I. Introduction
A. We’ve just come through Hebrews 11 — where the author was showing his readers how their forefathers of faith experienced similar difficulties/opposition, but persevered in faith through it all.
B. And now we come to Hebrews 12, one of my favorite chapters in all the Bible.
C. It begins in v.1 with “Therefore” — in other words, what he says here is said in light of all he’s been saying, in Heb.11 in particular.
1. And here he points us to Jesus, the last one on the list of great examples of faith, the culmination of the list.
D. Introduction to Hebrews 12:1-3
1. In my opinion, this is the high point of the book of Hebrews.
2. This is another one of those passages that is familiar to us, but so much deeper and more majestic and more powerful and more understandable now that we’ve traveled through Heb.1-11.
3. The theme of Hebrews is “Don’t give up (the faith)!” And that theme can be seen through these three verses:
a. 1 let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
b. 3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
E. Read Hebrews 12:1–3
II. Ten things this passage tells us about our lives
A. We’re in a race.
1. If we’re going to understand what God’s calling on our lives is, we’ve got to understand where we are and what we’re doing.
2. We’re not on a couch watching a movie.
3. We’re not in a classroom listening to a lecture.
4. We’re not taking a walk in the garden.
5. We’re not surfing the web.
6. We’re not on a road trip.
7. We’re not sleeping in bed.
8. We’re not at a county fair.
9. We’re not out shopping.
10. We’re not at a feast.
11. We’re not at an athletic event. We’re IN an athletic event.
B. It’s a long, hard race.
1. How many of you have been in a running race this year? Let me ask you, is it easier to run in a race or to not run in a race?
2. Because one of my sons is on the team, I’ve been going to a lot of high school soccer games. It’s amazingly intense: striving, fighting, struggling, pushing oneself, wanting victory more than rest.
3. That’s what our race of faith is supposed to be like.
4. That why we need endurance. That’s why we need to press through the pain.
5. I’ve been in a lot of athletic events in my 61 years, and I can tell you that after a while, you get tired, even if you’re in good shape. And in order to keep competing, you’ve got to push yourself way beyond what’s comfortable. And a lot of times it all comes down to who fights the hardest, who wants it the most, who is going to give in to the pain of exhaustion and who’s going to keep striving.
6. In making the choice to live a life of faith you have chosen a more difficult path than if you had chosen not to. Jesus talked about this in Matthew 7:13–14 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
C. We are beset with temptations to give up.
1. When things get difficult, people are tempted to give up. And in our soft society, we are tempted to give up pretty easily.
a. We’re tempted to give up on marriage.
b. We’re tempted to give up on our family and run away.
c. We’re tempted to quit our job.
d. We’re tempted to give up on life and commit suicide.
e. We’re tempted to give up on a friendship.
f. We’re tempted to give up on an exercise program or a diet.
g. We’re tempted to give up on a grueling medical process like chemotherapy.
2. Situations in our lives seem like they’re causing us unbearable pain. And pain makes us feel like giving up.
3. But do these things really stop the pain? Not necessarily. They might actually increase our pain.
4. Well, there is pain involved with being a Christian.
a. We can’t say whatever we feel like saying.
b. We can’t do whatever we feel like doing.
c. We can’t sleep with whoever we feel like sleeping with.
d. We can’t watch whatever we want to watch.
e. We can’t be liked by everyone we want to like us.
D. We have to be careful not to let our feet become entangled with sin.
1. It’s a little difficult to figure out what is meant here in v.1.
a. The ESV says - “let us also lay aside...sin which clings so closely.”
b. The NIV says - “let us throw off...the sin that so easily entangles.”
c. The Lexham English Bible says - “putting aside...the sin that so easily ensnares us.”
2. Our feet are the part of our body which comes into contact with the earth, the world. And it’s easy in our contact with the world to become ensnared by worldly temptations and lusts, which threaten to trip us up.
3. Not only is the race long, but we’re not running on a paved track. This is a cross country-style race. We run through all kinds of terrains and must keep alert to holes and roots and vines and strings and prickers which can trip us or entangle us.
4. Sin is the enemy of faith. When we choose sin we punch faith in the nose.
5. For some, this is issue #1. The enticement to give up doesn’t come from exhaustion but from temptation. The allure of sin pulls, distracts, lulls, draws, tantalizes, tugs, captivates.
E. There is another obstacle which can thwart our running the race besides sin.
1. We’re told to lay aside the sin which clings so closely, but we’re also told to lay aside every weight. What’s that all about?
2. There are many things which are not sins which nonetheless get in the way of our faithfulness. What kind of things?
a. Things we spend time doing, which are not forbidden but don’t really help us run the race.
b. It could even be people we spend time with, whose influence erodes our faith.
3. It’s not enough that something is allowable, it must be helpful, it must be edifying, and it can’t be addicting or enslaving. “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.” – 1Cor.6:12
4. But there are other weights which could hold us back in our race as well:
a. How about worries, how about fears, how about the cares of the world?
b. How about the fear of man? The fear of being ridiculed?
c. How about the fear of dying?
d. How about the fear of losing a loved one?
e. How about the fear of being rejected by a loved one?
f. How about burdens that we’re supposed to lay down and not carry?
g. You can’t run well if you carry all those burdens!
h. Jesus says to lay these burdens down. “Cast your burden on the Lord.” (Ps.55:22)
F. We are surrounded by a crowd.
1. 1a “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,”
2. The great cloud of witnesses —there are two meanings of witness: it can mean observing or it can mean testifying. Here it seems to be referring to testifying, not to observing.
3. You can see this in Heb.11:4 where it speaks of Abel’s faith and then says: “And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”
4. What are the heroes of faith in this great cloud of witnesses saying?
a. Keep the faith! You’ll be glad you did!
b. Don’t give in to the pressures to give up!
c. You’ll see in the end!
d. Their lives bear witness to the faithfulness of God.
G. Joy drove Jesus
1. Jesus already successfully finished His race, enduring the shame and hostility of the cross, and won the ultimate prize of exaltation at the right hand of the throne of God. Though He begged His Father to relieve Him from the pain and burden of the race, the thing which drove Jesus to press through all the pain and rejection was the joy of what the process would accomplish.
2. The shame of the cross
a. Jesus experienced shame on the cross, not just pain.
b. “It is important to recognize that the shame of the cross is something infinitely more intense than the pain of the cross.” (Philip Hughes) (The pain he refers to here is physical pain. But shame is relational.)
c. The physical pain was intense, of course, but the pain of crucifixion was something that many have experienced.
d. The shame of the cross, though, was something no one else has even come close to enduring.
e. Crucifixion itself was so shameful that no Roman citizen was allowed to be subjected to it. It was too brutal and too shameful even for serial killers, traitors, child torturers and murderers, who were Roman citizens. This meant it was considered inhumane.
f. But this is mere human shame. There was a far deeper shame which Jesus experienced. He experienced shame before the holy, righteous eyes of God for all of our sins.
g. “Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning, was there ever grief like His? Friends through fear His cause disowning, foes insulting His distress. Many hands were raised to wound Him. None would interpose to save. But the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that Justice gave.” (Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted)
h. The pinnacle, the apex, the climax of Christ’s suffering was when He was abandoned by His Father. “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”
i. And in that abandonment He experienced the rejection, the repudiation, the renunciation, the expulsion, the damnation which we deserved.
j. In a sense the Father was actually disgusted with the Son, and spewed Him out — not because of what He had done or because of what He was like, but because all of our sin and yuckiness was placed upon Him. He was treated as if He had committed all of our sins.
3. This shame was so daunting that when Jesus arrived at the edge of the precipice of the crucifixion, it stopped Him in His tracks. The Son of God, the perfect man: perfect in strength, perfect in courage, perfect in controlling His emotions, is shaking and quaking before what lies ahead.
(1) He cries out, “Father, if there’s any way, please take this from Me.”
(2) He’s begging His friends to pray with Him.
(3) He is “greatly distressed and troubled”
(4) He’s sweating drops of blood.
4. But in Heb.12:2 we’re told here that Jesus despised the shame. What does that mean?
a. Well, despising here is not a good translation of the Greek. The Greek word is KATAPHRONEI.
b. It is used nine times in the NT. None of these refer to hatred or abhorrence, which is what I think of when I hear the word despise.
c. It’s closer to the idea of scoffing at or rejecting.
d. Six of these uses speak of rejecting in a bad sense: rejecting Christ’s little ones, rejecting authority, rejecting the church of God, rejecting someone’s youth, rejecting God’s blessings.
e. Two other times this word is used in the context of loving one master and disregarding the other.
f. And that’s what I think is going on here. Jesus had to choose whether to listen to the present shame (and quit) or remember the coming joy (and persevere).
g. He despised the shame, that is, He wouldn’t listen to it, He wouldn’t let it get to Him, He wouldn’t let it deter Him, He refused to give heed to its pressure to give up and not finish the race.
h. I think it would be better translated “disregarding the shame.”
H. We also experience shame and sinful hostility (though not on the same level of Jesus, of course).
1. We’ve seen all along how this is what the Hebrews were experiencing. There is another reference in the next verse: “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” – Hebrews 12:4. In other words, they had experienced persecution but had not yet to the extent of martyrdom.
2. He’s been saying this all through the epistle. And we’ve talked a lot about it.
3. In the next section of Heb.12 the author goes on to explain the purpose of the suffering. That’s what we’ll be talking about next week.
I. God’s word calls us to disregard the shame and pain which come to us on account of faith.
1. When I am in pain, the last thing I tend to do is disregard it. But that’s God’s call.
2. How do you disregard hurt feelings? How do you disregard a migraine headache? How do you disregard being rejected?
J. The only thing which can enable to disregard the shame and pain is the joy of our promised prize.
1. Well, let’s go back and think about the fact that we’re running a race. When I played soccer games, I would peal off my uniform and shin guards and cleats after the game and discover my injuries. Sometimes I was bleeding and didn’t even know I was hurt. Then I would limp home. And if you’d seed me walk you would have thought I couldn’t run if I had to. But a half hour earlier I was running around like a wild man! My pursuit of victory had distracted me from my pain, and had drowned out the hurt.
2. This is the kind of thing which Hebrews 12:1-3 is talking about. We can disregard our pain and our shame when we are absorbed in winning the prize!
3. Just as Jesus disregarded the shame and pain of the cross because was driven on by a joy set before Him, so the key to winning the race is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to keep our joy fixed on Jesus, to keep our eyes fixed on the joy of Jesus.
4. I would like to reflect on the origin of this notion of keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus. If you were here last week you remember the gruesome story from 2Maccabees 7 of the mother and her seven sons martyred by Antiochus Epiphanes, which is referred to in Heb.11:35b. Well, in 4Maccabees 17 there is an epitaph of this mother and her sons which refers to them “keeping their eyes fixed on God.” That language was apparently picked up by the author of Hebrews here in 12:2, where, after referring to their example several verses earlier, he urges us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
5. There’s a lot about this life which is depressing, which pulls you down.
6. You need something to keep you up, to buoy your spirit. You need a life preserver to keep you afloat.
7. 2Corinthians 1:3, 5 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort... 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
8. We must manage our emotions. There are depressing things in our lives and there are encouraging things. And particularly, I mean that there are earthly discouragements as well as heavenly encouragement. What is our heavenly encouragement? Jesus! And His promises! And the home He is preparing for us!
9. We must keep looking at the invisible realities, and not let ourselves be overcome by the visible downers. We must “set our minds on the things above, not on the things on earth.” – Col.3:2
10. You see, the cross of Jesus makes sense of the hardships we’re experiencing.
a. He ran the race, He bore His cross, with His eyes on the prize.
b. He did not give up. He disregarded the unimaginable shame and bore the terrible pain.
c. And as a result, He is now “seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
d. “Though he was in the form of God, ...[he] emptied himself...being born in the likeness of men. And...he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5–11
11. But that’s not only what happened to Jesus. It’s the call of Jesus on us to follow Him down that path, that narrow, hard path which leads to life and rest and deliverance and glory. That’s what comes to those who don’t give up but keep pressing through the adversity, through the opposition, the ridicule, the self-denial, who keep their eyes fixed on Jesus who blazed the trail before us.