A Greater Endurance
Jesus is Greater: An Exposition of Hebrews October 26, 2025 Hebrews 12:1-13 Notes
Many believers start the race of faith well, but grow weary when trials come. We lose focus, stumble under the weight of sin, or misunderstand the Father’s discipline. Sometimes we feel exhausted, discouraged, or even tempted to give up. We see others running seemingly effortlessly, while we struggle to put one foot in front of the other. What we need is not more grit and self-effort, but a greater endurance. What can help us endure life’s challenges?
In In the book of Hebrews chapter 12, after portraying the heroes of faith in chapter 11, who by faith endured hardship, the author of Hebrews exhorted weary believers to run their own race of faith with endurance—fixing their eyes on Jesus as their example and source of strength.
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Good morning, church. We're continuing our series through the book of Hebrews. We'll be in chapter 12 today. So we're getting close to the end of our journey going through the book of Hebrews. This is actually the 22nd sermon in our series that we've entitled, “Jesus Is Greater.”
We've been going verse by verse through the book of Hebrews. It's been a wonderful journey. And today we've entitled this particular message, “A Greater Endurance.” “A Greater Endurance". And it is a greater endurance because Jesus is greater and because he's greater, his endurance is greater.
And it's available to us so that we are able to rely on him for our endurance. Now, many believers today begin the race of faith. Well, they start off strong, but when trials come, they often feel like giving up. Perhaps they lose focus. Perhaps they stumble under the weight of sin or some addiction.
Maybe they misunderstand the Father's discipline in their life and it causes them to want to give up. They feel exhausted, discouraged, and tempted to quit.
Perhaps we see others running life's race without effort. It seems like, why do they have it so good and I have it so hard? We struggle to put one foot in front of the other. But what we need is not more grit. It's not more of the Nike commercial, just do it.
It's not more of that. It's not more self effort. What we need is a spiritual endurance that comes from Jesus. We need Christ in us to help us face life's challenges because the truth is left to ourselves. There's just too much quit in us.
And so we need Jesus. Our strength fails, our resolve falters, Our hearts grow weary. But Jesus never gives up. He never quits. He always endures.
His endurance is greater. And this book of Hebrews reminds us of this. It reminds us not only as we learned in the last couple of weeks, of how by faith the saints of the Old Testament endured, but even greater than that as we get into chapter 12, that Christ is the pacesetter. He's the one who has both authored and finished the race of faith that we might follow him in the book of Hebrews, chapter 12. After portraying the faith of the saints of the Old Testament who endured hardship, the author of Hebrews exhorted his hearers that they might run the race of life with endurance by looking to Christ Jesus as both their example and their source.
And I believe today that we can look to Jesus for endurance to run our life's race. As we look at the text today, I think we'll see three ways that we can follow Jesus in this. Let's look at the text. We're looking at Hebrews 12:1-13 (ESV) 1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, 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, 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. 3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin
you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” 7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 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, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.” This is God's word.
We're looking for three ways we can look to Jesus for endurance to run life's race. Here's the first way.
1. By considering His example.
I want you to look and take notice. First of all, verse three it says, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.” Consider him who endured. Who's him? It's Jesus. He's speaking of Jesus. Consider Jesus.
Consider his example. The idea of to consider has the idea of to ponder upon, to contemplate, to meditate upon, to look unto. Consider Him. It's the first Greek imperative in this passage, although there is an imperative implied in verse one where it says this, 1 “...and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” It's not in the Greek imperative, but it's implied.
It speaks as if it's in the imperative. And that's really the meaning of this passage, verses 1 through 13. The invitation for us to run life's race, the race of faith, without quitting, without giving up, to do it with endurance. Let us run life's race. Let us run it with endurance.
Now let's back up the bus a little bit and start at verse one. And it begins with a word that we've taught our church to always ask a particular question. What's the question, church that we should ask when we encounter the word therefore in the text? Yeah, that's our question. We should ask, what's it there for?
Why is it there? And so it's always like an equal sign in the text that what was said prior equals what is being said next. And so therefore points back to chapter 11. Chapter 11. We called it the Reader's Digest version of the Old Testament because it began with the patriarchs, went all the way up through Moses and all the way to the prophets.
And so chapter 11, verse by faith, by faith. By faith, they endured and believed in one that was to come, but they'd never seen him. They endured without receiving the full promise. But now, therefore, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
Who's this great cloud of witnesses? Chapter 11, but not only chapter 11, not only the saints from chapter 11 who kept the faith, endured hardships, right? And kept on looking forward to the one who didn't come during their lifetime. But they kept believing that he was to come.
And now here we are. Therefore, now he wants to talk to us. We've studied chapter 11. He's saying, we've studied the saints of old and how they, by faith, look forward. Now,
how can we look back to Jesus who has come? And how can we have endurance from him? How can we have that kind of endurance for him? So we're not only looking to the saints that went before us for the model of endurance, but to the primary one who can give us this endurance. Well, I can't go past verse one without making a personal comment.
It's a verse that I first encountered in my memory when I was 8 years old.
My father died that year. He was 39. He died of cancer. I'm the oldest of four. I had a couple of questions for my family.
I was a daddy's boy. I'm the firstborn. He was a hero. He was strong. How in the world did this happen?
I had two questions. One was, where's my daddy now? And the other question was, can he see me? No one could answer it. They called in the preacher, Preacher Potter.
He came over to the house. We sat at my mom's kitchen table. He said, Gary, I understand you've got some questions. I said, yeah, where's my daddy now? He said, he's in heaven.
In First Corinthians, we read, “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” The minute he closed his eyes, he opened them to the Savior, Jesus. He's in heaven now. Okay, can he see me? Because he was always the one who would tell me, you know, I'm proud of you.
You know, a lot of my self image came from his comments, his blessings, that he would speak over me. He was gone. Can he see me? He goes, son, I'm not sure. But if we go over to the Book of Hebrews, chapter 12:1, it speaks of a great cloud of witnesses that surround us as we run life's race.
Now, your daddy's already completed life's race, but we're still running it, son. We're still running it. And there's a cloud of witnesses, a cloud; unusual language that surrounds us again. Unusual language. He said, perhaps, I don't know how much he can see, but perhaps he's cheering you on as spectators who have already completed life's race.
They've already finished the race. They've already crossed the finish line, and now they're waiting at the finish line cheering us on. And chief among them is Jesus, the founder and finisher, the author and finisher, the perfecter of our faith.
And I said, okay, and I believed him. Now, it's primarily contextually about the saints we just read about in chapter 11. But may I say to you, I think the cloud has grown over the past 2,000 years. I think it includes my mom and my dad and my grandparents. And I could name many saints who have come to faith in our church who are now part of that great cloud of witnesses.
And I bet you could name some too. And so now we're running the race, therefore we're running this race. And there are these witnesses that have this testimony. How they didn't give up, they kept on believing. And chief among them is Jesus.
I couldn't get past verse one without sharing that with you.
Verse 1, “...Let us lay aside, therefore, every weight…” One commentator I was reading about did a study of the Greek games, the Olympics, the marathon, and how they would come into the stadium wearing these brightly colored robes. But as they approached the starting line, they would strip almost to nothing, but just be essentially naked, because anything that would weigh them down, would slow them down. What would weigh you down from finishing life's race, by faith?
Sin certainly clings to us closely. Those sins that degrade and cling to us, that keep us from believing and moving forward. Let us therefore lay aside every weight. Let us lay aside every sin which clings to us.
Verse 1, “... 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,” We all have a race set before us. Your race is not my race. My race is not yours. We all have a path, but we all have the same finish line if we choose to run it.
Jesus is waiting. The word race is of interest in the Greek. It's agony. That's where we get the word agony. This is not a sprint, friends.
I wish it were. Get saved. Get baptized. Hallelujah. Go to glory.
It's not that it's an agony. It's painful. Life is difficult. It's filled with joy too. But it's a mixture.
Come, he calls us to endure. Let us run with endurance, the agony, the marathon. This is not a sprint. This is a marathon that is set before us. How are we going to do it?
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.”The word founder has the idea of an author or one who began a thing. It has the Greek word architecture, archēgos. It's where we get the word archaeology, if you will. The alpha, the starting point, the first.
And then the word perfecter has at its root teleiōtēs, which is the idea of completer, finisher. The capstone, the omega. He's the alpha and omega. He's the author and finisher. He's the one who began our faith and puts the capstone on our faith.
Let's look to him. Yeah, we can look to these examples that we saw in chapter 11. But now the author gets us to the very root of the whole thing. Actually, what kept them going was they were looking to him too. They didn't know the details that we know, but they knew enough to look.
But now we look back.
Who? For the joy. He did it for the joy. The joy of being able to bring us into his kingdom. The joy of being obedient to his Father.
The joy, the unconquerable joy. Did it for the joy he endured the cross. The word endured is the Greek word hupomonē. Hupo means something that's over you.
And monē means to abide under it. So to endure means to live under a weight or a pressure. Endured the cross. He endured the cross. It wasn't the weight of the wood that was so heavy.
But it was the weight of our sin that he bore. It wasn't the pain of the nails, but it was the pain of the separation that he endured with his Father. It wasn't the hateful, blasphemous comments that he endured, but that he couldn't hear his Father's voice for that moment that he became our sin. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become his righteousness. That he bore under and endured the cross, despising the shame.
Let's not forget that they stripped him of his clothes, they hung him before heaven and earth.
He did it for the joy, but he hated the shame. And now he's seen seated at the right hand of the Father. He crossed the finish line in this marathon and he ran past the finish line up on the podium and took a seat at the right hand of the Father, which is the seat of authority and power. Let's look to him as we run life's race. Let's look to Jesus.
And then verse three says, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.” Think on him, know him, consider him. What does it mean to be a Christ follower? Get your eyes on Jesus.
He endured from sinners such hostility against himself. Hostility literally the idea of those who speak against us.
Therefore, don't grow weary or faint hearted. I'm at the end of verse three there. Don't get weary or fainthearted for the joy. Can we run for the joy of the finish line? Can we run for the joy of Jesus?
Jesus, do you see me? This really hurts right now. But I believe in you anyway. I don't have evidence right now because I really feel down.
But I still believe in you. As Job said to his wife when she said, “Why don't you curse God and die, old man?” He said, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”
I still believe.
I've met people before that when they were children, they lost a parent. I met a lady some years ago who had lost her mother and it had kept her from the kingdom for all the years of her life. She held it against God. I don't know why I didn't hold it against God. I didn't.
I believed. I think it was all about him, not me. He trusted me with faith at an early age. But this lady and her elderly young years, he gave her faith to believe too. You know what helped her was to hear my story, which was a similar story.
Can you bear witness like that? Can you say, I'm not going to grow weary, I'm not going to grow faint hearted. I'm going to look to Jesus. I'm feeling like quitting right now, but I'm not going to.
And then he throws this verse at us.
Verse 4, “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” We've got people back here in chapter 11 that got sawn in two, stoned to death. You haven't been sawn in two like Isaiah. You haven't been stoned in the temple courts like Zechariah. You haven't been thrown into the lion's den like Daniel.
That's back there in chapter 11. You haven't been thrown into the fiery furnace like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. That's back there in chapter 11.
Do you know there are more Christians today dying for their faith than perhaps any other time period in the last 2000 years? There are Christians dying by the thousands in Nigeria right now, being murdered by a movement of Muslims burning down churches. But here we are in America, we get discouraged. Listen, I've been made fun of. I've been demeaned.
I've been excused from invitations to things. I've been left out. I've been talked about. I've never bled.
It speaks to me too. So don't quit. You haven't bled yet in your struggle against sin. Well, let's look to his example. Peter says this in
1 Peter 2:20-21 (NLT) “… if you suffer for doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you. For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.” Like a marathon runner who locks his eyes on a pace setter in front of him. I ran long distance in high school.
I was on the cross country team one year. I say one year because, man, that stuff hurts. But I was in cross country; I also ran the mile and the two mile in the Spring on the track team and the best guy on the team was a guy named Ernie. Ernie was a good friend of mine. And Ernie, he would go out early.
So some runners, they'll lay back and wait till the end, they'll have a good kick. But Ernie would just go out so hard early that he would cause everybody to just get discouraged right out of the gate like there's no way he can hold up that speed. But Ernie could. And so what I knew was if I could get behind Ernie, if I could just match his pace, I had a shot to place at the end.
I couldn't set a pace like Ernie. I would be so tired. I think I was going to cough up a lung. I'd start getting a side stitch, but Ernie's still running.
I would just be like, looking at his feet, and his feet were like a metronome. Come on, Lord, just keep going.
. Who's our Ernie? Who's our pacesetter? Look to Jesus.
Corrie Ten Boom, who survived. Her sister died in a Nazi gulag, but she survived. Here's her comment on the marathon of life. She says, “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed.
But if you look at Christ, you’ll be at rest.”
When you grow weary in this life, look up, fix your gaze on Jesus. Draw strength from his example, grace from his spirit. He endured for you, and now he endures in you.
Here's our second way. The first is to consider his example. The second is:
2. By submitting to His discipline.
We're at verse five now, and we're going to go through verse 11 on this particular point. Submitting to his discipline. A couple ideas to circle here. First of all, the word discipline is here nine times in the next few verses. It makes you start thinking we've switched topics, but we haven't, because discipline and endurance go hand in hand. You'll not have endurance if you don't have something to endure. And you'll not grow in endurance unless you have discipline that has disciplined you to endure.
He quotes in verses 5 and 6 from the book of Proverbs. He quotes Proverbs chapter 3, verse 11 and 12, where he says, Verse 5, “...My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. That's our second imperative, by the way, in this passage where he's saying, don't regard lightly God's discipline. If we stated that in the positives, take it seriously. Look down at verse nine and you can see, “Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?”
And so we can see submission here. Let's be the ones who submit to his discipline. Now, let's be clear. Discipline hurts. Everyone who's ever worked out in the weight room probably sees a sign on the wall that says, “No pain, no gain.”
And so the way you grow muscles is by tearing them down and then resting and they grow to meet the next level because your muscles are like, oh, my goodness. I don't know if the muscles are thinking, but if they were thinking, they're like, I've got to grow in order to meet this next. This person's trying to kill me, right? And so the way God, as our Father grows, our endurance, our faith is through testing, through discipline.
The way our endurance grows is by going through stuff. My son. Don't take that lightly. Don't be weary when reproved. It says as he's quoting proverbs here, verse 6 says, “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,”
It's evidence of his love for you. The word there for love is the agape word. It's his tender love, his unconditional love for us. He chastises everyone that belongs to him, everyone he receives.
“In this world there will be trouble,” and Jesus goes on to say, “but I have overcome the world.” And so he disciplines. Growing up without a father, after age 8 hit and my teenage years, the oldest of four kids, I rebelled.
I thought I was the head of the house. I gave my mama a fit. I remember when my son Stephen became 13 or 14, he started talking back to me. One day he was my best friend, the next day he's talking back to me. I called my mama, I said, mom, did I ever ask you to forgive me for ages 13 through 18?
Because I feel like some seeds I planted back then are coming to fruition.
Because I still remember what you used to say to me, “I hope you have one just like you when you have kids.” And I'm looking at him right now, it's like looking in the mirror.
Children need fathers and mothers. Fathers are often the ones that give us special gifts for discipline.
Mothers have a special gift for devotion and tenderness and taking care. Sometimes that's reversed. I see that sometimes, but that's generally true. Not having that as a teenager, God had to really work extra hard on me.
Because when you don't have that, you'll quit easily. You don't have someone to tell you no. That's not what we do as men and women of God. We don't quit. We keep going. We endure.
We don't quit on our relationships. We don't quit on our commitments. We don't quit. Not because quit isn't in us. Oh, I'm full of quit.
I've been at this for 34 years next month. When we started that little group in my house, me and my wife Robin's house, seven people in our living room started this church. I quit every Monday for years. Signed up again on Tuesday.
Never made it. Never made it more than 24 hours before I said, okay, okay, I'll keep doing it one more week. Lord, I'll give it one more week.
Here we are. That's right. Whoever said that here we are today. I haven't been quitting on Mondays for a while though. I'll say that to you.
I’ve been disciplined by my Father.
Verse 7, “It is for discipline that you have to endure.” They're connected. Are you going through something today? Like why me, God?
What about him? That's what Peter said about John.
Stop comparing yourself to other people. You got your own agony to run. You got your own race to run. You got your own marathon.
In me, he got a hold of a hard headed firstborn. My race, by my shape, had to be harder than maybe some of yours. Maybe some of you here have had a harder race than mine. You must have a really hard hit.
He trusts us with that which would allow us to grow and endure to become more like Him. I want you to think about this. His discipline is as a loving father. It's not to punish, but it's to raise up. It's not punishment, it's preparation.
His discipline is not punishment, but it's training. It's preparation. And as we see, it's that we might share in his holiness in verse 10, that we might become more like Him.
He's treating us as those that are part of his family. If you're left without discipline, it means you're illegitimate, man. I don't want to be illegitimate. I want to be a child of God.
Which means my faith will be tested. There will be discipline. There will be seasons that he'll trust me with. On the windy road of life that I'll have to go. Oh my goodness.
Where are you, Lord? Why is this happening to me?
But I will not quit believing in you. I'll keep trusting. There's a great cloud of witnesses waiting. And chief among them is my Lord Jesus. And for the joy I will keep running.
Verse nine, 9 “Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.”
He asked this rhetorical question in verse 9, “Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?” Father of Spirits? That's a strange phrase. But in context, not so strange.
It's more like this. Did you respect your earthly father? You ought to submit to your heavenly Father just like that. It's your spiritual father. You had a biological father.
And if you're a believer, you have a spiritual father. Not so strange. Not in context. It makes sense.
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.”
The word train is a Greek word where we get the word gymnastic, that's a great Greek word, gumnazō.That's where we get the idea of that athletic kind of training.
James says this, James 1:2-4 (NLT) 2 “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” So we look back and we realize what God has brought us through, has brought us to this moment where we have greater endurance as we've trusted him.
No pain, no gain. As an aspiring guitarist, when I was young, I grew up in a very musical family and I wanted to play the guitar. And I remember the first time I started trying to play, I got blisters on my fingers and I'm like, that hurts. So then I didn't want to play anymore. But then I would see that guitar and I would want to play again and I would try again and then I would get blisters again.
And I remember my Uncle Basil was a guitarist. Believe it or not, my grandmother was a great blues guitarist. She was really good. I really wanted to play like her. And she would say, well, Gary, you got to build up your calluses.
Well, how do you do that, Granny? You just keep playing through the pain and then you build calluses and then you won't even notice it anymore. You'll have the endurance to keep playing. Then you'll get better. It's the reason little kids, you don't usually see little kids playing the guitar.
It hurts. But somewhere along the line, if you'll overcome the pain, you can start playing the guitar. You have to endure blisters before you can play pain free.
Even a tree must be pruned in order to bear more fruit. CS Lewis, in his book, “The Problem of Pain,” says this, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Are you going through something today? Is God trying to get your attention? And it's the only way, only way to bring you to himself, to say that, that you'll trust him. Why not listen today? Allow his discipline to shape your endurance for the race ahead.
3. By relying on His strength.
By relying on his strength, look to his example. Submit to his discipline. Relying on his strength, having endured and having been trained, the exhortation now turns to renewal. And he gives us a double imperative here in the Greek; it's verse 12, “Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees,”
So see, here we are, verse 12. We have another therefore, don't we? This therefore points to verses 1 through 11. Since you're running life's race with endurance, and since you've recognized the need for discipline in order to allow you to have more endurance. Because now you've got a story.
If you've been alive long enough in Christ, you've got a story, you've got a testimony of how God brought you through this. Some of it was self, you brought it on yourself. You make bad choices, but God got you out of that and you couldn't. Here you are today. And some of it was, you don't know why it happened to you, but God brought you through that too, and all along the way.
But now, because of this, because you're looking to Jesus, you're looking to the example of the saints who've gone before you. Because you've endured discipline. Now renew yourself, be renewed. And so therefore lift up your drooping hands. It seems strange that running requires movement of the arms.
Try running like this, they wear you out. So get those hands back up and run.
When I ran cross country, one of our coaches liked to do the thumbs up run. I don't know if that helps, if that's more aerodynamic, but thumbs up running, we're talking, we're still in this race motif that the writer is using.
Get your hands up, get them way up. Strengthen your weak knees, you have wobbly knees.
You guys know three years ago I got new knees, right? I tell people I have a 67 year old body with baby knees. My knees are only three years old. I'm still tenderly bringing them along, trying to rebuild those legs, trying to be obedient to God's word. Strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet.
Man, your feet will hurt when you're running a marathon. Especially if you step off the path and get over on the side. You can fall down and really skin yourself up. Especially when you run cross country, you fall off in a ditch, you get really torn up. Need to stay on the straight path so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but be healed.
See, this is a time of renewal here that he's talking about, now that you've said, I'm going to follow the pacesetter, Jesus. He's the author and perfecter of the faith. I'm going to endure the discipline of the Lord, knowing that nothing touches me unless it first passes through the hands of the Father who loves me. If he lets it touch me, it's according to his will.
And therefore I'm going to endure it, knowing that it'll cause me to grow in perseverance and maturity. Now I'm at the place, though. But I'm weak, Lord. I can't keep my hands up. I'm going to be renewed by him, by the Spirit of Christ.
Help me get my hands up. I don't want to run like this. Help me get my hands up. I want to run like you want me to run. And I'm going to strengthen my running for you, for life's race.
And I'm going to step on the straight path so I don't step off and tear something else up.
Man, this really speaks to me as an old guy. I don't know about you young people, but verse 12 and 13, man, I'm feeling this. You guys know I love the language of the Bible. You know, the New Testament's written in Koine Greek, and so many of our English words come from Greek. It's just beautiful.
Ortho is all through 12 and 13 here. Orthos means to make straight. And so if it's orthopedics, then it's straight bones, right? And if it's an orthodontist, it's straight teeth. Straight; it's all through here.
Make straight, strengthen your knees. It's all throughout a joint. All of this imperative here is don't be crooked. Keep it straight. Renew yourself.
How do we do this? By renewing not according to my strength, but his strength. Really. The writer here is quite obviously well versed in the Old Testament. He has quoted Proverbs earlier in verses five and six.
Now he's really quoting Isaiah, who wrote this in Isaiah 35:3 (ESV) “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.”
How? By relying on his strength, by allowing him to work. After discipline comes empowerment. After discipline, God doesn't leave us drained. He renews our strength by His Spirit.
Endurance is sustained not by willpower, but by resurrection power.
It's his power that works so mightily. We work out what he works in.
Isaiah writes later in chapter 40, Isaiah 40:29-31 (ESV) 29 “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Like a runner catching a second wind.
Who ran through the side stitch and finally found, oh, I can keep going. I didn't realize I could run through this. My faith has grown. Or like Elijah, who laid down under the broom tree after a woman named Jezebel threatened his life, he had already stood up against all the prophets of Baal. He'd run a race and outrun a chariot, outrunning King Ahab down to Samaria.
Then he heard that the old queen Jezebel said that by this time tomorrow, you'll be dead. She said to him, or something thereof like it. And it just discouraged him. He'd come off the mountaintop, literally got down the valley and wasn't afraid of 400 prophets. But he was scared of that one spicy woman, and it discouraged him.
He crawled under a broom tree and he said, lord, just let me die. I'm the last prophet. Woe is me. Let me die. It was a long Monday for Elijah, but the Lord was gentle with him.
He sent an angel. And this angel set up a buffet for him there under the broom tree, brought him some angel food cake, some holy water, and he woke him up, let him sleep for a while. Woke him up and said, eat, drink. He did.
I think he rubbed his head a little bit and he went back to sleep because he was whooped. God will meet you there if you're there. He woke him up again, and served him another meal. He said, you’d better eat all of it. You better clean your plate because you're getting ready to run again, I’m getting ready to take you somewhere else.
He'll do that for you. You remember Jesus after 40 days, 40 nights in the wilderness, and then the temptation of Satan. He endured those three temptations. And then it says that the angels came and ministered to him. You want the angels?
You got to go through the wilderness. You got to go through and endure. You want to see the cloud that surrounds us? You want to see it? It's right here.
A veil separates us, but it's right here.
And one day the veil will be pulled back and you'll see.
So for the joy set before us and Jesus who leads the way, let's run the race with endurance until he calls us home.
Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. But more than anything, thank you for your son, the founder and finisher of our faith. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end for Jesus. I pray for that person that's here today.
You've never surrendered your life to him.
You can do it right now. You can make a decision to believe today. An act of the will. An act of the heart.
Pray with me like this. Pray like this. Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner, but I repent of my sin. I turn away. I lay that aside.
I want to follow you all the days of my life. I believe you died on the cross for my sins, that you were raised from the grave. I believe that. Come and live in me. Forgive me.
Adopt me into your family. I want to be a child of God. I want to follow you. I surrender my life to you. If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing, Jesus will save you.
He'll come and live in you by His Holy Spirit and seal you for redemption.
Others are here and you're a follower of Jesus. You know what I'm talking about. But you're going through it right now. You're really hurting. You're tempted to give up.
Lord, forgive me, Lord, for the joy. Help me to endure, Lord, because I trust you and I believe that you won't let anything touch me without it being according to your purpose and your will. Lord, I trust even the pain, Lord, use it so that you might be glorified and I might be made even more holy and righteous, which you've promised.
Lord, help me in this relationship. Help me in this situation. Help me in this place that I'm feeling like giving up. Not to give up, but to endure. For that great name of Jesus, according to His strength, in his name we pray.
Amen.
Audio
Right. Good morning, church. So thankful you're here today. Y' all braved the first, like, kind of chilly morning we've had this year. I'm so thankful to see you gave me the opportunity to put more layers on today, which is always fun for me.
I don't know why I like my winter wardrobe better. I don't know. Y' all deal with that. Some of you are like, I miss my shorts already. I don't.
I'm tired of being hot. So tired of it. But thank you so much for coming today. We're continuing the Book of Hebrews today, where we started this series a few years ago. The way we kind of do church here is we'll jump large past passages of scripture, kind of take bites and come back to them.
We like to have a good time as we walk through the Word of God. And so we're in Hebrews chapter 12. And I want to remind you of just a couple of things. First of all, last week we were praying over a church in Tarboro, First Love Fellowship. I just want to report to you, they had well over 100 people last week.
The room was packed. I should have posted a photo. I found a few online. I forgot to throw them up for you, but you can find them online. First Love Fellowship in Tarboro.
They're doing great. Pastor Jonathan Taylor and. And his young family. So praise God, your prayers were answered. And there were many people praying for that church in its first week.
So they're in week two. Now, y', all, some of you were with us on the journey. Week two is harder than week one. I'm just gonna throw that out there. So keep them in your prayers.
A lot of times you'll show up with 100 on week one and then 12 on week two. And I preach to 12 people many times. I can assure you this. Some of you know this. I preach just as hard to 12 as I do to 100.
I love what the Lord lets me do up here. And so, anyway, thank the Lord so much for that. Also, I want to remind you, this coming Friday, we're doing trunk or treat right out here. We're expecting a lot of people to show up, and so we need your help. If you don't want to do a trunk, that's okay.
We need as many trunks as we can get. But I've got some other tasks you can do, too. We're going to be cooking hot dogs. We're going to be having people helping people park. There's a lot of other jobs you can do.
If you just don't want to do the decorating a trunk thing and dressing up. But if you got kids, they probably want to dress up, so do a trunk. Anyway, I'm hoping we can really serve our city over the next week and another one of our big days. So let's get into the Book of Hebrews. We've entitled this series Jesus is Greater.
That's really what the author of Hebrews. That is, his whole goal is to, in a sense, prove first to the people of his generation and now to us that Jesus is greater in every way. And today we're going to be talking about the idea that Jesus is a greater endurance, that we can find a much better endurance in Christ Jesus. I want to remind you of our theme verse. It's in Hebrews chapter one, where it says, this shows that the Son is far greater than the angels, just as the name God gave him is greater than their names in a way that is the beginning, the first time he says greater than.
And then he says it umpteen times throughout the book of Hebrews. And so now we're talking about this idea of a better, greater endurance. Now let me set this up for you, because here's what I know. Some of you are running your life race right now really well. You're doing quite well right now.
Maybe you can look back and go, okay, I know there have been seasons where I was really on the struggle. I was in a tough valley. Maybe some of you this morning are in one of those valleys, financially, relationally, maybe even spiritually, you're feeling a weariness. There's a variety of people showing up today, and some on mountaintops, some in valleys. And here we are together, hearing this word about having endurance for life, if you will.
Sometimes we lose focus. We stumble under the weight of sin. Sometimes we misunderstand what God's doing. I'm going to talk about kind of a scary word today, the word discipline. It's the word that appears here in Hebrews chapter 12, where it talks of God's discipline.
And I'm not going to go around this topic. I know full well that sometimes some of the valleys you're going through, God is really working in those on purpose. Now, we should be honest. There are times we dig ourselves right into a hole on our own. And when we send those prayers up, if the Lord speaks clearly, he probably says, hey, bud, you got yourself into this one, but I'm here.
Let's get you out. But then there are other times where God is clearly allowing hardship for his purposes. What do we do then? What do we do when we feel exhausted, discouraged, tempted to give up? It seems like everybody else is running the race effortlessly.
Did you ever feel that way? Like you look at other people, even in your same career path, and you go, why does it look easy for you? That's partially because you don't know what they're going through. You have no idea. I was reading a book this past week talking about, like, business leaders, and anytime business leaders get together, they're always looking at each other going, it seems like.
Seems like the grass is greener on that side. But you always find out there's stuff under the hood that's really hard. In the family life and the way you work, we feel exhausted. Sometimes we feel discouraged. Here's the good news about today's message and what I attempt to do every week is to let you know it's not so much about human effort that makes this work.
Last week, last few weeks, we were talking about the faith heroes. The Moses, the Moses, the Abrahams, the Jacobs, the prophets. We talked about all these people over the last few weeks, and the Bible says one plain thing about all of them. That by faith, God did things. Not by perfection, not because they got it all right.
Read those stories. Go back and read the Old Testament. Part of the reason it's there is so that you and I can go. You know what? God can work with some pretty busted people.
That's good news because I don't get it right all the time. It's not about perfection. No, it's about endurance in Christ Jesus. The truth is, without Jesus, endurance, at least in life's race is impossible. Your strength will run out.
You'll need more than motivation. You'll need more than willpower. You'll need a greater source of endurance. You'll need this in your marriage and your parenting. Some of you are there this morning.
You barely got to church without really fussing out your kids on the way here. It can be trying because they don't realize what's going on. Half the time, they're going to just sit in the back seat and eat their boogers. They don't care. They don't care what you've got going on.
Look to Jesus as we'll read today, the author and perfecter of our faith. So here we go. We're going to be in the Book of Hebrews today. I know this will be a blessing to you. I hope you have ears to hear it.
The writer here of the Book of Hebrews is telling us here in chapter 12. After just portraying these heroes of the Faith in chapter 11, he's now going to say, all right, now they're watching. There's a great cloud of witnesses is what he's going to talk about. And they're watching you as you run life's race. Now, that might be a little spooky to consider, but that is the case.
There's a cloud of witnesses watching us as we run through life. And the author is telling us, exhorting us to run our race as they did, not in perfection, but with our eyes fixed on Jesus. That's what they did, right? That's what we can also do. By the power of God, we can look to Jesus for endurance to run this race.
The text is going to give us three clear ways to look to Jesus for endurance in our race. Here we go. A few verses here In Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 1 through 13, it says therefore. And that's pointing back to where we've just been because of these people who by faith did these things. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us 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, 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. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted in your struggle against sin. You have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? This is out of Proverbs, chapter 3.
This is this quote. It says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.
This is good news, right? Mixed news. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom His Father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children, not sons.
Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them for it. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them. But he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 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. Hear this church. Therefore lift your drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. God bless the reading of His Word. Amen.
I pray this encourages you, challenges you where you need it, but also encourages you that there's some stuff you're facing right now, that there's a great reason for it. God's up to something, and it's something powerful in your life if you would yield to Him. So let's dig in. We can look to Jesus for endurance to run life's race. How, Number one.
By considering his example. By considering his example, we're going to break this up, really. In these blocks, verses 1 through 4, verses 5 through 11, and then verses 12 and 13, there are a handful of imperatives. Those are command verbs in this text that really drive the ideas. And so the first idea is, consider him.
You see that in verse three, that's the first imperative, if you will, that the writer gives us. Look to Jesus. Point your eyes on him, set your pace on him. This whole exercise is this idea of running a race. And most of the words are, like, attached to that theme that we're running a marathon together.
So he comes right out the gate and he says, hey, verse one. There are people watching. Now, every time I've ever read this in the past, I've always thought, you know what? I bet my grandparents are watching. I bet my uncles and my aunts that are with Jesus already, I bet they're watching.
That might very well. That might be true, but that's not the purpose of what the writer has told us. What he's saying is, these people by faith, Moses, Abraham, Jacob, they're watching. Those are the witnesses he's talking about. So there is a great many saints, some of which we have never heard about.
They're watching the race. What are they watching for? They're watching to see how well we'll follow Christ Jesus in this life. Now they're doing some other things. I think they're having a right good time up there, but apparently they're watching.
And to this he says, okay, since you've got. You've got spectators, since not only that, there are spectators in this life too, some of you might be unaware of this, but there are people watching you. I can promise you this. As soon as you come out to your family or to your friends or to your co workers, hey, I'm a Christian. As soon as you make that public, all of a sudden people are like, wait a minute, why is he or she doing that?
Why that bad language still? Or why have they shifted so drastically? You know, people are watching, but here it's these saints of old. And because of that, the writer says, lay aside every weight and the sin which clings. So you might have the temptation, all right, I'm running this great life race.
I'm doing this marathon that is my life that has hills and valleys and good news, friends. We're all experiencing this together. So have the saints of old. So did Christ Jesus. So did every human being who has ever walked the face of this planet.
There are ups and there are downs, and this is the way of life. And sometimes on the mountaintop, we have a tendency to forget about God and think, you know what? I'm doing pretty well, I've got this right? And then we get down in the valley. Sometimes we'll get so confused and distracted.
This is the way our lives go. He's saying, hey, because of this, you should lighten the load and throw off the sin which clings. So I'm glad he adds the sin which clings in there, because you might initially think, okay, I need to offset some of the things I'm doing wrong.
Maybe I struggle with certain addictions. Maybe I struggle with certain kind of lust, certain temptations. Maybe I have a hard time with my language, maybe. And you fill in that blank. I have an anger problem and I don't do good with my finances.
I'm not a good steward. You fill in that blank there. You might initially think, alright, let me throw off everything that entangles. Well, in a way he's saying, yeah, absolutely, throw that off. But he's talking about weight, not just sin.
This might put a weird image in your head, but just so you know, the runners in Greek culture that he would be speaking to Roman culture, they would run, I mean, pretty much in their skivvies. I mean, they would run with almost nothing on. They would wrestle and things like that, in the nude. All right, that's just. That's a fact.
All right, Deal with that however you want to deal with that. But even today, modern runners, if you look at them, I mean, some of these guys. Do I have any runners in the room? I'm not trying to pick on you. If you're like a big time runner, some of these guys will wear some shorts.
And I'm like, that's suspect, bro. Like, you're that close to Exposure. But you'll notice this about runners. They will wear as little as humanly possible. Why?
Because every little stitch of weight affects you on a long term run. Some of these guys that are running ultras, they're running like 100 miles wild to me. And they're having to put like band aids in weird places and stuff because. Yeah, anyway. But they're wearing very little clothing.
Why? Because they're throwing off every single weight that entangles. Now why does the writer write this? It's not just to give you this illustration. It's to remind you of something really important.
That there's some stuff in your life right now that isn't sin. That is really slowing you down. Sin, that's the minimum requirement. Yeah. You need to let that go.
Lay that at the feet of Jesus. The temptations, the lust, the addictions, the brokenness, all of that you already know intuitively in Christ Jesus. I need to rid myself of this. I got to lay that at the cross. Got it.
What about the other junk? That's not evil, not sinful, but it's wasteful. I've heard people say this to me before. You know, I felt like God was really calling me to the mission field, but I'm so in debt that I can't get there. That is a weight that is entangled, that decisions have been made financially that limit you from doing what God has called you to do.
Some of us in the room are experiencing that. You need to attack that with reckless abandon. God has called you to the ministry, to the mission field, something like that. Finances shouldn't hold you back. Pray to the Lord of hosts and put a plan together and get rid of that so that you can be obedient.
There are weights that entangle us that aren't all sin. Some of you are in dating relationships right now. I don't know who you are, but the person you're with is not walking with the Lord Jesus. And if you continue in that pursuit, you're going to find, wow, we are going in two different directions and eventually it will end in great hurt. I'm not saying that people are weights, but in this, this particular instance, they are a weight towards your following Christ rightly.
Some of you have friends like this. Oh, I don't think the pastor should tell me I need to dump my friends. Yeah, I will. Some of you have some friends that are leading you into sin. Constantly, constantly leading you into sin.
And you're falling for that temptation for a season, maybe a long season. You need some new friends.
Throw off every weight. That slows down the race. Because guess who we're following. We're following the trailblazer. It says, look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith.
Get in step with him. And he is scooting, he's moving fast, and he has a plan for your life. That if you would get in step, it's going to be thrilling. It's going to be the thing you were made to do, and it's going to blow your mind. But if you continue to just carry.
I've never seen anybody running down the the track with baggage, two suitcases and backpacks on. You know, I see some people in my neighborhood doing this. This is like the new thing is to wear £100 on your chest. I don't know when that started. I did that for the military.
I hated it. I'm not doing that for fun. There's something wrong with people, but you never see anybody racing like that. He says, let us run an endurance race. Here's what it says about this word race.
Y' all are going to love this. This is where the Bible is just so good. Verse one, it says, with endurance, the race that is set before us. The word race. There is the word agon in the Greek.
That might sound familiar to you because it's where we get the word agony.
It's like, oh, man, thanks God, you've called my life the race of agony.
Well, at least the book is accurate. At some point, you realize there's some tough stuff. There's some agonizing moments in this life. Agon, he says, run that with endurance. This means, guess what, gang?
We're not in a sprint. We've got a long haul ahead and we know who to follow. This is what's so great about I believe the Christian faith is we're not alone and we're not confused. Not if we know this. We have a pace setter the Lord Jesus.
He's before us. The Holy Spirit is with us. We run with endurance. It says in verse two. Then look.
Look to the founder and perfecter of our faith. The founder and perfecter simply means this. It means he is both the starter and the completer. He's the Alpha, the Omega. He's.
He's the one who began the faith, and he is the one who will bring it to its finish. And he did all of these things first by enduring the cross. This is the example he's left for us, that he knew full well the agony that was in store for him so that we might be free from Sin, it says, for the joy set before him, he despised the shame. So now verse three, consider him. Consider him.
Think it over, contemplate. I think I would be doing you a real injustice this morning. Some of you in the room might not really be following the Lord Jesus with your life. Maybe you've never made the decision at all to believe in Christ Jesus, to walk by faith. I want to give you an honest truth this morning.
Walking with Christ Jesus will have many ups and many downs. This life will not be less agonizing as a result of faith. It will just have meaning and purpose. It will start to make sense. Now here's what I also know confidently.
Those outside of the faith also run a race of long enduring agony. But in Christ I have meaning, I have purpose. I can look at these certain things and go, wait a minute, I think God's up to something. Yeah, that hurt. That hurt terribly.
But I think God's. God's doing something here.
So I'm never going to be the type to get up here and say, hey, when you follow Jesus, you'll never have another problem. And then when you have your next problem, guess who you won't come see? You won't come see me. And you will have more. In fact, Jesus promises this.
He says, in this life you will have many trials. That's what the words of Christ are. But take courage, for I have overcome the world. That's what Christ says.
He says, this race, consider him, walk in step with Christ Jesus, who endured hostility and your struggle against sin. And then it says strangely in verse 4, and this would be true of us, it's surprising that it was also true of them. He says, you've not gotten to the point yet in verse four where you've had to resist this to the point of shedding your own blood.
That you've not gotten to the place in your Christian struggle where you've had to suffer the most severe test. And most of us Americans have not either. I will say there are Christians around the world who have suffered the great test of shedding blood. In fact, in the 21st century, there are, at least the last time I looked, more Christian martyrs in the 21st century than many of the centuries previously combined. We don't often talk about that in church, but there's great suffering to be a Christian in other places in the world.
Here in this place, we don't typically suffer this great test, so we endure. It says we are to endure, looking to Christ as our example first. Peter. Peter puts it this way in chapter two, he says, if you suffer for doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you. For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering.
Just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example. You must follow in his steps. I've seen these races sometimes. You might have noticed this before, like when they're in preparation, when they're trying to warm up.
Like, the longer races, the mile and beyond. You'll often see there's a guy that will get out in front of the main runner and, like, push them. Like, as they're warming up, you'll see this rando guy that's just hauling, and then he'll go off into the grass, and then that person will keep going. And this is kind of how they prepare and how they train. That guy, his whole job is just to set pace.
He's just there to make sure, hey, when you do this mile, you need to have a sub 1 minute, 400. You need to be moving. And so he comes out booking, and then he bugs out once the guy's got it set. Now, here's what's so incredible about the Christian faith, is we have this very thing, the pacesetter, who is Christ Jesus. And he doesn't step off into the grass.
He keeps on going. But it seems to me that not only that, but we have the Holy Spirit of God almost behind us. Like, you ever feel that? I don't want to go over there. I don't want to talk to him.
I don't want to do that thing. You feel like God pushing you, feel a sense that God is moving you towards something, and then there's that little push from behind you. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't really want to pastor a church. God.
I don't really want to go on the mission field. I don't really want to even go to. I don't want to go to church. This morning, some of you got just a little spiritual nudge. Just this morning, you rolled out of bed and went, ooh, it's a little chilly today.
I think I might stay in these warm sheets. You just got that little nudge. It just kicks you right on out of bed. We have a pacesetter who is Christ the Lord. There are things that he is urging you towards.
This first point is simply this. Where have you fixed your eyes? You want to know how to run a race with endurance? You have to fix your eyes on something. The one who runs the marathon.
I promise you this. I've never done a marathon. I've done, like, a 10 miler before. And I'll tell you what gets you through those last miles. There's an end.
That's what gets you through the last few miles. I heard a guy put it this way recently. He said, you know what? Halfway through one of these ultras, I have to tell myself this. It doesn't always get worse.
That's not really encouraging, is it? But it really is encouraging because if you run like 30 some miles and you go, that was horrible, it might not get worse, it might get better. What gets us across the finish line is knowing there's a finish line. It's having something in front of us that we've got our eyes set on. And some of you have got some really poor pacesetters in your life right now.
Oh, if I could just get this job. Oh, if I can just get this raise. Oh, if I can just convince her to love me, then I'll finally be happy. I'll finally have what I'm looking for. I'll finally be on the destination.
No, you need a better pacesetter because all of that stuff's going to let you down. I promise it will. Fix your eyes on Jesus or your endurance will be lacking.
Here's the second, and y' all can't wait for this part. If you thought that was tough, let's go a little tougher. Some real tough love from the Lord Jesus today. In verse five, he picks up talking about something out of the Book of Proverbs, which we would have liked to have skimmed over and not considered. He says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.
Here's the second way we look to Jesus for endurance is this by submitting to his discipline. Ew. It's okay. Come on with me. Submit to his discipline.
I'm a grown man. I ain't submitting to nobody's discipline. I know how you feel. I've been there. I've already picked switches at home from like 6 to 14.
I'm done with that. I got enough spankings for most of you in the room combined. I mean, I did my due. My brother. I have an older brother and a younger sister.
I think they mostly just sat around the house going, I'm glad it's not me today because it was me all the time. I got a spanking every Sunday for like 10 years. I kid you not. I couldn't help myself. It was too much fun to run and jump over equipment and get into the back of the church van and just get.
I just had too much energy. I was into stuff. I was in the custodian's lounge, reaching my hand up into the concessions and getting stuff out. Because I had a skinny little arm. I could get my hand up in there.
I didn't always get caught for that. I'm just putting that out. Lord, I am sorry about that, by the way. I repent of that. I didn't get caught every time.
But you saw, that was a mess, y'. All. And so now I come to this. I'm like, there's more. It's like I've kind of been into that already.
There's something more, though, something so much more in what Christ is up to and what God is up to in our life. He says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor grow weary from it. For the Lord, what does he do? He disciplines those he loves. He disciplines those he loves.
This is the second imperative right here in verse five. It says, do not regard likely. That means to care little about. No, he says, don't do that. Consider it.
Take it to heart that God loves you so much that he's trying to mold you and make you into his image. There's a lot of parrots in the room, you know. Sometimes you have to discipline your kids. Do you do it because you like it? If that's true, we need to talk after.
You've got some issues. If you just enjoy disciplining people, there's something psychopathic about that. No. No, you don't. You do it because, what, you love them?
At the heart of it, you love them. You don't want them to turn out to be terrible people. You are interacting in your workplaces and in your life with people that didn't get enough discipline when they were growing up. You're like, I'm not my kids. We're not going to play that.
You discipline how out of love? Good parents do that. This is the argument that the writer is making now. If God loves us, shouldn't he discipline us? Have you and I reached perfection yet?
Has anybody in the room gotten to the place now where you just don't make mistakes anymore? Because if that's you, you should be here. Because I haven't acquired that yet. I think things. Sometimes I shouldn't think.
Sometimes I say stuff I shouldn't. Sometimes I even do stuff I shouldn't do. Now, here's what I'll say. My aim is to get less and less the doing wrong to eventually. It's just every once in a while there's a stray thought.
I don't know if I'll ever overcome that, because I don't think we reach perfection until the Lord comes or takes us home.
So I know this. Every once in a while, I need one of these from God, because who else is going to do it? Sometimes my wife is like the voice of God for me. She sees it, goes, that's not okay, what you're doing there. Sometimes I do that for her.
This is, I think, the joy of a good godly marriage. But who else? If I'm going this way, I need people sometimes. I need men in my life who say, hey, what you said, what you did there, not okay. It's good that those are real friends.
Those are good friends you put around you and say, you're not walking with the Lord Jesus. The friends you're hanging out with, that just say, hey, man, that's good. Go ahead and divorce your wife. Hey, go ahead and do that thing. You deserve it.
The friends of yours that say you deserve it, those aren't your good friends, the ones that will tell you, hey, man, that's not okay. That's not what it looks like to walk with Jesus. Those are true friends. Get a bunch of those around you. It says, submit, then don't regard lightly.
Then the discipline of the Lord. Why? Because he does it out of love. It says, he chastises. And the whole thing you see in verse 8 through like 10 is comparing this to our earthly fathers.
Verse 9, it says, earthly fathers. It literally means the Father of our flesh, the one who bore us in the flesh. That's our earthly parents. It says, we subject ourselves to that and we even respect that. Those of you who had good parents, who, yes, they disciplined you, but now you look back and go, I honor them for that.
They help me in life. He says, if you even get that much, of course you should get the fact that God sometimes disciplines and he does it so that we might share in his holiness, and he reminds us of something that we know. Verse 11. Hey, look, discipline kind of hurts at first. It's not fun.
If you're going this way and God wants you going this way, there's got to be a little bit of shoving to get us over there. And it's painful, but it breathes into righteousness those who are being trained in it.
I think this is such a useful verse to us today because here's what I know. I know a few of the stories in this room. I know people are going through terrible valleys right now. And you might look at those things and go, I have no Clue why God has let these things happen.
There's this strange balance that occurs when we really process things. This where we go, okay, if terrible things are happening to me, did God by mistake just overlook them?
There's a really careful question here. We have to ask about God's sovereignty. How much does God know? How much does God see? How much does God allow?
Here's what I believe based on the word of God. God sees all, knows all. Nothing passes into your life without it passing through his hands. Well, then why am I in this terrible situation? Now that is a good question.
Now you're asking the right question. Wait a minute. But I thought God loved me. Yeah. Okay, you tracking just how important this decision tree is where you start to go, okay, here I am in the muck, I'm in the valley, I'm struggling.
God obviously knows about it, has allowed it to happen. Okay, God, now you're getting to the right question. Okay, God, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to learn? What do I need to change?
Some of you in the room, God is trying to just teach you in this moment, hey, will you trust me when I take this away or when I put this in your life? Sometimes discipline looks various different ways. The removal of things or the addition of things. Sometimes he puts a new boss in your life and you go, this is horrible. This is the worst.
Or sometimes he takes people away, people abandon you. Sometimes things don't work out and you go, wait a minute.
But the Bible says his word clearly says he disciplines out of love. Sometimes he's trying to help you throw off a little bit of weight. Certainly all the time he's trying to help you wrestle with your sin and your brokenness.
Okay, so friend, right now, some of you in the room, you're really in a tough place. Begin this questioning, this line of questioning with God. Okay, I know this thing's occurring and it didn't escape you. It just didn't accidentally show up. And I like to say to you what Joseph said to his brothers, what you meant for evil, God is going to use for good, that there are some things happening in your life that the evil one or some terrible friends or something terrible has happened.
And the evil one means that for destruction, he wants to destroy you, your marriage, he wants to destroy your career, he wants to end you. And yet God is at work. This stuff didn't slip through, all the terrible things. Read the book of Job sometimes all the terrible things that happened to Job, they didn't happen accidentally. God had a Plan Endurance grows in the soil of discipline.
Here's what James says in verse. In chapter one, verse two, it says, dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. Here's a saying I heard growing up constantly.
Some of you, this will really ring true for you. Did you ever hear the term no pain, no gain? I heard that constantly as a child to a point where I was like, I feel like I'm not gaining a lot. I'm doing pain in a lot of. I'm doing plenty of that.
I heard that all through sports, and my little scrawny self didn't grow. You know, I'm like, this is a lot of pain involved in football and in wrestling. And yet my body does not seem to be changing.
Not many of you knew me in this phase of life. Believe it or not, I used to be about 53 and £103 until I was a junior in high school. I wrestled 103 as a sophomore in high school. And I kept saying, well, I'm doing the work, I'm doing the running, I'm doing the exercising, but this thing ain't doing nothing.
I don't know what to do about this. And then one day, all of a sudden, I woke up and I grew a foot. It was kind of wild. No pain, no gain. Sports require pain to grow.
We know this already. You want to be a better runner, guess what you have to do. You have to run more. Yuck. I have to endure more pain in my feet and in my legs.
You want to. You want to grow in your career? Guess what? Pain. More.
Study. More reading. More seminars. More vulnerability. More.
More. You want to be a good musician? Guess what? Pain Go up to any guitarist. You know, you'll find either if they're right handed, you'll find these little bitty, goofy calluses on every finger of their left hand.
Mine are actually looking kind of wacky today because I don't play like I used to. So they're getting kind of tore up. Go up to Mr. Mark later. Everybody in the whole room. Y' all go talk to Mark today.
That'll blow his mind. Guarantee you he's got some hard spots on these left fingers. And when I first started learning to play, that junk hurt. It hurt. My little bitty fingers soft.
No pain, no gain. I love what CS Lewis I'D recommend this book to you called the Problem of Pain. CS Lewis writes, God whispers to us in our pleasures. He speaks in our conscience, but he shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
Where is God the loudest? In the valley, in the pain. Why? Because I think most of the time it's because we're doing this on the mountain. It's not because God's not speaking.
It's because, oh, look at me. I'm doing good.
Here's the third and final way we look to Jesus for endurance by relying on his strength. I wasn't going to leave you hanging, friends. Hey, look, there's a good point in here. I've got to run. I've got to set my pace to Jesus.
I've got to submit to his discipline. But guess what else? I get to rely on his strength. Rely on his strength. It says in Isaiah 35, strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.
This is what the writer of Hebrews is kind of echoing here when he says, lift up your drooping hands. These are all imperatives here. Strengthen your weak knees. Make straight your feet. All of these words have kind of the same meaning in mind.
That you would straighten up, that you would cut a straight line, that you would run a straight course. That when you get Christ Jesus in your view, fix your eyes on him and say, all right, God, whatever you want me to do, I will submit to your will. Submit to your discipline. I am yours. Do you see this picture?
This is the runner in life who says, God, I am yours. I'm running behind you. Whatever you say, I'm doing it. Shape me and mold me into your image. You do with me as you please.
And then as we run this straight course now, we feel the hands of God pushing. We feel the strength of God in our life, the kinds of things we would not know or experience if we try to run on our own. So he says, make straight paths for your feet. That way what is lame may be healed. So God's on the back end doing something here.
After discipline comes empowerment. This is why, I mean, we already know this in physical life, that when we have the discipline to do sports, to do physical fitness, to discipline our minds towards some activity, when we do the work, it always bears the result of getting better and better at whatever that thing is.
I say this to you to say the first step's the hardest.
It's kind of like this flywheel principle in your life, if y' all remember, like the merry go rounds when we were kids, and most of us have chipped teeth on them jokers. But, you know, kind of, in a way, when you were really little, that first push is really hard, right? But once you start getting it and you get a buddy on the other side, then you can literally launch your friends out of those things, which is incredible. You better stay in the middle or you're going. One of the worst injuries I ever got was on one of those things.
I was trying to. To Superman. I was trying to hang on and see if I could get my legs horizontal. And I did. I succeeded, but I wasn't strong enough.
And I went a distance and hit one of those. Y' all remember those horsey things? You could go hit my head on one of them things. I think that was my first concussion.
But it's the hardest point is getting that thing started. And this is kind of what life is like. Those first steps, young believer, those first steps. You think you're coming to faith. That's where you're at.
Those first steps where I know the Lord Jesus, but I'm not walking. I've not got my eyes fixed on him. I'm going to determine to do that. Those initial spins are tough. He says, lift your drooping hands and guess what?
Make straight your paths and you will be healed. Isaiah 40, it says it this way. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.
All right, so I hear you, Jonathan. This whole message is about fixing my eyes on Jesus, submitting to the will of God and his discipline. But all of it hinges around this.
The decision to say, I am yours, Lord Jesus. Empower me to do the things you've called me to do.
I give you permission to come up to me after any sermon where I try to make it sound like you can do this. Apart from Christ Jesus, I never want to do that. We need the Holy Spirit of God behind us, pushing. I see where you're going. Lord, give me the strength to do it.
I don't have the courage to do it. Give me the courage to do it. That's your prayer life. This is what Isaiah is speaking of. He says, what?
What does he say? He says, wait for the Lord and renew your strength.
Wait. When you feel too weak to go on, remember you're not running alone. Some of you need to take a pause this week. I said this to some of my brothers this week in First Kings, chapter 19, there's this wonderful story where Elijah has just had this incredible moment where he has baffled the nation. And many of the prophets of BAAL have been destroyed because he prayed and called in fire from heaven.
And God did this wonderful miracle and burned up many of the false prophets. And all this happens. And then one woman says, hey, I'm going to come take you out. And he gets afraid. Her name was Jezebel.
She's a pretty famous character in the Bible. She says, hey, I'm going to take you out, basically. And what does Elijah do? He gets afraid and he takes off running. And he runs as far south as he can possibly run in the nation of Israel.
He goes all the way to the bottom of Judah. But he does something right down there. I don't know if his fear was correct. I would say I don't know that it should have been, because God was clearly with him. But he got afraid and he took off running.
But then he does something really correct. He gets alone, he prays, and he rests. Some of you this week, you're deep down in a valley. Maybe just try those three things. Get alone.
Pray honestly. Guess what? Elijah prays. You'll love this prayer. Hey, God, will you go ahead and kill me?
Just go ahead and take me out. That was the prayer of Elijah in 1st Kings 19. You ever been that honest with God? I'm so sick of everything that's going on right now. God, would you just remove me?
I'm obviously the problem in this whole equation. Take me out. I'm not saying, hey, go home and be suicidal. But he was honest with God. You ever gotten that kind of honest with the Lord?
Get alone. Get honest with Jesus and rest. Some of you might just. It would do you good just to have a good power nap. Do you know?
That's okay. And he woke up, and the angel of the Lord, it says, left a cake for him. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I'm rooting for you, though. Woke up to a cake. Hallelujah.
There's something great about his story that you need to remember that the strength to overcome the valley, the terrible things that are going on, even the mountaintops, the strength you need to do life comes from God. Rest in him. Be honest with him. Get time alone and eat those angel cakes when you get them. Endurance is not the absence of.
Of weariness, friends. It's not. Everything's Going right, everything's perfect. That's not endurance. Endurance is saying, I've got my eyes fixed on Jesus, God, I'm yours.
Your will be done. Now empower me to live this life. Can you do that? That's your prayer. That's your life purpose.
Where are we going? It's exciting, too, because who knows? Who knows where the Lord Jesus is taking us? All right, I'm just going to get in behind you. Let's go.
This is an exciting thing. I pray that you'll take this journey with us. Let's pray now. Church. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that first of all, you are a good God who loves us, that the things you've called us to.
I've said this many times, Lord, but the things you call us to, you did first when you say, hey, this race, it will require endurance because it's long, it's up, it's down. It's difficult at times. There are trials, but there are also triumphs. You tell us all this. You promise this, in fact.
But I'm thankful, Lord Jesus, that you blazed the trail first. You never ask us to do things you didn't first blaze the trail and do first. Lord, I'm so thankful for that, that I don't feel alone in this. Sure, I have the people of God with me, and that is great. But we have a destination in mind.
We know where to fix our eyes. It's not absent to us. We're not confused in this. We know all right, where you lead, Lord Jesus, we go. Thank you for that.
I'm asking now, Lord Jesus, a really specific prayer. There's some people in the room. They're going through some of the hardest things they've ever gone through. Maybe there's a sickness in their life. Maybe they've lost a job.
Maybe something's going wrong in a relationship. Lord, there's some terrible things going on in some of our lives. That's not everybody in the room. I recognize some people in the room are actually doing really quite well. I pray for them.
Uniquely this Lord, help them to set their eyes on you even in the victories, because it can be such a challenge in those moments to think, lord Jesus, we got this, we're doing good. Which doesn't prepare us at all for the marathon. God, I pray for those people, but for those others in the room that are in a pretty deep pit right now, I pray, Lord, would you just be obvious to them as they spend time in prayer with you? Lord, would you reveal yourself? I pray they see you on Every page of the Bible.
I pray they hear your voice when they shout in fear and turmoil. I pray they hear your voice when they do like Elijah and just really get honest with you, God, I don't know. I don't know what to do next. My kids are this. I don't know if I can save my marriage.
My work is going terrible. I don't know if I can overcome this addiction. When people finally get honest with you, God, would you speak?
Would you let your presence be known and felt? I ask this boldly, Lord, help your people to throw off every weight that entangles them, the sin which so easily clings. Help us, your people, to throw that off. I want to run, and I don't want to just barely run, God, I want to run fast.
If you're going to run hot, I want to run hot, too. Please, God, give me the strength. Empower me to do this. Lord, I recognize there's somebody in the room today. All of this sounds really incredible.
You're telling me there's purpose and the ups and downs of my life. You're telling me there's someone to follow, there's a purpose.
There's someone in the room that's hearing that maybe clearly for the first time. They've not given their lives to you yet, Jesus, I pray for them right now that they would take a step of obedience. They would take a step of submission to your will. And it starts with confession. It starts with determining not my will anymore, but yours be done.
Dear friend, if that's you this morning, I want to give you an opportunity to confess. Christ, no more waiting. There's no reason to wait. Your purpose, your life's purpose is in store for you in Christ Jesus and nowhere else. If that's you, my friend, pray this with me.
Lord Jesus, I believe you died on the cross for my sin. I believe you are Lord of my life. You're in charge. You are the king of all things and certainly the king of my life. And, God, I believe that you raised Christ Jesus from the dead and the cross and the resurrection.
They give me hope knowing that not only have you conquered my sin, but you have heaven in store for me. Lord, thank you for saving me today. Now I ask God, help me to fix my eyes on you. Help me to see where you're setting the pace in my life so that I can follow you.
Dear friend, if you prayed that prayer with me, welcome to the church. Welcome to the family of God. We are so thankful to share in the race with you. God. We're asking as they asked.
Lord, help us to know where you're leading us to get in step with you. Guide our feet Lord, as we run with reckless abandonment towards you. God be with your people this week that we would be a light in our communities. Help us to be a great witness. Wherever we go, we pray in Jesus name, Amen.