This morning, as we gather together with the saints to remember You at Your table, we thank You for such a great salvation and for the fact that we can share it together. We just bless Your name.
We pray that You would grant grace to look into Your Word a little bit, and that there might be a word of encouragement today, in Jesus’ name.
As we begin, let’s look at Hebrews 12:1.
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
let us also lay aside every encumbrance,
and the sin which so easily entangles us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
We want to look at the book of Hebrews another time today. We remember that this book is a book of exhortation—exhortation and encouragement. Who was it written to? Early Jewish Christians, and it was a word of encouragement to them.
They were looking at a great shaking. They did not know there was probably this great shaking coming, and this word the Lord spoke was to draw their attention back to the Lord Himself, away from any other thing—their Jewishness and their Jewish religion. He was exhorting them to turn to Jesus Christ.
I think we have the same word today. We have a great shaking coming, and we have a little benefit because we know. We know there is a great shaking. So the question is, what are we going to do about it?
Paul had a goal, and we have that goal: to turn from other things simply to Him. Paul said, “That I might know Him; that I might gain Christ.” So, in this great shaking, might we be a people with a goal to know Him and to gain Christ.
Before I get into the message for today, I wanted to share a couple of little things. This word has come to me numerous times while I have been looking at this book, and I did not want to make it a whole message. It is the word of exhortation.
Exhortation is a word of correction, and it is also a word of encouragement. There are two places in Hebrews that use the word encouragement.
Hebrews 3:12-13 says:
Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you
an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.
But encourage one another day after day,
as long as it is still called “Today,”
so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Encourage one another not to fall away from the living God.
Then Hebrews 10:23-25 says:
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,
for He who promised is faithful;
and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some,
but encouraging one another;
and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Encourage one another. What is your thought about encouragement—encouraging one another? When we see somebody drifting, somebody who is not doing well, we reach out to them.
One tendency we can have is just to say, “Well, forget it. Just forget them. They are not going to make it. They are not going to go on.” Not a good thing. Not a good thing.
If I had not had people to encourage me when I was down and out, I would be out. So we need to think about ways to encourage one another.
That word encourage is a Greek word: parakaleō. Where else do we see Paraclete, parakaleō? You can answer.
John. There is a great word in John 14:15-16, a great word of encouragement. It is good to think about what that word means. It means to come by the side, to call to one side; hence, aid, encouragement, exhortation, consolation, and comfort.
I was just thinking: it says, “Come alongside.” When we want to encourage someone, we can go two different ways. We can ignore them, like I mentioned earlier, or we can come to them and say, “You need to do this. You need to straighten up.”
That is not what this says. That is coming down from the top. This says, “Come alongside.” I think the result when we come and say, “You straighten up,” is that people are going to react and just not listen.
But we need to encourage one another. We need to come alongside. And the only encouragement is to lead one another to the Lord Himself. We need to pray for each other, walk with one another, and really point one another to the Lord Himself. That is the only thing that is going to answer.
Well, now we want to go on to the message for today. I think this message in Hebrews 12:1 is a natural transition from the first four things I shared.
The first one was: Do not drift. Do not drift away from the Lord Himself.
The second one was: Enter His rest. We have a great rest to enter into. What a great thing. He has done everything—a complete salvation. We can just rest in that.
The third one was: Press on to maturity. This is a little more difficult. Press on to maturity—a sense of moving forward. The Lord is after sons: sonship.
The fourth one was: Draw near. The way has been made for us to draw near. Do not stand afar off, but draw near by the blood of Jesus.
So the one today, I have summarized as: Run with endurance.
Let’s read the first few verses of Hebrews 12 again.
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
let us also lay aside every encumbrance,
and the sin which so easily entangles us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith,
Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him Who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself,
so that you may not grow weary and lose heart.
The burden obviously comes from Hebrews 12:1: Run with endurance the race that is set before us.
First: the race that is set before us. We are in a race.
We need to know more than mentally that we are in a race. Our hearts need to know spiritually, deep within, that we are in a race. It is a spiritual race, a race of faith.
The gospel that is common today says that the goal of Christianity is to get saved—to receive salvation and be born again. What a wonderful thing. What could be greater than being born again?
But that is just the start of the race. It is just the start of the race. The Lord has put us in this race that we might press on to maturity, that we might go on to sonship, that He might bring many sons to glory.
Run with endurance the race that is set before us. Do not quit.
Hebrews 12 begins with a word of encouragement:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us…
That is Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is called the hall of faith—those of great faith. In one sense, they are there for a lot of different things, but we can certainly take them as a source of encouragement.
See their race and their running—all these people who lasted their whole lives. This is not a short sprint race.
If we were in a sprint, we could run it, gut it out, and be done with it. We could go home, soothe our sore muscles, and say, “Ah, I finished the race.” But I chose to call this a cross-country race.
Often we say, “This is a marathon.” But marathons are usually flat, right? Flat surfaces. A cross-country race has crooked, stony paths. Think about the paths up on Skyline Drive: rain, wind, uphill, downhill, cold, hot, rough. Run with endurance.
How many are familiar with the Boston Marathon? There is a section in that race called Heartbreak Hill.
Heartbreak Hill is an ascent over four-tenths of a mile between the twenty- and twenty-one-mile mark. It is near Boston College. It is the last of four Newton Hills, which begin at the sixteen-mile mark and challenge contestants with late climbs after the course’s general downhill trend to that point.
Though Heartbreak Hill itself rises only eighty-eight feet, it comes in the portion of a marathon where muscle glycogen stores are most likely depleted—a phenomenon referred to by marathoners as “hitting the wall.”
It was on this hill in 1936 that defending champion Johnny Kelley overtook Ellison “Tarzan” Brown, giving him a consolatory pat on the shoulder as he passed. This gesture renewed the competitive drive in Brown, who rallied, pulled ahead of Kelley, and went on to win—thereby, it was said, breaking Kelley’s heart.
Johnny went by Tarzan and patted him late in the race. I have seen that hill, and it is really bad news. They are running downhill, it is warm inland, and then you come over that last hill and the Boston Harbor breezes hit you in the face. You are exhausted getting up the hill, and then you get hit. It is a challenging spot.
So the point is this: Johnny encouraged Tarzan. Let’s encourage one another to stay in the race.
We need spiritual training to run in a spiritual race. Think about what Paul said in Ephesians 3:14-19:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
from Whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
That is the goal of our training.
We see two examples in Hebrews 11 of those who lived their lives by faith and not by sight. We live in a day when we want to live by sight. We are so comfortable. We want a hands-on, sentient existence. If you do not know what that is, ask somebody later. But it is a worldly, fleshly, natural existence.
By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen,
in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household,
by which he condemned the world,
and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
So we have Noah, and we have Abraham:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place
which he was to receive for an inheritance;
and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land,
dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;
for he was looking for the city which has foundations,
whose architect and builder is God.
Noah and Abraham did what they did because they knew the Lord. I feel like He was speaking to them very deeply, and they laid hold of it by faith. It was a deep inward word. They were living by faith and not by sight.
Noah built an ark, for goodness’ sake. Noah built an ark in his backyard. We had a guy in Richmond build an ark once, but he was not too popular. It did not float.
And Abraham went out not knowing where. A life of faith. We need to live trusting the Lord.
There is good instruction on how to live the life of faith in Proverbs 3. So many of us know this, and it is over my desk:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.
We are in a race, a great contest, and it is a race of faith.
Number two: what are we supposed to do when we are in a race? Run.
What is interesting is that we did not enter ourselves into this race. How did we get in this race? When we were born again, we got put into a race. The Lord entered us in this contest.
He has a purpose for us, and He put us in this race for His purpose. What is our responsibility? To participate and run.
If you are on the track team and you tell the coach, “I do not feel too good today. Things have not been going too well today. Coach, I do not want to run today. Is that all right?” Tell the Lord you do not want to run today. Run with endurance.
I tried to find a good definition of run, and I could not find one, so I wrote my own: Keep moving with purpose in our step toward the goal.
The goal above everything else is that we gain Christ. The older I get, the more I believe that there is nothing else—nothing else—that will satisfy other than Christ.
He is the key to all spiritual blessing and living: Christ in us, the hope of glory. Paul said he suffered the loss of all things and counted them as rubbish in order that he might gain Christ.
The tense of this running is continuous, repeated action. Keep on running.
How many people have gone through O’Hare Airport when traveling? Terminals B and C are connected by an underground tunnel, and in the middle of that tunnel there is a moving walkway. It talks to you the whole way. What does it say? “Keep walking.”
We can just change it: “Keep running.” Keep moving, keep walking, keep moving.
How do we run? How do we keep moving and run continually? Keep our eyes on the prize. We have to keep our eyes on the prize.
Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith.
It is very important to keep our eyes on the prize. This race can be strenuous. It is long and lifelong, and it can be strenuous. We have a big tendency to look at ourselves in the middle of a strenuous race, and that is not a good thing.
We look at ourselves, our own ability, and our own strength, and we are tempted to quit. All the pain and discomfort.
Let me ask a question. If I were to say the name Jim Ryun, who knows that name? Not Paul Ryan—Jim Ryun. His name is spelled R-Y-U-N.
Jim Ryun was a Kansas fellow from my generation, and he was one of the best runners in the world, bar none. In 1964, he was the first high-school runner to break four minutes in the mile. In 1965, he set a high-school record that stood for thirty-six years. He went on after high school and set world records. He was an Olympic competitor. His résumé goes on like this.
I had the privilege of seeing him run in 1968 at the Drake Relays. It is a collegiate track meet at Drake University in Iowa. Everybody wanted to come and see Jim Ryun run, and he was doing very well.
I cannot remember whether he was running the 880—the half mile—or the mile, but it was beautiful to watch him run. About three-quarters of the way through, something happened to Jim Ryun. He quit.
The world’s best runner quit. I can see it now. He was going around the far curve, and he ran into the infield.
I think the pressure got to him. He could not handle it. There was so much pressure on him, but he was looking at himself. He put all that pressure on himself, and he quit. So we have to be very careful that we do not look at ourselves.
Sharon and I had the privilege last month to go to middle-school track meets. Our oldest grandson has started to run—he is in sixth grade. My wife, I never knew this, but she is quite a track fan. She really gets into this stuff. It is kind of embarrassing, actually.
But I said, “Sharon, when you are seeing these guys run, watch for about three-quarters of the way through the race.” Hardly anybody cannot run three-quarters of the race, but the whole race is right there at that three-quarter mark. Watch them from that point on. That is where Jim Ryun quit.
So the moral of that story is this: Have you been running well? Are you about three-quarters of the way through the race, and it is getting too much for you? Getting pooped? Had enough? Please do not quit. Run with endurance.
We need to come alongside each other. Naturally speaking, three-quarters of our race might be fifty years old, sixty, or seventy. It does not matter. Even if you are fifteen, that is three-quarters of the way to twenty.
Whatever age we are—particularly when we are in our forties and fifties and have been running a while—it is a big challenge. Do not quit. Run with endurance.
The only way we run with endurance is to keep our eyes on the goal.
Galatians 5:7 says:
You were running well;
who hindered you from obeying the truth?
You were running well, and someone cut in on you. I do not know how many of you have ever run in a race, but there is probably nothing worse than having someone cut in on you.
Do you know when they cut in on you? About three-quarters of the way through the race. You have barely enough energy to keep moving one foot after the other, and some clown—excuse me—cuts in and makes you stumble.
You can just quit. You just want to quit. But Paul said, “Who cut in on you?”
I do not know what it is that cuts in on us. What cut in on me? What cut in on Kevin and Jerry? What cut in on Dora? What cut in on Ryan? What cut in on Joe? What cut in on Herb?
There is no question about it: someone is going to cut you off. We have a response to react to it: keep running. Run with endurance.
The last practical thought I had on running is this: Run through the finish line.
Often the finish line is at the end of the last straight. You turn that last curve, see the finish line, and think, “If I can only make it there, I have made it.”
If you run to the finish line, what happens? You slow down. Everybody starts passing you up. You lose the race.
Run with endurance. Set your eyes beyond the finish line. Set your eyes on Christ. Set your eyes on glory. Set your eyes on going through, not merely making it to the line.
Running to the finish line has ruined more runners than you will know.
Run with endurance. Number three: endurance.
Paul uses a lot of athletic analogies. That is why I think he wrote Hebrews, because he talks about running races and fights. We are in a fight, and it requires endurance.
We need much training: patient endurance and steady, active persistence. Those things go against our natural inclination.
In preparation for training, we are encouraged to lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.
Let us lay aside every encumbrance,
and the sin which so easily entangles us.
It is hard to run in the race when we are encumbered. What is an encumbrance? A weight. What weighs us down? What weighs down our spirit and soul?
It is anything that keeps us from putting the Lord first: our natural job, our lack of a job, our health, our neighbors—it is everything. We need to lay it down. Set aside every encumbrance.
Often today we are so busy. We say, “I have to do A, B, C, and D, and then I will have time for the Lord.” When we come around to finishing A, B, C, and D, and get to E, we are tired out. We have nothing left for the Lord.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
We need to put aside our encumbrances because they will only increase. This world and this world system are demanding our souls. It is a very intentional, articulate attack on Christians. He wants more bricks and less straw.
Lay it aside, and put the Lord first. Then there is the sin which so easily entangles us. It is the sin of unbelief. Put aside that sin of unbelief. Put the Lord first.
When we talk about laying aside encumbrances and other things crowding our lives out, this has come to me a number of times lately: I think we do that naturally. We get very busy. We create things to do because we do not want to deal with and recognize our absolute depravity and our need for the Lord.
We need the Lord, and we know we are not right and not going on. So we fill our lives with a tremendous amount of activities. That is another kind of encumbrance.
Let’s look at Job for a minute. This is a man who had great natural success. He was honestly a righteous man, and the Lord dealt very strongly with Job.
It was not that he was a bad guy. It was not that he was a sinner. But he was self-satisfied. He was satisfied with the things that encumbered him.
That long book of Job—all the dealings, reasonings, and so forth—has a conclusion in Job 42:5-6:
I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
but now mine eye seeth Thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.
The Lord was after Job, putting Himself first and dealing with him.
The sin which so easily entangles us, we have said, is the sin of unbelief. Hebrews 11:6 says:
He that cometh to God must believe that He is,
and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him.
Trust the Lord. Trust the Lord with all our heart.
In Hebrews 12, the author talks about the way to increase our endurance, and he equates spiritual training with discipline.
Hebrews 12:5-9 says:
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
It is for chastening that ye endure;
God dealeth with you as with sons;
for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?
But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers,
then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us,
and we gave them reverence:
shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
We live in a day and age when discipline is a dirty word. I see some schoolteachers back here, and they know how often children come to them with parents who do not think their children should be disciplined. “It is mean. It is mean to discipline your children.”
But we are illegitimate children if God does not discipline us. His discipline has us in view as full-grown sons. We should appreciate it, and it demonstrates God’s love for us.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that being disciplined and going through hard times shows that we are sons?
Physical training increases and perfects a natural strength, a strength that is already there. Natural runners have the ability to run because they were born that way, and they develop that strength.
Spiritual discipline develops something from another place. Discipline brings us to the point where we recognize that we do not have the strength, and we must receive it from above.
We need to lay hold of the Lord and move from His life and His strength.
I have talked to several people lately who have availed themselves of genetic testing in this new age of genetic testing. Why do people get genetic testing? I am not sure I know.
I can report to you that I got some genetic testing, and it was free. I did not have to pay for it. I got it out of the Bible. It said that my genetic history is one hundred percent Adam.
So if anybody is tempted to get genetic testing, give me your money, and I will give you some Bible verses that show where your genetic history is. Obviously, genetic testing can have great benefit, and we are thankful for that.
But we need to realize that we are one hundred percent Adam, and discipline is to bring us to the end of our natural selves.
Paul said in Romans 7:24:
Wretched man that I am!
Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
We often think our problems come from so many different places. But Christ has set us free. We have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
This is one of the strongest purposes of discipline. Romans 8:2 says:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
made me free from the law of sin and of death.
We get put in circumstances and situations to come to the end of our self-life and natural strength, to come where Paul said:
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Paul also said in Ephesians 6:10:
Finally, be strong in the Lord,
and in the strength of His might.
Unless we believe that we do not have that strength, we are not going to call on the Lord.
His discipline brings us to the end of our natural resources and allows us to call on Him and learn Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, as our life.
Hebrews 12:5 says:
My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord,
nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.
Do not despise the discipline of the Lord.
The training that distance runners go through is quite something. When I was in college, we had to start our running in the fall, and the coach said, “I want you to run seven miles.” I thought, “Seven miles all at one time? You have got to be kidding me.”
He turned us loose on the farms at the edge of campus. I do not think I ever ran seven miles, but we did find something out on the farms. It was in the fall, and we found an experimental apple orchard. So we could pick apples. That was our goal.
We had a goal in this long, enduring race. We went out and got apples and brought them back. We did get caught. We had to stop bringing the apples.
But anyway, running is a long, long race that we are on. We need endurance. We need training. We need discipline.
Who has heard of the book by Paul Billheimer called Don’t Waste Your Sorrows? It is a really good book. The whole purpose of that book is that you might be in a trial, but use it for your benefit, for your increase. Gain Christ.
How do we despise chastening? Number one, we try to escape it. We do anything we can to get out of it. We cry for help and escape. We blame it on something else—our circumstances.
It is very popular today to blame it on demons. We certainly need spiritual discernment. We need discernment to know what we are dealing with, but we also need the grace of God. Be careful that we do not despise discipline.
If we despise discipline, we will miss our opportunity for sonship.
Number two: God wants us to go through a circumstance by the grace of God. We do everything in the world to go around it, but we gain Christ by going through it. Job gained by going through it.
Paul went through terrible trial. He prayed three times, “Lord, take this from me.” And the Lord said:
My grace is sufficient for thee:
for My power is made perfect in weakness.
So we need to go through the discipline.
The last little point on not despising discipline is this: Have you heard the saying that when we are in a trial, it is better to get better and not bitter?
You have this trial, this unreasonable trial, and we have a choice to get better because of it, or we can become bitter.
Hebrews 12:15 says:
See to it that no man come short of the grace of God;
that no root of bitterness springing up trouble you,
and thereby the many be defiled.
Take the grace of God. If we murmur and complain about our circumstances, we run the risk of defiling the whole camp.
Do not despise discipline, but take the grace of God and learn Christ through it.
I have been thinking about the open times we have had lately. They have honestly been a great encouragement to me.
There is one reason they were an encouragement to me: everybody who has gotten up here has testified, in one way or another, that His grace is sufficient.
I have not heard one person get up and say, “I could not stand it. I got out of it.” They went through it in Christ, with the Lord, with the brothers and sisters. The grace of God is sufficient.
I think those times have been a real encouragement to me. We come to the point where we know that God is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. I think that has been the testimony through all these times.
So we want to run with endurance.
The last main point is the goal of the race. What is the goal of the race?
Christ. Gain Christ.
Christ in us, expressed. The old man set aside, and Christ expressed in each one of us and in a company together.
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
In closing, this book of Hebrews was written to call early believers out of religion into a living relationship with a living God—out of religion.
The call to us is the same today: to prepare us for a shaking that is to come, to prepare us for His return, and to prepare us as sons.
We have talked about running with endurance. This is a lifelong race that we are in. We are born into it.
We are called to train and develop endurance as full-grown sons. We should not despise God’s discipline, because He disciplines those He loves.
Do not get bitter, but get better. Do not try to escape God’s dealings.
Finally, if you in your life are at the seventy-five-percent place—the last curve in an 800—do not drop out. Remember Jim Ryun. By God’s grace, run with endurance, and do not quit.
Lord, we thank You for Your great grace. We thank You that You would give us this word to run with endurance the race that is set before us.
We pray that we would take the grace and have that endurance. We pray that we would gain Christ and be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
We just bless Your name today. Amen.