Running the Race to the Finish (Hebrews 12:1-2)

The Call to Endurance in Hebrews 12

Typically in the book of Genesis. That's a series that we've been in for quite some time. But we are taking a somewhat unplanned break from the book of Genesis this morning. And so if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, take it and turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews chapter 11. We're going to study Hebrews chapter 12 verses 1 through 2, but I want to read it in this context. So we're going to start in chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11 and beginning in verse 32.

Hebrews chapter 11 verse 32. I'm going to read it in its context. And so we'll start in chapter 11 verse 32 and read down to chapter 12 verse 3. Hebrews chapter 11 from verse 32. If you've got one of the Bibles, we give away page 1068, page 1068.

Hebrews chapter 11 beginning in verse 32. If one more time, I can invite you to stand with me. We like to stand for this reading in our services. In this moment, God is speaking to us by his very word.

And so we want to honor that even with the posture of our bodies. So Hebrews chapter 11 beginning in verse 32. Brothers and sisters, these are God's words. And what more can I say? Time is too short for me to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets who by faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the raging of fire, escaped to the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle, and put foreign armies to flight.

Women received their dead raised to life again. Other people were tortured, not accepting release so that they might gain a better resurrection. Others experienced mockings and scourgings as well as bonds and imprisonment.

They were stoned. They were sawed in two. They died by the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins, in gopeskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.

All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised. Since God had provided something better for us, so they would not be made perfect without us. Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us.

Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

But consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won't grow weary in giving and give up, excuse me. Pray that God will bless that reading of his word and give us understanding.

Let's pray, ask for the Spirit's help, and we will launch into God's word this morning. Let's pray together. Oh God, our help, we ask that as we open up your word and you speak to us from its pages, pray that you would give us open and receptive hearts.

Pray that you would allow your Holy Spirit to be at work in us, opening our eyes that we would see wonderful things out of your law. Pray that the heart, the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened so that we would know the hope of the calling to which you've called us.

Father, I pray that as we think about the race of the Christian life that you have set before us, Father, I pray that you would help us in that race through what we will hear from your word this morning.

Father, as we pray for our time together now, we also pray for our friends at First Baptist Church in Phoenix. Thank you for Pastor Brett and his co-elders there, Paul and Dustin. Pray for them as they prepare for their Christmas service next week.

All that goes with that, pray that they would know your blessing, pray that they would know your help. Pray for their witness there in Phoenix as they seek to honor you through the ministry of your word and through fellowship together.

We pray your blessing on them and pray for your blessing on us now. We ask these things in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Please be seated. I've titled the message that's before us this morning, Running the Race to the Finish.

Running the Race to the Finish. I don't know if you find marathons fascinating. I find them deeply fascinating. I'm from London originally. We most well-known marathons in the world, the London Marathon.

If you don't know where the marathon comes from, it comes from a story. We don't entirely know if it's true or not, but legend has it the marathon gets its name from a battle that took place called the Battle of Marathon.

And during this battle that waged for quite some time, it was the Persians versus the Greeks. The Greeks led by Alexander the Great won a massive victory in that battle. And so following the defeat of the Persians, a messenger boy, history tells us his name was Pheidippides.

The story goes, like I said, there's some debate as to whether it was quite this long. But the story goes that this messenger boy, having seen the victory and now wanting to announce it, ran a staggering 25 .4 miles from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens.

The more wild version of the story says he did it in one burst. Again, there's some debate about that. But the Marathon to Athens to declare, in what was in Greek, just one word, ne neke kaman, we have won.

And then the story says that he collapsed and died, who said that running is necessarily good for you. But be that as it may, that story kind of inspired the modern marathon. In 1896, when the Olympic Games first started, that actual route from Marathon to Athens was the first modern marathon.

Today, marathons are held around the world. I believe here in the US, one of the bigger ones is the Boston Marathon. 1924, at the Olympics, they expanded it from 25 .4 to the number that we all know now.

If you know anything about marathons, 26 .2. And the marathon has become, in the world of sports, the one of, if not the ultimate showcase of endurance and discipline. It's often been said that if you can run a marathon, there isn't a whole lot you cannot put your mind to.

Now, running may not be your favourite thing in the world, and I wouldn't really blame you. But whether you recognise it or not, Christian, you are in a race. Do you realise that reality? Do you realise that you are in a race, that you are in something of a marathon?

And if you recognise that, are you prepared to run that race? In fact, are you prepared to run it well? Because you can run races badly, and you can run races well. Most importantly, are you running in the kind of way that prepares you to win?

I don't know if you think much about that often, but if not, consider this an opportunity for us this morning to actually think about that. If you haven't thought much about the fact that you are in a race, and that how you run this race matters, this message may be the one for you.

Why Hebrews Was Written to Encourage Christians to Keep Going

Since we're kind of parachuting into Hebrews chapter 12, a little bit of background might be helpful here. Hebrews is one of those books that we actually don't know a whole lot about. So who wrote it?

Nobody really knows. Some older versions of the Bible have the title, the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, but we don't really know that for certain. That's a guess. Some say it was Apollos. Some say it was Luke.

I suppose if you woke me up at three in the morning and asked after I told you not to wake me up at three in the morning, I might say I think it was Luke. But honestly, we don't know. Where was he writing from?

No idea. There's a mention of Italy in chapter 13, but again, we don't really know. It could be he's writing to people. He's writing from Italy, or he's writing to people that we just don't know. We do know who he was writing to.

We do know that he's writing to Hebrew Christians. We get that much from just reading the letter. But where are these Hebrew Christians? No idea. Some people say it might be Jerusalem. Some say it's Rome.

Again, no idea. It's almost as though when you come to the Book of Hebrews, it strips away anything that might draw attention to people. Which actually, if you've read the Letter to the Hebrews, and I encourage every Christian to read it, if you've read the Letter to the Hebrews, that makes sense because this whole letter is written to remind Christians that Jesus is better.

And since Jesus is better, what better way to even demonstrate that by not making it about you, the author, or the people who are being written to. As you come to the Letter to the Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews draws on the Old Testament to show his audience that the Old Covenant, with its prophetic line, with all of its heroes, with its priesthood, with its sacrifices, that the Old Covenant, as good as it was, it has nothing on what has come to light in the coming of Christ and in the dawn of the New Covenant.

And as you read the letter, it becomes really obvious that the audience that he's writing to are being tempted to, as it were, to look back, to glance back to what they had left behind in Judaism. Like I said, these are Hebrew Christians, so at one point they were practicing Judaism, they heard the Gospel, they came to believe in Jesus, and they left Judaism behind.

But that now had created some problems. There seems to be external pressure from the outside to go back to Judaism, and you also get the sense that internally there is some struggle, as they are still seeing the temple, and they're still seeing the sacrifices, and all of these things, and thinking maybe, maybe we can have both of them.

The tone of the Letter to the Hebrews can be described as a coach on the sidelines who is marshalling every ounce of strength to tell runners who are tempted to drop out of the race, to press on, to not look back, to keep one foot ahead of another in the pursuit of Jesus, because Jesus is better.

And scattered throughout the letter are passages of encouragement, passages that seek to propel the audience, and we become part of that audience as we read these passages, to encourage them to keep on pursuing Jesus, because Jesus is better.

And like I said, though I didn't plan to be here this week in Hebrews chapter 12, I do think it's a little appropriate given that we are coming towards the end of the year. Consider this something of a spiritual pit stop this morning.

Any Formula One fans in the room? You should watch Formula One, it's fun. In Formula One you have these things, they call them pit stops. The idea is in a race a driver can elect to take a few moments, get his car worked on, they do these very, very quickly, get your tires sorted, get everything realigned, they try and get this done as quickly as possible so you can get back on and race.

Consider this one of those pit stops this morning, because in our passage the writer to the Hebrews is going to encourage us, and please bear that word in mind, he's here to encourage us. This is not him brow-beating, this is him being an encouragement.

The writer to the Hebrews is going to encourage us to run the race of the Christian life and to run it in the kind of way that gets us to the finish. Well, what do you need to know to run the race in that kind of way?

How can you run the race that is set before you with purpose and with conviction? That kind of leads to my big idea for this message, you know every message I try to have a big idea that summarizes what we're going to learn, well here's my big idea for this morning.

Beloved, the race of faith is won by deliberately focusing on Jesus while keeping a close watch on ourselves. The race of faith is won by deliberately focusing on Jesus while keeping a close watch on ourselves.

Now you may think, wait a minute, that sounds kind of contradictory. Okay, I'm supposed to focus on Jesus by watching myself? Actually, I think in the two verses we're going to look at, we're going to see that those two things, if we do them rightly, don't contradict each other, but that actually you can't do the latter, you can't keep a close watch on yourself without focusing on Jesus.

So once again, my big idea for this message, the race of faith is won by deliberately focusing on Jesus while keeping a close watch on ourselves. Well, for the rest of our time this morning, I want to consider four directions that you need to follow if you're going to run the race of faith well.

Four directions that you need to follow if you're going to run the race of faith well, they all come to us from verses one and two. First direction that you need to follow is this, if you're going to run the race of faith well, you need to look around at those who ran the race before you.

You need to look around at those who ran the race before you. So again, can I invite you to look back at that passage, Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 1, the author says, therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let's stop there for a moment, if you're going to run this race of faith well, you need to look around at those who ran before you.

For us to get the most out of these simple words, there are two questions that we really need to ask it. If you're taking notes, I'm going to write these two questions down. So he mentions here that we have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, and he makes that the basis when he says, therefore, in light of this reality, this is why you should do what I'm about to tell you.

Well, that raises two questions. Number one, who are these witnesses? When he says that we have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, the question becomes, well, who exactly are they? So who are these witnesses?

And question number two, not only who are these witnesses, but how are they witnessing? How are they witnessing? So question number one, who are these witnesses? Question number two, how are they witnessing?

Now, some people have taken this to mean that there are, you know, as it were, the saints who have gone on before us, they're in heaven. You hear people use this language all the time, especially at funerals, this idea of, well, they're looking down on us from heaven.

You know, your great-aunt Bessie who died and went to go be with Jesus is, you know, up there in heaven, and she's looking down on you, and, you know, all these other saints who've gone on to glory, they're looking down, and you don't want to disappoint them.

You know, almost as though up in heaven, you know, there are these really nice curved QLED screens, and all these people are basically watching us from glory, excited when we get it right, and holding their hands in their heads, and yelling at the screen when we get it wrong, like they're watching an NFL game.

Is that what the author is getting at here as we look at these verses? I hope you can gather from the way I'm speaking, probably not. For one thing, that makes it very clear that those who pass on into glory don't know what's happening here.

And also, why would they want to know what's happening here? They're in glory. So, I don't think that's the meaning that we get here. I think the key to answering the question of who are these witnesses comes to us in the first two words of verse one.

So, look again at the text, chapter 12, verse one. Therefore, since we have, we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us. When you see that word, therefore, allow me to give you a basic Bible study tip.

When you see the word, therefore, in your Bible, ask yourself what it is there for. So, let's ask the question, why does it say therefore here? That's why, and I heard the confusion in the audience, this happens every time I teach this passage.

There was a, wait, you said we're looking at chapter 12. Why do we start in chapter 11? Because you can't understand chapter 12 without understanding chapter 11. So, what happened in chapter 11? Well, chapter 11, if you're familiar with the Bible, some people call it the hall of faith chapter.

It's this litany of people and the ways in which their simple and at times imperfect faith manifested itself as God's people. In fact, here's the total listing in that chapter. You have Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and then a little section at the end that's where we read.

It's called the honorable mentions, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. I put it to you and look at this with me and see if it makes sense. That the witnesses that the author is talking about in chapter 12 are the very people he's just told them and told us about.

I put it to you that the witnesses here are not people in heaven. Well, they are in heaven in a sense, but when he talks about this, such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, he's talking about the people he's just reminded us of.

All of these great characters from the Old Testament are witnesses to us. Well, that leads to our second question. Remember I said two questions you have to ask? Who are these witnesses and how are they witnessing?

Easy way to answer that question. Beloved, they are not witnessing us. They're not looking at us. They are witnessing to us. Do you catch the difference there? That the focus here is not that they are looking at us as much as they are, maybe if I swap the word, it might help.

They're not witnessing to us. They are testifying to us. You see, I put it to you that the author to the Hebrews wants his listeners, which include you and I this morning, to be reminded of the fact that those who went before us testify to us, catch this, that it is possible to finish the race.

Again, we don't have time, but I encourage you in your own time this week, take some time and just glance over chapter 11. And you'll notice that the phrase that is repeated over and over and over again, by faith Abel did this, by faith Enoch did this, by faith Noah did this, and on and on it goes.

What is he getting at by, as it were, summoning these witnesses? What he's getting at is very simple. He points to them and he says, brothers and sisters, do you see what faith in God can propel us to be and to do?

I mean, it's very clear when you read this list of names, not all of these people were perfect. And that's exactly the point. Notice that he doesn't say that so-and-so did this and he was wonderful and amazing, or so-and-so did this and he was wonderful and amazing.

No, he prefaces it every time by saying by faith. It's almost as though the author wants you to make the connection. If I put it in the form of a question, how did all of these people in previous ages make it to the end?

And by implication, how will you, my brothers and sisters, those who read these words, how will you make it to the end? If you want an idea, look at how they did it. They witnessed by testifying to us that this race can be run, yes, imperfectly, yes, with fits and starts.

As I said, we're actually in the book of Genesis in our week-to-week messages here. Have you all seen just how many fits and starts have taken place? We're not even that far in the story of Isaac and Jacob, and yet they make it to the end.

And the implication of the letter to the Hebrews is they made it, and by God's grace, so can you. And this point isn't limited to the Hebrews. The Bible makes this point over and over again. So Romans chapter 15 and verse 4, the Bible says, for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

Paul will say it again in 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 10 -11, now these things happen to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. These examples that you read in the Old Testament, yes, they have their moments of failure, weakness, but they also have moments of great triumph and great spiritual experience.

All of these things are designed in the goodness of God to testify to us that simple, flawed, fallible human beings are more than capable of walking with God. Here's an idea, I don't know if you have moments like this, sometimes I do, where you get discouraged in your walk.

Can I give you a piece of advice? This might prove helpful to you, it's helped me every now and again. The next time that you get discouraged in your walk, can I encourage you to pick up the Old Testament and read through the life of one of God's people?

I'm doing that at the moment, as you know, as I said, I'm preaching through the life of Isaac and Jacob, and week by week as I'm reading their story. Yes, I have my moments where I am somewhat horrified at times, but I'm also encouraged.

I'm encouraged that God was patient with them, and since He was patient with them, and God doesn't change, that means He's patient with me. And that when, even when they didn't deserve it, God opened doors and made ways and was a blessing to them.

If that's the case, then He will do that for me too. And what ends up happening, these characters in the Bible inspire me, not by their perfection, but by their recognition of, and their reliance on, and their trust in God.

And the authors of the Hebrews, look back at our text with me, know how he describes it. It says, since we have such a large cloud of witnesses, that word picture carries this idea of the, there are so many of them, like you can't even count them all.

In fact, did you catch it in 1132 where we read? He says, and what more can I say? He says, time is too short. I'm of the view that the lesson to the Hebrews was actually a sermon that was written down.

And as he gets to this point in the sermon, he goes, I'd love to say more, but I don't have time. I know that pain all too well. He has to cut it short because there's so many people he could line up and say, guys, you are not the first to struggle.

You are not the first to find difficulty and find challenge. You're not the first ones to have gone through a hard patch, but the wonderful thing is by faith in God, you can make it. There's so many, he had to cut it short.

And so he begins by encouraging his readers. Don't just hear these stories and think that was great for them. No, you need to look around at those who ran the race before you. If I can, can also make a plug for reading the stories of great Christians in previous ages.

This is one of the reasons I encourage every Christian at least once a year, read a Christian biography. Read the story of somebody's walk with God for the year that's coming. I want to read the story again.

I read it a few years ago of John G Patton. John G Patton was a missionary to the new Hebrides from Scotland. Man suffered greatly, gave up a lot to go serve the Lord in this culture. Oh, by the way, they were cannibalistic, literally taking his life in his hands.

That's just one example. There are countless of them down through the ages. I encourage you once a year to say, you know, I'm going to read the story of some great Christian and see what God did in and through them and hopefully find some encouragement.

So how do you run the race of faith? Run the race of faith by looking around those who ran the race before you. But not only do you need to look around, the second direction you need to look in is you need to look at yourself and see what might stop you.

Laying Aside Every Hindrance and Sin

You need to look at yourself and see what might stop you. So again, come back with me to our text Hebrews 12 .1. Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us.

Not only do you need to look around and see all those who ran before you, you also need to look at yourself and see what might stop you. In 2012, my home city, the city of London, hosted the Olympics, kind of a high point of London life.

And I'll never forget, I love cycling. You might not know that about me. I'm a big fan of cycling. I used to love outdoor cycling and then a certain man called Lance Armstrong happened. But I also love indoor cycling and I still watch that.

And in 2012, arguably my favorite indoor cyclist, ran his final race. He was getting ready to retire. His name was Sir Chris Hoy, Scotsman. That was his nickname, the Flying Scotsman, because boy was he fast.

And knowing that this was going to be his final race, they kind of put together a little VT package that they played before the race. And it showed his training regimen. So you can just picture me, I'm 21 at this point.

Yeah, 21. I'm sitting on my sofa in the house I grew up in, in London. And I'm watching this five, six minute piece on what his training regimen looked like. And by the time they got done, even I felt tired and I hadn't done a single thing.

Because what they showed was how he prepares for his races. You ever seen indoor cycling? It happens in a flash. It's very, very quick. And they showed him doing, forget the number now, it was somewhere between 10 and 15 miles on an exercise bike in his personal gym.

10 to 15 miles with no break. Like pedaling with all of his life. Veins bulging in places you didn't even think was possible. Like just completely in the zone. He gets done and he can't even walk. They have to put a gym mat next to him because he just collapses off the bike straight onto this gym mat.

He actually threw up in the video. Pushing his body to what clearly looked like breaking point. And then they showed the race. And it was fascinating because again, this is his last race. You think he might want to take it easy?

Absolutely not. He crushed his opposition. Wasn't even close. And I gained, I already had a lot of respect for Sir Chris Hoye, but I gained a ton more in that moment because I came to realize that his preparation to run for a few seconds, or in this case the cycle, for a few seconds was as rigorous, if not more than actually running.

Or cycling as the case may be. And that reality I put it to you is true spiritually, just as it is physically. That being able to run faithfully doesn't just happen. It's not just, well, you know, I'm going to try harder and do better and kind of pull myself up by my bootstraps.

And that's how I'll be able to run. That's not how this works. It requires some preparation on our part. Paul said it best to Timothy. If you're taking notes, 1 Timothy 4 .7, told Timothy have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths, rather train yourself.

Some of your Bibles will say discipline yourself. It was the word, it's actually the word we get gymnasium from. Train yourself, discipline yourself in godliness. If you're going to run the race, well, you need to look at yourself and see what might stop you.

Now I need to pause for a moment because there is a right way to look at yourself and a wrong way to look at yourself. The wrong way to look at yourself is in a sort of, some writers have called this morbid introspection.

In other words, that you're kind of looking at yourself and thinking, man, I need to try harder. I need to do this better. I need to do this better. And it's constantly turned in on you. That's, I would argue that's the wrong way.

Why? Because it's making it all about your ability to run. The right way, I would argue, yes, we are looking at ourselves and we are thinking, okay, what could I do better? But we're doing so through the lens of careful self-discipline that is empowered by the spirit of God, not empowered by trying harder and doing better within ourselves.

And to help us out, the writers of the Hebrews gives us two things that we need to consider. I'm told by those who are more athletic than me, that when you're thinking about performance, you have to think about external factors and internal factors, things within and things that might be outside of your control, but you still need to think about.

And so the author gives us both something, actually both of these are internal in a sense, but he gives us two things for us to think about as we think about running this race well. To understand this, you need to understand the context of races in the first century when this is being written.

Prior to the Olympic Games, the big games were what were known as the Isthmian Games. In their day, they rivaled the Olympic Games quite significantly. And when athletes wanted to run well, they wanted to run in the kind of way that they lost as much weight as possible without hurting their performance, and they often wanted to wear clothing that was light and allowed them freedom of movement.

In fact, you know what some runners did in the ancient world to give them an advantage? Anybody know? They ran naked, excess weight, chafing clothing. They recognized all of that could be the difference between victory or defeat.

And I put it to you that the author of the Hebrews kind of picks up that language. And so look at verse one again. Therefore, since we have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, note the two things he says.

Let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Two different things. First of all, he says, lay aside every hindrance. Some of your Bibles might say, lay aside every weight. In other words, lay aside the things which slow down your spiritual progress.

This term for lay aside was used for those athletes who would actually disrobe and run naked because they didn't want to be weighed down by the clothing that they had. Here's what's interesting about that.

Follow logic with me here for a second. Are clothes in and of themselves a bad thing? All of you are dressed here today, I am very thankful for that reality. Clothing is a good thing, but in the context of a race, some clothing might be less practical and less helpful to running the race.

I told you I'm from London, and one of the things they do in the London Marathon, I wish they wouldn't. It just, I don't understand it. So the race is, again, it's a marathon, so professional runners from around the world come.

But then you have folks who run the marathon. Something about doing it for a good reason. They're running for charity and stuff like that. That's fine. They're not professional runners and we all know it.

But then you have some who decide to wear these awful costumes to run in. I mean, literally, it takes them like two, three days to run the marathon. And you're just like, you know, I get why you want to run the London Marathon.

I don't think that's the most practical thing to wear. It makes you wonder like, why are you even bothering? Is a costume wrong in and of itself? No, at a party or something, that's a great thing. It just doesn't work in this context.

Okay, Kofi, where are you going with this? It's very simple. Can I put it to you that a weight is not necessarily, and in fact, I go so far to say it's almost never something that is inherently a bad thing.

As John McArthur put it in his commentary on this section, quote, often it is something perfectly innocent and harmless, but it weighs down, it weighs us down, diverts our attention, saps our energy, and dampens our enthusiasm for the things of God.

Can I put it to you that a weight is not necessarily something that is sinful, it's whatever slows you down in running the race. In the race of faith, you cannot afford to be weighed down by things that will slow you down in running.

So, okay, let me get practical for a moment. Can I ask you, as you think about your own life, what is weighing you down? Can I ask you to consider what may be stopping you from running the race well? Here's the thing, in and of itself, it might be a good thing.

It might be something that in a totally different context is completely worthwhile, but for the purpose of running the race well, it might be something that in and of itself isn't sinful, but it is slowing you down.

And can I put it to you that if you know there is something, or if you start to think about this and realize, oh, there's something in my life that's slowing me down, and it's costing me performance in the race as it were, can I encourage you by the mercies of God to get rid of it?

It's not worth it. Christian, the reality is certain activities might need to go, certain affections might need to be reigned in, certain affiliations might have to come to an end, but whatever it takes, can I encourage you with God's help, labor to get rid of it?

And while I'm on the subject, can I put it to you that what is a weight for you will not necessarily be a weight for someone else? This requires some humility on our part. There may be things that are a problem for you, but are perfectly fine for everyone else, or they're perfectly fine for other people.

Why do I say that? Because a danger that can happen in church at times is we start to project what is a weight for us onto somebody else. We start to project, well, this is a struggle for me, therefore it must now become a struggle for everyone else.

Again, if we're talking about something that in and of itself is not sinful, we may want to just pump the brakes a little bit. Let's exercise some humility here. What is a weight for you might not be a weight for somebody else, but the point remains, if it is a weight for us, we need to lay that aside.

But not only is there the danger of legitimate things that might weigh us down again, look at the text, because he doesn't just say, let us lay aside every hindrance. He also says, the verb there, lay aside, carries to both of these things, let us lay aside the sin that so easily ensnares us.