Good morning.
I just want to go over these verses
with you today because they're a very important
passage of Scripture.
All Scripture is important, but I think there's
a great deal of misunderstanding with regard to
these verses.
The last three chapters of Hebrews, the subject
is faith and endurance, faith and endurance.
And chapter 11 has to do with the
great heroes of faith in the Old Testament.
And now chapters 12 and 13 go on
to endurance.
We're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,
it says, first of all in verse 1.
Some people think that refers to the saints
in heaven looking down over the balcony and
observing what is going on in earth.
Others, and I agree with the others more,
although both are possible, I think the saints
referred to in chapter 12, verse 1, refer
back to the ones in the previous chapter.
The previous chapter.
Great heroes in the race of faith.
And they're witnessing to us, they're not so
much spectators, but they're witnessing to us by
their lives of faith.
For them, faith made the future present and
it made the invisible visible.
And that's what faith does.
It's exactly what it does.
And we're called to a life of faith.
He says, let us lay aside every weight.
A weight is anything that hinders us in
the race of faith.
It isn't necessarily the same for each one
of us.
It could be different for each one of
us.
But we must scrutinize our lives day by
day and put away things that would hinder
us in the pressing on toward the mark
for the prize of God in Christ Jesus.
The sin which so easily ensnares us.
Well, the previous chapter had to do with
faith.
The opposite of faith is unbelief.
And I think the sin that so easily
ensnares us is unbelief.
Some days our faith is so strong.
Other days when the trials come and the
difficulties arise, it's just a different story.
Run with endurance.
What is endurance?
Well, I'd like to give you some definitions
of it.
Endurance is victorious steadfastness under trial.
That's good, isn't it?
Endurance in the Bible sense is victorious steadfastness
under trial.
It's the brave and courageous acceptance of whatever
comes to us in life.
Good?
It's the triumphant ability to bear things past
the breaking point and not break.
It's greeting the unseen future with a cheer.
Yes, I really wrote that in my notes.
It's greeting the unseen future with a cheer.
And shortly after I wrote that, I turned
on my computer.
The biggest file in my computer is sermons.
I went to get sermons and it wasn't
there.
It had gone.
I lost it.
Tremendous.
Greet the future with a cheer.
Incredible.
All those years of work.
Endurance.
We're called to a life of endurance.
Well, before the dear brothers rush up here
afterwards and offer to help me, I found
it.
Sermons had shifted over to books.
That was strange.
How did that happen?
Well, I guess it just crawled during the
night on those unseen wires.
I have no idea, however, that got under
books.
None whatever.
But it's there.
And the whole experience confirmed my theory that
all recorders, PowerPoint, computers, all of those
things are demon possessed.
Somebody else has lost things, too.
Christian life is a marathon, not a hundred
yard dash.
So many start well, but it's finishing well
that really count.
Think of dear Noah.
We read about him in chapter 11.
Great man of faith that he ended his
life with alcoholism.
Tragic, isn't it?
Tragic to go on so well for years
and to end in that way.
I think of Gideon and what an illustrious
life of military victory he had.
Ended in encouraging idolatry among the people of
God.
I think of Samson.
Well, his whole life recorded.
It certainly didn't get any better.
Ended in a sort of suicide.
I think of Saul.
This impresses me.
I'm going to read it to you.
Samuel said, when you were a little in
your own eyes, were you not head of
the tribes of Israel?
Did not the Lord anoint you king over
Israel?
Now the Lord sent you on a mission
and said, go and utterly destroy the sinners,
the Amalekites, and fight against them until they're
consumed.
Why then did you not obey the voice
of the Lord?
Why did you swoop down on the spoil
and do evil in the sight of the
Lord?
He said, I'm going to take the kingdom
from you.
Sad, sad.
David, what a man of God he was.
Yet, close of his life was a dark
cloud over it.
Mortuary, busy from time to time.
Three of his sons dying tragically because of
his, because of his sin.
Solomon, how well he began picture of the
Lord Jesus in his kingdom glory, and yet
multiplied horses rather than depending on the Lord.
He depended on the horses.
Married foreign wives who led him into idolatry.
I think of Demas.
Demas is a puzzle to me in the
New Testament.
Paul says of him, Demas has forsaken me,
having loved this present world.
He loved the present world.
John says, if any man loved the world,
the love of the Father is not in
him.
What does that mean?
That Demas wasn't saved?
Sounds like that, doesn't it?
Yet, he labored with the Apostle Paul.
Ended in obscurity.
And I think of the church at Ephesus
and the Lord Jesus said to it, you
have left your first love.
He said so many good things about Ephesus.
You've left your first love so easy to
do.
It reminds us that we're never safe from
falling until we step over the threshold of
heaven.
It's the truth.
The ship may come back from extended voyage
and go aground at the mouth of the
harbor.
The race is set before us.
The race of faith.
I like the next verse, looking unto Jesus.
I'd like to pause over that, looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
Dear friends, we want a Christ-centered ministry.
We want that in our lives.
If I may just think with you about
Christian radio here in the Bay Area.
I don't know if you listen in the
afternoon.
I don't usually, but I turn it on.
And I hear this pop psychology.
I hear dear women there telling how they
apparently married a lemon in the garden of
love.
And they tell all the details of ruined
lives.
And they're counseled with modern psychology.
No word glorifying the Lord Jesus.
No word looking after the Lord.
No word finding your strength in a life
devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Nothing like that.
Self, self, self.
May I stand here today and tell you
there's no victory in self.
The victory is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I think God's goal for us as
assemblies too, as goals for the church, learn
to live close to the Lord where you
don't need to rush off to every local
radio station and divulge all the personal details
of your life.
Look to Jesus, the author and finisher of
faith.
He's there at the beginning of the race
of faith.
He's there at the end of the race.
He shows us how to run the race
of faith.
Consider him who endured such hostility of sinners
against him, lest you become weary and discouraged
in your souls.
Some of the Hebrews to which this was
written had been persecuted.
They had found Christ to be the Messiah.
And this enraged their families and their friends
and their rabbis.
They were persecuted.
They were driven out of their homes.
They lost their employment.
They were disinherited.
Everything conceivable happened to them because they had
abandoned Judaism for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it was easy to be discouraged, easy
to give up along the way.
And the writer says to them, you have
not yet resisted unto blood.
Jesus did.
And Jesus is our model.
To resist unto blood for them would mean
martyrdom, wouldn't it?
And he'd been going over some of those
who did suffer martyrdom in the Old Testament.
And he says, you have not yet resisted
unto blood, striving against sin.
And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks
to you as sons.
I want to say concerning this next passage,
I think it's greatly misunderstood.
My son despised not the chastening of the
Lord.
Two words used here are chastening and scourging.
And I want to tell you, that sounds
hard.
That presents a picture of the Lord with
a whip, with a lash, with a rod.
And it seems all he does is chasten
us.
It's a great misunderstanding.
May I suggest to you that when you
come to those words, chasten and scourge in
this passage, don't take them literally.
Substitute the word train or educate, and you'll
really get the thought of the passage.
God is not a vengeful God, spanking his
people all the time.
But he is educating us.
He is training us.
And what he does is done in love.
The word chastening here includes the idea of
teaching, comforting, encouraging, correcting at
times.
But that's not the whole thing.
Correcting is not the whole thing.
Most of it has to do with the
same education that parents give their children.
Please, when something happens in your life, don't
think, what did I do wrong that God
is punishing me?
Just realize that God doesn't do anything but
what you would do yourself if you could
see the end as well as he does.
If you could see the purposes to which
he is working as well as he does,
you would do exactly the same thing in
your life.
Do not despise the training of the Lord,
nor be discouraged when you're rebuked of him
whom the Lord loves.
He trains and educates everyone whom he receives.
Punishing is only part of it.
What had these Hebrews done wrong?
Well, if you look at the passage carefully,
they hadn't done anything wrong.
What was coming to them?
Persecution was all for the namesake of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Where did that come from?
It didn't come from God.
It came from the devil.
How did God do it?
He overruled it for his glory and for
their good.
And I try to remember this when things
go wrong in life, when they seem to
go wrong in life.
You see a good illustration of it in
2 Corinthians chapter 12.
The apostle Paul had a marvelous privilege of,
whether in a dream, a vision, I don't
know how, had a glimpse of heaven.
And he heard things that it was not
lawful for man to utter.
Tremendous temptation to become proud.
None of the other apostles ever had that.
God allowed something to happen to him, a
messenger of Satan to buffet him.
Did God send it?
No, God didn't send it.
Satan sent it, messenger of Satan to buffet
him.
But God overruled it.
And Paul said, most gladly will I rather
glory in my infirmities that the power of
Christ may rest upon me.
It's wonderful, isn't it?
So when something untoward happens in your life,
look at it as God's training.
Lifetime is training time for reigning time.
God has a purpose in your life and
in my life if you're a believer.
That purpose is to produce Christ in you.
We sang about that this morning, didn't we?
We are to be models of Christ down
here in preparation for the future.
Just think of that, we're going to reign
with him.
This world makes a mighty poor home.
But it makes a mighty good school.
It's wonderful to think that everything that comes
into our lives as believers comes in filtered
through the love of God.
They hadn't done anything wrong, I repeat.
They hadn't done anything wrong at all.
They were being persecuted.
God was using it to produce likeness of
Christ in their lives.
He goes on to say, for whom the
Lord loves, he chastens and scourges everyone whom
he receives.
There's that word, scourges.
How do you explain that, MacDonald?
It says scourge, and you know what the
scourge was when they scourged the Lord Jesus.
It was terrible.
Let me just say that the words chasten
and scourge in this portion of scripture are
a figure of speech known as metonymy.
There you go, using big words again.
What is metonymy?
Well, it's where one word is used for
another.
For instance, we say that man's face is
steel.
We don't mean that his face is metallic.
We mean that his face is cold and
hard.
He has a cold and hard appearance.
We understand that.
And we use expressions like that all the
time.
I noticed this week in Proverbs chapter 1
where wisdom cries out to men to listen
to her and they won't listen to her
and they reap the consequences of not listening
to her and she says she will laugh
at their calamity.
Laugh at their calamity?
That sounds vengeful.
That does sound worthy of wisdom who is
incidentally a figure of the Lord Jesus.
Dear friends, it's a figure of speech again.
It's the same figure of speech, metonymy, where
one word is used for another.
There's no laugh really involved.
Laughing at their calamity.
We use similar expressions all the time.
Have you ever heard the expression that man
had the last laugh?
It doesn't mean that he laughed at all.
It's just a figure of speech that means
that maybe by his argument he was able
to say the final word and all contentions
ceased.
I don't know whether the expression is still
used.
Then you laugh at the other side of
your face.
You ever hear that expression?
Laugh on the other side of your face.
It doesn't mean that there's a literal laugh
involved in that.
It means that you'll have to drink your
own medicine.
Nothing more than that.
Just drink your own medicine.
And so I plead with you today when
you read this passage of Scripture and come
to those words chastening and scourging.
Please don't take them literally.
They are metonymy for pain and suffering and
trials that come to a believer in this
life.
Are you with me?
It's all they are.
Words used in a poetic sense to drive
the truth home to us.
Training is a mark of sonship.
God deals with people as sons by training
them.
And we are sons of God if we
have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, we've had human fathers who corrected us.
We paid them respect.
Shall we not much more readily be in
subjection to the Father of Spirit and limb?
Father of Spirit.
Father of all living creatures.
Spoken here on as spirit.
Now no chastening seems to be joyful for
the present but grievous.
Nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of
righteousness to those who have been exercised by
it.
Hmm.
Human parents train us temporarily.
I mean, when you reach eighteen it's pretty
well over.
And they do it the best way they
know how.
But we have a father who trains us
and he does it all in love and
he does it all perfectly.
So that a man like David could go
through deep trials and say at the end
of the trials it's good for me that
I have been afflicted.
And a lot of us have had that
experience too.
We've seen God's hand in it.
We saw him producing results that couldn't be
produced in any other way.
And we think, boy, that's really wonderful that
God cares for me enough to do that.
So let's notice the following things concerning God's
training.
We should lay aside every hindrance.
Allow him to have his way in our
lives.
We should avoid the sin of unbelief.
We should run with endurance.
I never come to that word endurance without
thinking of an experience in my life.
When a group of us were over in
France, I was the oldest one.
I was a man and they were young
kids.
And we were going door to door and
we couldn't speak French.
So before we went, we had to memorize
a single sentence in French.
Jésus Christ a changé ma vie.
Je suis heureux depuis.
Jésus Christ has changed my life and I've
been happy ever since.
And we would go knock on the door
and the woman would come to the door
and we would say, Jésus Christ a changé
ma vie.
Je suis heureux depuis.
And she probably thought we were rowing with
one oar.
But we all developed very sore noses doing
this all day long.
You say, well, sore nose, what from having
so many doors slammed in our face.
And I remember at the end of the
day when it would be easy to think
about beds and comfort, you know.
And we're climbing a hill and the young
fellow who was with me recited that poem.
He said, Does the road lead uphill all
the way?
Yes.
To the very end.
Does the way we tread last the whole
long day?
To the very end, my friend.
And he was looking at the future with
a cheer.
He was enduring with a cheer.
I think that's beautiful.
One of the great lessons in today's passage
is look to Jesus.
Find your comfort.
Find your strength in Him, not in pop
psychology.
He endured the cross.
He despised the shame.
I love that.
For the joy that was set before him.
What joy?
The joy of having his bride in heaven
with him.
The joy of changing us by faith in
him.
Changing us into his likeness and having us
with him for all eternity.
And now he's exalted the right hand of
the throne of God it says.
And we should not become weary or become
discouraged in the pathway ahead.
God's testing is an evidence of his love.
If we've accepted parental training how much more
should we accept his which is perfect.
And incidentally God's training lasts only as long
as it's necessary and useful.
That's why it never ends in this life.
Let me say that again.
God's training lasts only as long as it's
necessary and useful.
That's why it never ends in this life.
But when we see him we shall be
like him and his training will end then.
There are three ways in today's passage that
we can react to his training.
One is we can despise it.
And that's a foolish thing to do.
To despise the training of God.
God who knows what's best.
God who has infinite wisdom.
We should never despise his training.
We can become discouraged and that's easy to
do.
We can become discouraged in his training.
We can profit by it.
Lord Jesus what do you have for me
in this?
Work out your wonderful way in my life.
I tell you it's a wonderful thing to
put myself in the hollow of his hand
and say just do with me as you
like.
Blessed Lord Jesus.
The poet says keep right on to the
end of the road.
Keep right on to the end.
Though the way seems long in your heart's
a song keep right on round the bend.
Though you're tired and weary still journey on
till you reach that happy abode where all
your love and dreaming of will be there
at the end of the road.
We can always find a good poem for
all the circumstances of life I think.
Renew your spiritual vitality.
I think that's good.
I think Moffat in his translation of Romans
12 says maintain the spiritual glow.
Isn't that good?
Maintain the spiritual glow.
How do you do that?
By just going on steadfastly for the Lord
Jesus Christ.
And so it says in verse 12 therefore
strengthen the hands which hang down at the
feeble knees.
This is for people who have suffered maybe
the loss of a loved one.
Going through severe marital problems.
Unfaithful mate.
Some form of addiction.
Drugs, liquor, pornography.
Unemployment or financial problems.
Look unto Jesus the author and finisher of
faith.
Obey the word of God and see him
come to your help.
Make straight paths for your feet so that
what is lame may not be dislocated but
rather be healed.
Walk on with a steady course.
Don't go off on tangents here and there.
Just keep the Lord in view and go
on steadfastly following him.
Pursue peace with all men and holiness without
which no man will see the Lord.
How do you understand that?
Well we're sure of one thing.
We never achieve perfect holiness down here.
Positionally we are, believers are already holy.
Because believers are in Christ they already are
made holy and that makes them fit for
heaven.
But practical holiness is something else and we
we achieve that day by day.
We should be becoming more and more like
the blessed Lord Jesus so that people looking
at us may say that man makes me
think of Jesus.
That happened to a young man in this
assembly years ago Rob Luce guide of very
serious illness.
One day a nurse came to visit him,
a visiting nurse and she said Rob makes
me think of Jesus.
And if you knew him, that was good.
That was good.
Rob makes me think of Jesus.
I tell you, friend, that's living.
When you live in such a way that
people are thinking about the Lord Jesus.
She also added and the interns coming over
here to the house make me think of
the apostles.
I like that.
She had it all down, didn't she?
Looking diligently lest anyone fall short of the
grace of God.
This is a danger and the writer brings
up Esau.
It says he's a profane fellow.
It means that he didn't have any regard
for spiritual things, whatever.
No regard for spiritual things.
And he sought repentance diligently.
Wasn't able to find it.
He's a classic case of an apostate.
And of course this whole book is about
the sin of apostasy and warning about it.
Well, I think the whole subject is dealt
with very beautifully here.
And once again, I just want to say
in closing, don't be afraid of the passage.
Don't be afraid of changing, chastening into training
or scourging into teaching because it is poetic
language.
It's metaphorical language and it refers to the
same type of training that a parent carries
on with a child.
God does it perfectly.
God does it as long as we're here,
down here.
God has a good end in view.
And he does it, as I say, as
long as it's necessary and useful.
So our part is to just open ourselves
to him.
Trust in him.
Life of faith and know that whatever he
allows to come into our lives is filtered
through his love, wisdom and power.
Shall we pray?
Father, we thank you for your word.
Sometimes we come to a passage like this
and it scares us when we think of
your scourging and we think of the scourging
of the Lord Jesus and how terrible it
was.
Help us to understand your word correctly.
I do pray that we might all learn
to live the life of endurance even when
untoward things seem to happen.
I pray especially for the two young men
who are going to be baptized this morning
that they might go on faithfully for the
Lord, that they might realize that baptism is
not the end but that we're called to
live a baptized life, those who have died
with Christ and have been buried with him
and who rise with him to walk in
newness of life.
We commit this following service to you in
a very special way.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.