Run With Endurance The Race

Hebrews 12 and the Call to Run with Endurance

We continue in our study of the book of Hebrews this evening in Hebrews chapter 12. Once again, we pause to ask the Lord's guidance as we seek to handle this tremendous text. Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, we once again come to this text and we ask you to help us to understand what it means to fix our eyes upon Jesus, help us to examine ourselves so we might know what slows us down, what encumbers us, what distracts us, what binds us from running the race with endurance and patience.

We pray for the Spirit's ministry amongst us so we might know about the sin, the sin that so easily entangles us as well. Lord, help us to examine these words and to apply them to our lives, we pray in Christ's name.

As most of you know, I and a couple of the other brothers in the congregation am a very avid cyclist. When I say avid, just a few weeks ago my dear wife, who has to work very, very early in the morning, decided that she wanted to get a bike ride in before work.

Now, being the good husband that I am, I'm not going to allow my dear little wife to go out in the middle of the night and ride by herself, even along the canal. For example, the underpass near our canal recently became a homeless village and I have noticed that at any time that I go through there, folks are up and about doing their thing.

So, we went riding and we left the house at 2 a .m. Now, that is dedication. That is dedication. I'm not leaving tomorrow morning at 2 a .m. I hope to leave by no later than 3 .45 a .m. I get to sleep in tomorrow for just a little, about 60-mile bike ride.

And so, I'm obviously very focused upon my task and the others who do that kind of thing, especially this time of year, have to do a lot of sacrifice to be able to engage in that. And because of that, I do follow all of the races and things like that and it's very exciting to me.

And in the process, certainly one thing you discover, I've got my next major race is in November and I've thought through the course and all the rest of that stuff and I'm thinking about which bike would be best and which rims.

Us cyclists, we're very, very concerned about weight. And cyclists will spend an obscene amount of money to get rid of 100 grams, 200 grams here. I mean, just a few less french fries is really all it would take, but we prefer doing that on the bike, I guess.

And so, the idea of something that encumbers you, something that slows you down, extra weight is a big, big thing for us. And you'll notice, of course, that an amazing amount of money is spent in designing, for example, the clothing that runners will wear.

I mean, you might be wondering if they're wearing almost any clothing at all anymore, but even what they do wear has been computer analyzed to be the lightest it can be and yet support the muscles and yet be aerodynamic.

Oh, the advances in technology in that area are truly, truly amazing. We know that when the difference between first and second might be literally in hundreds of a second, that it's the person that has gotten rid of all the extra weight that is the person who is probably going to be victorious.

Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus and the Witnesses Who Went Before Us

Well, in light of that, we certainly see the application in the text we began looking at this morning. This evening, we'll be especially looking at that running of the race. But let's look again at the first two verses of Hebrews chapter 12.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

This morning, we covered the discussion of what it means to have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us. And to just remind you, we considered the idea there are those who believe this means that the primary function of these witnesses, they're looking at us.

We saw that that would involve a rather major shift in the meaning of the term, and the reality is that these are those faithful people who have gone before us, and what they've witnessed has been God's faithfulness and their acceptance of his promises.

And so we looked at that, and then we sort of had to, for at least a moment, sort of skip on down to the fact that what we're to be doing is fixing our eyes on Jesus. And I didn't mention the fact that that idea of fixing our eyes, it's not the normal term for just looking.

I mean, that's a part of the word, but it is to look up to. It is to gaze upon. It is to fix one's eyes upon. It is an intensive form of the word that would indicate that it's not just a quick glance.

It's not just the kind of look that you would have looking around the room or something like that, but it is an elevation, it is a focus, it is a fixing of one's eyes upon Jesus. And we did emphasize the fact that that is centrally important to our understanding of the Christian life, the Christian faith, and that really to fix most of our problems involves our fixing our eyes upon Jesus.

And so we're going to have a description of who Jesus is and everything else that comes after that. Like I said, this text, we may have done 21 verses last week. We're not doing anywhere near that today.

We will only really cover one and a quarter, I guess, really, if we're blessed here. But we looked at fixing our eyes upon Jesus, and now we look back at the beginning of the exhortation, Let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

The Race Set Before Us by God's Providence

So many things here. I'm not going to rush it. If it takes more time to cover it, we'll do it next time. But let's consider what is said here. We have a race that has been set before us. I mentioned this morning that that included the laying out of the course.

And I do want to emphasize in that phraseology that we do not get to determine the course of our race. We don't get to determine that. God determines that. It's not let us run the race that we decide to run.

There are many Christians who wish that it were other than that. And unfortunately, many of us, every one of us in this room at some point in time, has run afoul of what this text is really saying, because in our more honest moments, hasn't there been times where you have looked at someone else's life?

You've looked at another believer in Jesus Christ, and you've compared your trials and difficulties, your life as it has been given to you, your economic standing, your health, your home, your job, whatever it might be.

And you've looked at someone else, maybe even someone else within this fellowship, and you've gone, why don't they have it as hard as I do? And what you're really asking is, why has God placed me on this course?

And their course, from my perspective anyways, seems to be much easier. Mine seems to be much hillier than theirs. I seem to have to run through some swamps and bogs, and they seem to be up on a nice paved path all the time.

It seems like they're always running downhill, and I'm always running uphill. Now, obviously, there's a problem in our attitude when we think that way. Because it is God who sets our course, and He does so in such a way that in His infinite wisdom, the course that we are called to run is the very course that will, first of all, glorify Him the most, by, secondly, giving you the opportunity of enjoying Him the most by being conformed most closely to the image of Christ.

Now, that requires you to have faith in God's wisdom. It requires you to have faith in God's providence. That God, in His wisdom and providence, knows exactly what you need to conform you to the image of Christ, and therefore you have no basis at all in looking at somebody else and going, ah, it doesn't seem that God's putting them through as much.

Well, maybe you need more. Or maybe you really can't see everything that they're going through, either. But the reality is, God knows exactly what you need. And He knows exactly what course to lay out for you.

Now, all of us would like to have a downhill course. Wouldn't that be easy? Wouldn't that be nice? I mean, Kelly and I got up yesterday morning and went down to South Mountain. And coming down South Mountain, that's not half bad.

I think most folks in here would not mind riding a bike down South Mountain. You don't even have to pedal. You know, it's just wee! Now, some of you might not, because there's some nice hairpin turns there.

They'll make the turn. It's a long way down to the first boulder. But as far as difficulty goes, that's pretty easy coming down. There's only one little problem. To come down, what do you have to do first?

You've got to go up. And you know, I do my best. I get the best results when I climb, climb, climb. Just climb. You've got to do it. Anybody knows you've got to do the hard things. I try to build them into my life.

You've got to go through those difficult times. Well, God knows, huh? And we may want to have the course that's just always going downhill. It's nice and easy, just riding along. It doesn't work that way.

It doesn't work that way. God knows exactly what we need. And He has set that course before us. And are we thankful for that? We should be. We should be. It's a great source of contentment, happiness, joy, to be thankful that God has placed us where we are.

People who generally do not have peace in the Christian life are people who really are questioning God's wisdom and God's goodness in placing us upon the course that we are running. But when we recognize that He has done so, and He has done so out of His great wisdom, that's a good thing.

Laying Aside Sin and Encumbrances

Now, to run this race, we are to lay aside every weight or encumbrance. Now, one of the key exegetical questions that scholars discuss at this point is the relationship between the phrase, every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.

There are some who have said, well, the relationship is such that you should understand it. Let us lay aside every encumbrance. That is the sin which so easily entangles us. And there are some who have argued that point.

I do not take that perspective. I think there are two things involved here. It's fairly easy to see why we need to lay aside the sin which so easily entangles us. The running of this race is a race which requires godliness.

It requires the Spirit's activity in our hearts and minds. And therefore, every sin is a stumbling. It is a departure from the path. It is in some way, shape, or form, something that is going to slow us, inhibit us, even make us to go backwards upon the course.

And that sin is described as, in some translations, easily entangling us. There are some sources that would actually see the word more having to do with that which so tightly clings to us, which is difficult to remove.

In either case, you can understand what the description is. And that is, you know, if you've ever, there are certain dresses I imagine you ladies would not want to attempt to run in. And sometimes you see ladies like if a rainstorm comes along and they're wearing some of these dresses that just do not allow for much in the way of freedom of movement.

Sort of stumbling and bumbling along trying to get out of the rain because you just can't move very well in this very restrictive garment. And so we know what it is to wear certain kinds of clothes. Most of our Sunday best is not what we want to go out and play basketball in or run a race in.

It's not designed for that. And so the idea of sin, and it's easily entangling us and causing us to trip and to fall, we can see exactly how that works. It's very easy for us to understand. But I think that's different from laying aside every encumbrance.

What do I mean by what would be an encumbrance then? Well, I think there are things in this world that in and of themselves are not sinful, in and of themselves are not morally wrong. A general view of life would be morally neutral.

It wouldn't be right or wrong to possess these things or engage in these activities or whatever else it might be. But the idea is of an encumbrance, something that slows us down in the race. And hence, my suggestion would be that this would refer to those things in life that especially the world recommends to us that can be very enjoyable, that can be very pleasing to us, that we can even enjoy together as individuals.

And yet, because of the race that we have been called to run, because of the nature of that course, they become an encumbrance to us. Maybe at the beginning, they weren't much of an encumbrance. But the farther we carried this weight, the heavier it became.

Now only you can make applications to your life at that point. I mean, I could make lots of suggestions there. And again, since we're talking about a race, I just default back to my own constant experience.

And I think of how many things that I've thought of carrying with me that would be nice to have on a nice long ride. And when you first pick it up, oh, that's light. After 60 miles, it's not so light anymore.

It's amazing how heavy it can become. When you start thinking about all the energy you've expended to carry that light item for a long ways. And you see, I think the wisdom that maybe is being communicated to us here is we have a tendency as believers to become entangled and encumbered with a lot of things.

That taken individually, no big deal. But you multiply them. And then you think about what it's going to take to maintain them and to utilize them and to keep them for week after week and month after month and year after year.

And we wonder why we get to the end of our day and it's been just completely taken up. And we don't have time for, well, almost any contemplation of God or His purposes or anything else. And so I think that the Christian who is asking, I want to run this race in such a way that I honor and glorify God.

I want to run this race with endurance. How do I do that? What's the mechanism? We should be examining our lives and saying, how much extra stuff am I carrying along with me? How much extra stuff? And you say, well, but it would take real discipline to get rid of a lot of that stuff.

Yeah, I know. Some of you remember not very long ago when I stood behind this pulpit, I took up a little more room behind this pulpit. And dropping that weight wasn't easy and I'm back at it again. I'm back at it again because I want to drop more.

And it's not necessarily fun. And it's an everyday thing. And it's a discipline thing. And sometimes you have to, you know, there's some goodies that's far into that room over there. And some of them I really like.

I love chocolate. Oh, I love chocolate. Anybody bring anything? Please don't tell me. Don't even tell me. I don't want to know. No, I'm not a cheesecake guy, so I'm good. I'm all right there. But it's just, you have to have discipline.

And I've discovered in my own life, maybe you've discovered this in yours, it's completely a matter of how much do I want that to accomplish that goal versus how much do I want that, that tasty bit of chocolate.

And I have to weigh the two. But the Christian, if we're fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, and we want to walk in his footsteps, then there really shouldn't be a whole lot of issue there.

But it does require the thoughtful application of thought on our part to examine our lives and go, what's an encumbrance? What keeps me from being able to do what I need to do to be the servant of God that he's calling me to be?

That really is the question. And just as the faithful men of old laid aside those things that kept them from serving, we think of Abraham and Isaac, the offering of Isaac. What Abraham laid aside in that act of obedience, we should be asking ourselves the question, what do we need to lay aside?

And so laying those things aside, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Only one other thing to look at there. Let us run with endurance. Endurance. Now, notice something, because it's very purposeful on the part of the author.

Look down at verse 2. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who of the joy before him endured the cross. Same term. Same term. Well, okay, same family of terms. Same roots. And so just as Jesus endured, we are called to run the race with endurance.

In other words, for most of us, this isn't a sprint. This isn't a sprint. It's a lifelong race. It's one of those long endurance events. And believe me, there's a difference. There's a lot of folks that can get into pretty good shape and do sprints.

Get real strong and they can go real fast. And there are certain cyclists that are called sprinters. You've got sprinters and you've got climbers. And there are certain stages where the sprinters get, you know, it's that all out 44 mile per hour whoosh right there at the end.

And the best sprinter in the world right now is a guy named Mark Cavendish. And he can just make a bicycle go outrageously fast for about 250 yards. But if he goes just a little bit earlier than that, gas is out.

Because it's just that short burst of energy. But when those guys try to climb the mountains, those little teeny little climber guys, they are on the back of the bus. You know, they're coming in enjoying themselves about 25 minutes after everybody else is done.

Because they just can't do it. That's not what they're designed for. You know, Christian life seems to me to be a long, long endurance event. No vacations. No real rest stops. Certainly the spirit gives us those times of refreshment, obviously.

But it's not something you take time off of. And we are called to run with endurance. Now, a person who does something like that, a person who engages in an endurance event, probably shouldn't be a whiner.

Probably shouldn't be a whiner. I mean, you knew it was coming. You knew what you were signing up for. And that's what I don't like about the prosperity message and all that kind of stuff, where you try to get into Christianity with the idea that everything is going to be a bed of roses.

And then you find out that this is actually what it's all about. You know, a few weeks ago, I did the toughest thing I've ever done. 240 miles in two days. 21 ,000 feet of climbing. And I never stopped along the side of the road and got a bystander and said, I'm so tired.

I just... Do you feel sorry for me? Because I don't think anyone would have said anything about feeling sorry for me. They would have looked at me and said, well, you signed up for this, didn't you? You knew what this was going to involve, right?

Many, many hours of pain and agony. You signed up for it, so what are you complaining about? And yet, how often are we guilty of just that? I mean, really, if we are to run with endurance, the race that is set before us, it makes a huge difference to me.

What my mindset is when I get up in the morning before I go out. Huge difference. If I've got my mind, I'm going to do 70 miles. Great. If I've got my mind, I'm going to do 20 miles, and all of a sudden, because of whatever, road closure, something, I don't know, all of a sudden I've got to do 40.

Wow. That last 20 can be really difficult because I wasn't mentally prepared to do it. It's something beyond what I was expecting to do. Well, if we will just think about what we are being called to do and to be prepared and to pray for endurance, patience, being in it for the long haul, it makes a huge, huge difference.

I think there are a lot of churches that are based upon, on Sunday morning, Sunday night, maybe Wednesday night if they even have a Sunday night service anymore. We're becoming somewhat of a dinosaur doing that.

But get everybody revved up emotionally. Get all the singing and the dancing and everything else just to try to get them enough momentum to get through the midweek. To then rev them back up again to try to get enough momentum to get them through Sunday.

That's not endurance. That's the sprint thing and hoping that momentum will just keep you going and you don't fall over before you get to the next rev up thing. When you're doing an endurance event, you're not going top speed all the time.

You have to know what you can do and you have to have your eyes on the goal and judge your effort properly. In the same way, we are called to run with endurance, with patience, the race that is set before us.

Endurance, Perseverance, and the Gift of Faith

Now, these are people who are already experiencing resistance. But as Paul is going to say, you haven't yet resisted the point of shedding blood. Sorry, did I say Paul? Oh. The writer to the Hebrews, might have been Paul.

We've talked about that before. But the writer to the Hebrews says to them, you haven't yet shed blood, but they will. What kind of endurance does it require of our brothers and sisters this evening who are in prison?

Our brothers and sisters who, some have been kidnapped, are being held for ransom. Some are in prison. Some have lost loved ones. That's endurance. And the only kind of faith I know of that endures is a supernatural faith.

A faith that is born in the heart by the Spirit of God. As I've said many times, we should never be afraid of Jesus' words. He who endures to the end shall be saved. I don't make myself endure. That's the difference between the Arminian and Calvinist views of faith.

We believe faith is a gift of God. It's the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of man. It's the result of regeneration. Others view it as something anyone can work up. But if you can work it up, then you can lose it too.

The reason that faith endures is because it is a supernatural work of the Spirit of God in the heart of man. And so, we are called to run with endurance the race that is set before us. And so, once again, this text demands of every one of us, no matter how young, how old, whatever your calling in life, it requires you to ask yourself the question, in the race that I will run this week, how well do I want to do?

What's my goal? Am I just hoping to make it to the finish line sometime? Do I want to run well? What can I do? How can I make application? How can I look at my life and ask, Lord, what is an encumbrance in my life?

What's an extra weight that I'm carrying that I don't need to carry in this race? What things do I love and like that in of themselves are not wrong, but because they're slowing me down, I don't want to love them or like them anymore?

What about the sin that so easily entangles me? The sin that keeps me from running at all, from making almost any progress at all? What is it? What can I do about it? And I'm in need of endurance, Lord.

Every one of us in this room, I think, can pray that prayer. Lord, I'm in need of endurance. I so often become tired. I so often lose the desire to continue in the fight, to continue in the race, continue in the war, all the different illustrations that are used in Scripture.

I need endurance. It needs to be our prayer. It needs to be our application. Because if we're true followers of Christ, we have fixed our eyes upon him. We want to be with him where he is. Anything that gets in our way should be something that we will fight with all of our souls to overcome.

That is our calling. That is our gift. It is a high calling. This text really speaks to us exactly where we are. May God cause us to truly think about what his word says. Let's pray together. Indeed, our Heavenly Father, as we prepare to run this race once again, Lord, by your Spirit deal with each one of our hearts.

Identify for us what is an encumbrance, what is a weight we do not need. Show us the thin which slows us and entangles us and clings to us and make it truly the deepest desire of our hearts that we would endure, that we would have endurance, long-suffering patience, the ability to continue on in the race, all to your honor and glory.

We thank you for these ancient words that yet live and call us to faithfulness in you. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.