So we've been making our way through the book of Hebrews, and we are in Hebrews chapter 12.
We're going to look at verses 1 and 2 and unpack those this morning.
So here we go.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which cling so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is 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.
So maybe you've heard these verses before.
I would call these t-shirt verses, right?
You've heard them before if you've been around Christian faith or church, but we want to talk about what do they mean.
And the more we look at it, the more we study, the better it gets for us.
So the chapter begins with this word, therefore.
So the old Bible study cliche.
Every time you see the word therefore, you should ask, what is it therefore?
Great.
So you've been around.
So we had to look at the previous text, which would be chapter 11, which we looked at in the past two sermons.
To sum that up, there's a whole bunch of people having a tough time.
And it is because they converted from Judaism, a legal religion in the Roman Empire, to Christianity, which was an illegal religion in the Roman Empire.
And so they were receiving persecution.
They were having a rough go at it.
And the writer is saying to the rest of these people who have converted over to Christianity to be Jesus' followers, and us to us also, is you have people like that ahead of you.
And those people are for you as you persevere in the faith walk.
Monday night our little family was eating dinner at the kitchen bar.
So the three girls were around the kitchen bar, and then Christian and I were standing up around them, and it was our littlest daughter's birthday this week, and so she had gotten a birthday card in the mail, which mail is huge to any of us.
We all love like personal mail, right?
Like, especially if you're a kid.
And so she was reading this birthday card to us, and she was just glowing that she received this card.
And so I then asked the proverbial Seinfeld question from season six, episode three, to be exact.
How long do you have to hold the card before you throw the card away, right?
Like, is it one day, is it three days, is it five days, how long?
All three, all three of them look at me like this is the most insane question possible.
They head down the hallway to their bedrooms and they come back with these packets, which I didn't even know existed, and they're just packets of all the cards that they've ever received, which meant a couple things.
First, it meant I'm incredibly cold hearted and throw away cards.
That's the first thing it means, certainly.
And then, second, and this came after one of my daughters said, Yeah, um, whenever I feel sad, I like to read all these cards.
And you're like, oh, that's so sweet, right?
But that's also Hebrews 12.
It's the idea that like when we're having to persevere through something, it can be incredibly encouraging and helpful just to remember that you have a cloud of witnesses around you that are for you.
And that's what Hebrews 12 is telling us.
Point number one is this we are not alone in our suffering.
We have a family of faith that's for us.
And now some of that family of faith is alive, but some of that family of faith has passed on.
We have a legacy of faith in this family of faith that's for us.
Can you imagine lining up in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium?
Say they put a track in there 400 yards around, and you're lined up, and you are running one lap around, and you are taking that last turn, coming down the last hundred yards, and you've been busting it, full out sprint that whole way, and your lungs are aching, your heart's pounding, your legs are barely kicking, you're not sure if your legs are gonna make it.
And 75,000 people, this is the imagery here of Hebrews 12.
75,000 people.
No judgment on you.
They're just for you, they're just cheering for you.
They're not gonna Monday quarterback you and say how you could have done this and you could have.
No, no, no, they're just for you.
That's the image we have here for us.
So, like, I yeah, I know you have your best friend and you have your mama, and you have your aunt that you can call when things are rough.
Like, we have those people, and we also have a history of faith, a legacy that we can also use for our encouragement when we're going through tough times.
So, let's break apart the last part of verse one, first part of verse two.
Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.
And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.
So the text asks us to contemplate what we are running toward?
What are you for?
In your limited amount of days, your limited amount of days that you have with little children before they become big children, your limited amount of days in your marriage, your limited amount of days in the job you have and the purpose you have and the relationships, the friendships, the family, what are you running toward in those things?
Are you running toward just more performance and pretending escaping?
Right?
Hindered and hurting by sin that so easily entangles, right?
And that's that feeling like our hearts are just being suffocated slowly.
Or are you running toward Jesus?
The lavish, always welcome of God, and a life in response to it, which is being deemed free and also becoming more free.
Just to fill you in, it's Super Bowl Sunday, so I'm obligated to give a sermon illustration with a Super Bowl, which is easy this year because we have Tom Brady, which is kind of like Jesus, in the Super Bowl.
Right?
Uh I asked two people this week.
I said, Oh, there he is.
I mean, and he's beautiful also.
I mean, right?
I mean, just like, come on.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
Six Super Bowl championships, and he's beautiful, and he married a supermodel, okay?
So that's what he, and a house in Costa Rica, by the way.
I Google stalked that this week.
That's fun for about an hour to do that, and then you feel bad about your entire life after you Google stalk him for a little bit.
I asked two people this week, I said, who are you who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl?
But neither person said, like, Buccaneers are chiefs.
It was just like Brady or not Brady.
Like that's what's going on tonight.
It's like either I'm for Brady or I'm not for Brady.
And I'm for Brady.
I'll just go ahead and let you know I'm pro-Brady.
I'm quoting him around the house specifically because my wife can't stand Tom Brady.
So we basically want to quote him more, you know, and act like he's Jesus even more.
So 20 years with the Patriots, just to fill you in, but some of you don't know this storyline.
He comes out of Michigan.
He's like, he's drafted like 199th or something, he's like six rounds, something crazy.
And he's the backup quarterback for New England, and then he fights to become the starting quarterback, and then he goes on in these 20 years and he wins six Super Bowls.
Then he's 43 years old, and you think it's over, the dynasty's over.
No, he goes to Tampa Bay.
Like they were seven and nine last year, and a COVID year, he comes in, he gets limited practice with any of his receivers, and he leads him to the Super Bowl.
Like it's unbelievable.
This guy is a machine of endurance.
He eats perfectly, annoyingly, perfectly.
He works out perfectly.
He lays aside everything that could entangle him.
Which we go, oh, what a that's a great sermon illustration.
Like, that's a really good sermon illustration on Super Bowl.
Like this was handed to me.
There's one big, big, really big problem with this.
And that is Tom Brady's all self-empowered discipline.
Like it's really impressive.
Like it'll just condemn and exhaust most of us because most of us can't even come close to it, right?
But it's really impressive and it works really well.
Like with your job and sports and academics, like it's it's actually needed.
But with matters of your heart and faith, it's very dangerous.
Because if all we use is self-effort and faith, like looking inward to your effort by which you're going to uh appease God or get that smile from God or you're gonna show other people how faithful you are.
If that's all that that's the way in which your faith walk is fueled, eventually here's what happens.
You're just becoming more self-dependent.
You'll become smug, judgmental towards anybody who's struggling, because why can't they get their act together?
Eventually you'll be exhausted.
A few questions have helped me over the years.
If you've been around here, you've you've heard a few of these questions, and this would be to help us distinguish between the difference between God dependency and self-dependency.
Looking to Jesus or looking inward to my own self-effort?
Do I feel anxious day to day about where I stand with God?
Specifically about your standing with God?
Do I have ongoing concerns about my worth or forgiveness?
Do I live in apathy toward God on a routine basis?
Am I able to accept and love others, even those who are different from me?
Is my starting point trying to get a smile on God's face or living from the smile that is already on his face toward me?
Which brings us into point number two.
Jesus is both our doorway into relationship with God and our way forward in growth.
Or we can say our way forward in discipleship.
This is why author and Pastor Tim Keller, he's so renowned for saying the gospel is not just the ABCs of the Christian life, but the A to Z of the Christian life.
It's all of it, this good news of who we are in Jesus.
We don't move on from the gift of Jesus, we move deeper into our identity in Jesus.
Our sin put upon him on the cross, his righteousness given to us, so we're fully beloved in God.
The work of discipleship and growth and grace is for the Holy Spirit to be working in us to comfort and convict us to grow deeper in the identity we already have in Him.
Brings us to point three.
In our secure position with Christ, we repent quicker of sin that hurts and hinders.
Growth and grace doesn't mean that we sin less and less and less.
It actually means you're just becoming more aware of sins going on inside of you, like motives and heart stuff.
And you're becoming quicker to repent, to fall back into the grace of Jesus.
Ah, there I am again.
God, I'm so sorry.
Thank you for your love.
Help me, help me.
The text says the sin clings so closely.
Now, this speaks of sin that entangles us.
The definition there would be impedes movement, hindering any progress in faith.
So back to the race imagery, right?
So it's like you're in that Mercedes-Benz Stadium, you're at the starting line, everybody's lining up, and you go, oh, hold on, hold on, guys, hold on one second.
And you walk over, you pick up a backpack full of bricks because you love those bricks so much, you just love them, and you just put that thing on because you're gonna run with that backpack of bricks on.
Right?
It would entangle you, it would impede you, it would weigh you down.
That's how sin entangles us, hinders us, hurts us.
And the way out of it is to look to a greater love.
It gives us this answer.
How do we do this?
How do we do that?
How do we let go of that bag of bricks?
Verse 2.
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.
When I'm at home and I have uh lunch at home during the week, this is what stares me in the face when I open the fridge.
It's either a Coke, which I love, I'll be honest, or a Izzy, which I also love.
Now, I'm from the South.
And Coca-Cola is the answer for everything.
If you have a headache, drink a Coke.
If you're sad, drink a Coke.
If you have a stomachache, drink a Coke.
Even though the stomachache was probably caused by the Coke you had that morning, the way you're gonna solve the stomach ache midday is a Coke, right?
And I love Coke.
I would drink three a day, one with every meal, if that was what was good for me.
And it's not good for me because it's filled with refined sugar.
And this other, this is a lot better option for me, the Izzy.
And I love it also, like it's a fruity, sparkly drink, right?
And it I love it also, I'll be very honest.
But if I'm if I'm gazing upon the Coca-Cola, it's just very hard for me to choose this.
It's like somebody saying, don't press the red button.
It's like, well, as soon as you look away, I'm pressing the red button.
If I don't press it, like at least I want to press it, right?
That's the way that the law works.
Even if something is healthy for me not to do, as soon as I focus upon it.
As soon as I gaze upon it.
It's so hard for me to make the right choice, the good choice, the holy choice.
We have to shift our gaze, to gaze upon that which is good for us.
The great 19th-century British preacher Charles Spurgeon, he said this about this text, not necessarily about Coca-Cola and Izzy's, but it could apply to that as well.
But specifically Hebrews 12.
You are to look from all beside to Jesus.
Fix not thy gaze upon the cloud of witnesses.
They will hinder thee if they take away thine eye from Jesus.
Look not on the weights and the besating sin.
These thou hast laid aside.
Look away from them.
Do not even look upon the race course or the competitors, but look to Jesus and so start in the race.
See, the passage has a lot going on for us.
A lot of encouragement, some stuff for us to do, stuff to be aware of, but it's carrying us to that which fuels all of that.
Looking to Jesus, founder and perfecter.
And that's where we get there at the beginning of verse 2.
And we get gospel implications for our faith race.
Two implications.
Number one is this Jesus as founder means I am not the founder.
I'm a follower.
Jesus as the founder of your faith means you are not the founder of your faith.
You can relieve yourself of that burden.
You're the follower of the founder.
And my extended family of siblings and cousins, there are four founders of businesses.
Four.
It's an overachieving bunch that you get around and you just feel a little bit lesser than.
And I've watched them.
Like they have great success in the world.
Right?
It's easy to look at people who've like founded a company, it's grown.
Maybe they started out in that closet or that garage and then it became like eight employees or 20 or 80 or something.
And you look and you go, like, oh man, look at the flexibility they have.
I mean, look at the cash flow they have going.
Wow.
Like, and that's gonna last for a while.
Man, that's a stream of revenue.
That's incredible.
Look at that, what kind of recognition they have.
And you look at all that, oh, that's amazing.
And there's also a burden to the founder.
Like, founders feel the burden of upholding that which they created.
Like when times aren't good, they're feeling the burden of the families of all the employees that work for them.
So if you're a founder, you feel that.
Guess what?
In faith, you don't have to feel that.
That's not an emotion for us.
We don't have to feel that because Jesus is the founder of our faith.
That's what happened at the cross.
It's the gift of faith to us, his faithfulness to us that we find ourselves in.
Founder is the word Archagos.
It means this: the author.
So Jesus is the author, not us.
The chief leader, Jesus, not us.
The trailblazer who goes before you.
So Jesus blazed into your sin and your guilt and your shame, your woundedness, declares you healed, saved, and also puts us on a path of becoming even more healed and even freer in the grace of God.
My spiritual practice, your spiritual practice is a response to grace breaking through in our lives.
Our spiritual disciplines, whether that be for you, you're gonna sit down, you're gonna study the Bible for an hour because that's your thing.
You can go for a walk and prayer walk, you're gonna read a devotion, and then you're gonna hop in your car, you're gonna drive to work and put on worship music.
Whatever your spiritual discipline is, it's a practice of knowing deeper that which has already been deemed upon you.
So you're free in becoming more free.
Implication number two is this Jesus as perfecter means I am not the perfecter, but the recipient of the perfecting.
Which to any of us that are perfectionists, and we carry it into faith, and we're just trying to get ourselves a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better, so we can appease God and get that smile from God, or appease all these other people in the church world.
Like you're free from that.
The perfecting of your faith is done by Jesus for us.
You're already deemed perfect, even while you're working out your faith in Him.
This week I received a phone call, it was midweek.
It was just like a ho-hum day.
You know, you have great days, you have low days.
It's just one of those kind of in-between days.
And it was in the afternoon, and my friend called me.
He said, Hey, I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you, and I was praying for you because I was thinking about this and this and this for you.
And I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you and praying for you.
My whole day changed.
He didn't say anything else, he didn't solve any of my problems.
He didn't like send me a gift in the mail.
Like, I mean, just hey, I'm thinking about you, I'm praying for you.
Changed my whole day.
Just knowing someone was for me.
Right?
This is this is how love changes everything.
Just to know someone loves you and is for you all the way through the process.
And listen, this is the good news of Hebrews 12, 1 and 2.
We look to Jesus not to cause him to look at us.
We look to Jesus because he has always been looking out for us.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for the good news that you are for us long before we begin to be for you.
God, thank you that you want us to be with you before we do for you.
Help us to find our faith and your faithfulness to us.
Help us to walk out our faith walk and faith race only by looking unto you.
Forgive us for all the ways that we live in self-dependency, smugness, judgmentalism, self-righteousness.
Forgive us for trusting in all of our self-effort rather than falling back into your great grace for us, which we need, our hearts need.
Help us to just constantly, continually look upon you and to be shorter and shorter in our time in between sin and repentance, to look back upon you again.
Thank you that you are always for us, looking upon us just as you look upon your Son, Jesus.
Amen.