective, if that's your purpose, then you need to get in the best shape possible.

What is weight? Weight for us as believers, it's usually things in our life that are not disciplined. What does it take to get into spiritual shape? Paul tells us we're to exercise ourselves unto godliness. If there's exercise, what's the exercise? What are the things that we need to be doing in our lives that are a part of getting in shape spiritually?

What are the things that you already know? Things like daily Bible reading, daily prayer time, faithfulness to the house of God, sharing the gospel in witnessing, being involved in service ministry, giving financially to the local church. These are all spiritual habits.

These are all spiritual disciplines. And the difference between one over the other is the fact that some of you are disciplined and some of you are not spiritually. Some of you are fat, out of shape, flabby. And some of you have not lifted any spiritual weights for a while and you're just going through the motion.

And that's the danger of Bob Jones University because it's quote unquote a spiritual atmosphere and you float through the atmosphere but actually you're going backwards. Because any athlete knows that if he doesn't work out for two or three weeks, what is he going to be like in two weeks? He's out of shape, exactly. You go two or three weeks and you neglect spiritual disciplines, it doesn't matter where you are, you're out of shape. So he says lay aside these undisciplined areas of your life. Let me also say that these weights could also be things that are distracting, things that are binding. As a Christian, we are surrounded by multiple distractions. Things that grab our attention and lead us away.

Because if you're running a race, you have to be focused because your focus is the goal, it's the end of the line. The Gospel speaks of two sisters, Martha and Mary, you probably know the story. Where Jesus comes to the house and Mary sits at Jesus' feet and Martha's trying to fix lunch and she's upset with Mary because she's not helping her. And Jesus clarifies what's really important. He said, Martha, you are encumbered about with a lot of serving but Mary has chosen the number one most important thing and that is me.

Let me ask you a question this morning. Have you chosen the number one most important thing for your life and that is the Lord Himself and spending time with Him? Or are you distracted?

A part of spiritual maturity is learning to make principled decisions. Learning to make decisions where you are focused with intention on what you're trying to do. There's no doubt in my mind, one of the biggest distractions for many of you sitting in this room right now is your cell phone. For example, if you're playing a game on a cell phone this morning, my tendency is to say, you're really stupid. But let me not be so unkind to call you an idiot. Let me just say that you're distracted. And let me tell you this, that you're actually worldly because instead of focusing what is only eternal, the word is eternal, you're actually looking at something in the world, whether it's a game or it's a text message or it's something that's happening in this world and you actually are neglecting the eternal for that which is temporal. I'm just saying, you want me to be straight up with you? You want me to play a game or you want me to be honest with you? And many of you should be far more spiritual than you are and you're actually not that spiritual because actually you're constantly distracted.

You need to lay aside these weights. You need to be focused. I remember a number of years ago, we had in our evangelistic team, we had a young man at the time traveling with us, a guy named Will Galkin, probably you've heard of Will. And I bought for my sons a PlayStation and I think it was like PlayStation 3, I don't remember what it was, 3 or 4. And we had it set up in our fifth wheel trailer and my boys would play PlayStation. And I would say to Will, I'd say, Will, come on over to my trailer if you want to play, come over and do some PlayStation. And he would say, nah, that's okay. And I asked him like four or five times and one day I said, Will, why don't you come over and play PlayStation? He said, I can't handle it.

I said, what do you mean you can't handle it? He said, I get so immersed in video games, he says, I become obsessed with it. Now to me, video games are really boring. I'm just saying. Now they may not be, that's okay. I mean, it's probably because I'm boring, okay?

It's probably that simple. Or maybe I should say, I'm really not that good at it, okay? So some of you are like really, really good. But you know what he told me?

I thought it was interesting. He said, I get so obsessed with it, he says, it's all I think about. And my brain is like engaged in these video games. And he said, suddenly all I'm doing is thinking about video games. Instead of really being focused on the things that are really eternal and the things that matter. And so he actually limited himself.

He actually, he would come over occasionally and he would play for an hour or two. But then he would go back and he didn't want to be distracted. You know what? You can't be an Olympic athlete and be distracted.

That's what he's saying. If you're going to run the race with endurance, there's some things you need to lay aside. Number one, he said, you need to lay aside weights. Then number two, he says, you need to lay aside the sin that doth so easily beset us. What is the sin that so easily besets us? The word beset there means to tighten control.

It's like encircling around you and tightening its grip. It could be a personal sin. It could be something that's individual to you. That's peculiar to your own personality. It could be a sin like lust or pride. It could be fear, insecurity.

It could be laziness or bad habits. So it's a sin that is peculiar to you. And I think that's a plausible way to look at this, this your own besetting sin. But it could be, it could be, which I think it's probably more this way, because there is an article in front of the word sin. He calls it the sin. And it's the besetting sin of the book of Hebrews.

So what is the besetting sin of the people of God in the book of Hebrews? Let me give you an illustration that might help. A number of years ago for many, many years I served at Northland Camp and Conference Center, and for those years I also, some of those years I served as the camp director. And so one summer we had a theme, Hebrews 12, run the race. This is really actually where the idea came from that we're doing this semester. So we decided to sort of make it a little bit more real in life and so we decided to do a big race on a Saturday. We decided to do a triathlon. And the triathlon included two groups of people. One group were those that wanted to do the whole thing. So they would swim, they would bike, and they would run.

So it was like, it was like a 500 yard swim, a 12 mile bike ride, and I think it was like a two or three mile run, okay? But I decided we wanted to make sure that we had counselors the next week, so we decided to do teams. And so most everybody just got on a team, so one is biking, one is swimming, the other is riding. So people ask me, are you going to be on a team? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be on a team.

So I was on a team with the camp manager, Mr. Paul Witt, and the camp evangelist, Will Galken. And so we got together, and I looked at him, I said, I'm not going to run, and I'm not going to swim. So Will said, I'll swim, and Paul said, I'll run, and I said, I'll bike. So the race started out, it was like across the lake and back, it was about a 500 yard swim, and so Will jumps in the water with everybody else, and as you well know in one of these races, it's just a lot of splashing for a while, and then all of a sudden the racers, the swimmers begin to sort of separate themselves based on who's the fastest. And so they went out and swam back, and they came up and got out of the lake, and I'm looking for Will. You know, because you really can't really tell who's who until they start coming out of the lake, and so all these people start coming out of the lake because they had to run up the hill and tag me, and I had to take off. And so I'm waiting and waiting, and finally I see like three people looking, you know, they're doing the dog paddle, you know, coming to it. Finally Will comes up out of the lake, he looks like the creature coming out of the black lagoon.

He's a manatee coming up the hill, you know. And he's coming up this hill, and he finally tags me, and I start the race, my part. And in about 30 seconds, I realized I had made a very serious mistake. Number one, I had not ridden the bike all summer.

Number two, the bike that I chose was a bike that my wife and I bought for late Saturday afternoon rides. It had the big fake tires with the white side walls, and the big, you know, the big buddy seat that you sit on with the little ding ding ding ding bell, you know. I looked like the Wicked Witch of the West, you know. And so I got, it wasn't even three speed, it was no speed. So about 30 seconds into it, I realized I've made a mistake. But I had 12 miles I had to ride. Most of the time I rode all by myself.

And if you've ever been to Northeastern Wisconsin, there's a lot, a lot of dead deer on the side of the road. And you know, when you're doing something like this that's really hard, you sort of hallucinate somewhere through the middle of it. And I started having all these thoughts like I was going to die. And they were going to find me in a ditch like a dead deer with my legs sort of stuck up like this. And finally, finally, finally, I made it back.

I think it was like 58 minutes later or something. And I literally rolled in and I tagged the runner, Paul, and I literally fell off the bike on the ground. Everybody started gathering around me like, is he dead? And the first words out of my mouth were these. I finally figured out what is the sin that doth so easily beset us.

They were like, what? Because the entire race, the whole race, I wanted to quit. What is the sin that besets all of us?

We already know what it is. We want to quit. In this case, it's the faith. It's walking away. It's turning our backs on. It's walking into the world away from what I have come to believe.

Now don't tell me that that's not something you struggle with because you do. It is the sin that doth so easily beset us. Five times in Hebrews, the rider gives us warnings of the danger of falling away in the faith. That's why he says, exhort one another daily. Lest you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Lest your heart gets hard.

You can sit here day in and day out and literally, instead of being tenderhearted, you can become hard-hearted. So he says, lay these things aside. And then he gives us a positive command. And very quickly, notice what he says in verse two, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. Believers are commanded to run the race with a resolute focus on Jesus. And we know that looking unto Jesus is illustrated throughout the New Testament. Peter is invited by Jesus to get out of the boat and walk on the water. And as long as he keeps his eyes on the Lord, what does he do? He walks by faith. But when the waves and the temptations, the distractions came around him, he took his eyes off the Lord.

And what did he do? He started to sink. We always sink when we take our eyes off the Lord. And Jesus reached his hand out and rescued the disciple from certain death. And Jesus admonished him. He said, oh, thou of little faith, wherefore did you doubt?

Why did you doubt? You have to keep our eyes on the Lord. The key to staying on top of the water is ignoring distractions and staying focused on Jesus. You got so much stuff and that stuff can become the distraction where we take our eyes off the Lord. Let me also say that looking unto Jesus means to focus on his person and what he's done.

What does he say? Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. The word author means the one who blazed the trail. In other words, Jesus is the champion of faith.

He's led the way. Who's my example? My example is Jesus. I look in the Bible.

He tells me what he's like. He's also the finisher of our faith. He is the one who has perfected our faith. In the Old Testament, they didn't have access to God. We do today. In the Old Testament, they could know that their sins are forgiven. We do today.

In the Old Testament, they didn't have a new heart and a new power. We have that today. In other words, he has perfected for us everything that we need to live the Christian life.

You have access to all that you need. But let me also say in conclusion that looking unto Jesus is actually the way that we run the race. Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured. How do we run the race? We're to endure.

The word endure means to stay under. It means to make a firm resolve, not to quit. Some of you have been here already three weeks and you're already ready to throw in the towel and quit. I like what one preacher said, you need to go to your dictionary and find the word quit and cut it out. Because if you quit today, do you think it's going to be easier tomorrow? Let me assure you that tomorrow is not easier. You say that's really discouraging. Let me say it again.

Do not quit. Endurance, there is this incredible value of persevering. And who is the example? It is Jesus who endured the cross. Who focused on the eternal joy of what was set before him. Who treated the shame that came to him from the Roman soldiers. He treated their shame with contempt. He held those who held him in contempt, he held them in contempt.

Why? Because he knew that the cross was the wisdom of God because through the cross you and I can be saved. And all along the way as we look to Jesus, that's how we run the race. Looking to Jesus is sufficient enough for us to live the Christian life because when we look to him like we look to him to be saved, as we look to him on a daily basis, here's what God does, here's what God does. He empowers you.

Did you get that? Just like he saved you and just like he brought Peter out of the water, so when you look to Jesus, even like a simple child crying out for its mother as you look to Jesus, he gives you the power to live the Christian life. So lay aside and look to Jesus. Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you that you give us strength through your word to run the race. Help us to be faithful. In Jesus' name, amen.