A Command to Remember II: Away From Look Toward

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Welcome to the Hope Council podcast. I'm John Snyder, and with me again is Teddy, and we are following up on a theme that we started last time.

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We're talking about John Newton, and... Yeah, and what brought us to Newton? Right, well, it was what he had printed or painted up above his manse.

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It was all the helps that he had to remember Christ. He took the command, remember

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Christ, to heart, and knew that he needed every help possible to do exactly that.

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And we showed you the plaque, you know, what you have as a plaque. It's what he had painted above his mantle.

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Yeah, so if we're not going to be paralyzed with the subtle accusations of the enemy against our

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God, even against the believer, and our conscience tends to join that, the accuser, when we look at our failings, if we're going to avoid the paralyzing impact of doubt and despondency as a believer and really press on in this new year, we have got to fill our minds with the memory of God's faithfulness in a way that spurs us forward.

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And we talked about some ways that memory can be a disservice, you know, remembering the past in a way that becomes a substitute for presently following Christ.

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And we'll talk about that a little more today. Yeah, you had said, if those things ever became a pillow for you to rest on rather than fuel to urge you forward, you have to forget it.

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Yeah, so what we want to do today and in the next few weeks is to look at a passage that I think most of our listeners would be familiar with, and that's from the book of Hebrews, after that great chapter 11 where you see all these examples of those who have looked to the faithfulness of God, risked everything to trust

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God and kept moving in the direction of faith. Then in chapter 12, we have the conclusion of that or the application of that chapter where the writer says, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, not primarily witnesses who are watching us, but a great company of believers who surround us who are eyewitnesses of God's faithfulness, and their lives have just given us that in chapter 11.

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So, we have all these believers from the old covenant and the new covenant, and we can see 2 ,000 years of believers who all say to us that He can be trusted.

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And the implication is, 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 our 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.

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So, for 2025, we want to run well, the metaphor of the

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Christian life. There's an urgency, and there's a very definite path that we're running.

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We're not just exercising. There's a limit. We don't have forever to do this, but how do we do it well?

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And we do it by stripping away everything that would slow us down and looking to the object of our faith,

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Jesus Christ. So, John, that raises the question, though. What does it mean for the believer to look at Christ?

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The big help that we have is we can back up from any individual passage, and we can see the

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Scripture as a whole, and we find the command to look to God throughout the

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Bible. And obviously, when we look at the passages where it shows up, we can just give a few today.

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It's obvious that this is a metaphor for the spiritual, intentional turning to God in faith.

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So it's faith's gaze. It's a hearty, intentional looking with all our hope focused on the

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God or the Savior. So it is a thing that we see in the

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Old Testament. Think of a very clear illustration, and we find this in the New Testament, Jesus referring back in John 3.

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He's going to talk about everyone who believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. Okay, before he says that, though, he gives an illustration to help kind of make it clear, and the illustration is one that any of the

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Jews would have understood as the serpent in the book of Numbers, a bronze serpent was placed on the pole in the midst of the camp of the

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Jews, and anyone that looked to that serpent was saved. So I'm going to be lifted up, and the parallel application is so anyone who looks to me will be saved.

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Well, what kind of a look was it? And we remember the account from the book of Numbers. I think it was Numbers 21.

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Yeah, 21. So the Israelites are once again, as God leads them through the wilderness, he leads them in a bit of a roundabout way, and he's taking them for his purposes.

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He's taking them a certain direction, and it's for their good, but all they notice is once again we're in a place with no water, and it would have been better to die in Egypt, and Moses just has it out for us.

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You know, what kind of leader keeps doing this? And so they begin to complain, and this time

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God's response to their complaint is to send really an infestation of snakes, which are called fiery serpents, perhaps because their bite caused burning pain.

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We're not sure exactly why they're called fiery, but here you have these snakes, and the snakes bite the

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Israelites, and those that are bitten always die. It's a fatal bite unless God provides some rescue.

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So when Jews start dying left and right, they cry out to Moses and say,

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Moses, Moses, we're so sorry that we complained against God again. Will you go and plead for us?

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And Moses does, and God provides a remedy. Moses is commanded to take and make a bronze serpent, so a snake shaped out of bronze placed on a pole, lifted high up, so no matter where you were in that massive encampment of Israelites, you could look out the front of your tent, and you could see this bronze serpent on a pole, and this was

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God's provision for rescuing you, for healing, and if you would trust

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God's provision, as strange as it must have seemed, that looking at a metal snake on a pole could heal a body, but God commanded it, and those that trusted

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God and did what He said because they believed Him. But that's not the only time we see that. I mean, you can think of the command in Isaiah 40, verse 9,

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Behold your God, look your God. Isaiah 42 says,

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Behold my servant, look at my servant. Isaiah 45, that wonderful verse that led to Charles Spurgeon's conversion, in the

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King James, in the New King James, it says, Look unto me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am

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God, and there is none other. Now, in the more modern translations, it says, Turn to me, which I think we'll talk about later,

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I think those go together. It's a good translation. Right, so if I'm going to look at God, I'm going to have to turn from my present focus, so there is a turning away from in order to see

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God. John chapter 6, verse 40, when Christ feeds the great crowds, and they say,

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Well, do a miracle, do another miracle, and then we'll believe that you are the bread of heaven.

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And Christ talks about the nature of coming to Him, of true faith. And He says in verse 40 of John chapter 6,

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For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son, there's the looking, and believes in Him, will have eternal life, and I myself will raise

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Him up on the last day. So, everyone who looks at me, believes. It's not just the initial act of conversion, when a person, for the very first time, looks in hopes to Christ, but there's also 2

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Corinthians chapter 3, where Paul says that's how we're transformed. He says,

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We all with unveiled face, beholding or looking as in a mirror at the glory of the

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Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, by the

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Spirit. So, as we behold Christ, this great expression of God's glory, we see

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God's glory in the person of our Savior, and the Spirit is molding us into that image as we give the heart's gaze there.

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But as we give that heart's gaze, and this is one of the things... So, for those of you who may be watching or listening to this,

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John, you preached this on Sunday, and I'll put a link to that sermon in the show notes, because it is very, very helpful.

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I was very convicted by it, and very encouraged by it. But one of the points you brought up is that this looking, and as the

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Israelites looking up onto the bronze serpent, as us, New Testament, looking unto

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Christ, as God's providence and providing for repentance, providing for...or

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rather, providing for reconciliation with Him. But that look, that faith, is never alone.

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It's always accompanied by the twin gift of repentance. Yeah, they go together.

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And where faith only is mentioned, it is a repenting faith. And where repentance only is mentioned, it is a believing repentance.

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It's not because there's something in the Greek language, you know, that somehow our

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English translations have missed, although in the book of Hebrews there is something in the Greek language that we're going to look at.

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And it's not because of systematic theology, it's because the nature of faith and the nature of repentance, when

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God is the focus and we are the kind of people acting out those commands, then we cannot really turn all our trust toward God without turning away from something else.

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You know, we're not neutral beings. We're already trusting other things. So to trust God means to let go of something.

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Well, it's quite literally inhaling and exhaling. Right. So we are dumping the garbage in order to have our hands free to grab hold of the pearl of great price, you know.

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And we're going to see that in some passages. Let me give some examples of how the command to look is also accompanied by the awareness or a direct command that we have to look away from some things.

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So take Isaiah 40 again. In verse 9, behold your God. Now, He is not speaking about God in His absolute perfections, you know, the

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God, the Father. He is speaking of behold God coming to save you.

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So really, He's pointing them to the coming of Christ. We know that because flowing out of that command to look, here comes your

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God to save you. He's like a warrior, yet He's a shepherd who carries the lambs, who is gentle with the nursing ewes.

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So, you know, what a wonderful description, a pencil sketch of our

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Savior, a warrior, yet a shepherd, the God -man who comes to save.

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The very next description of Him shows up not in chapter 41 of Isaiah, not the next chapter, but two chapters.

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So Isaiah 40, behold your God, He's coming to save. Chapter 41, we don't look at Him.

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Chapter 42, again, the command, behold, but now this

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Savior God is described as the servant of the Lord, and we know that this is the

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Son. Of course, again, in chapter 49, chapter 50, and chapter 53, so 42, 49, 50, and 53, these are those servant songs, long descriptions, poetic descriptions of the coming of Christ, His character,

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His devotion to the Father, and His labor on behalf of sinners. Chapter 53, actually in the

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Hebrew, starts back in chapter 52. I think it's verse 13, and what you see is it starts again.

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So the first verse of the songs, chapter 42, behold my servant.

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The last verse in those songs, chapter 53, behold, again, the command to look.

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So over and over, look, look, look, look at God, look at God, look at God coming to us in the person of the

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God -man to save us. Why doesn't the first song that describes the coming

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Savior immediately follow chapter 40? Why is there a chapter 41 with no mention of this great servant?

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Why do we skip a chapter and then come back? It's almost as if there's a parenthesis, and if you were a liberal theologian, you would say, aha, this is not a book written by God.

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This is a book written by men because chapter 40 says, look, behold, God is coming. Chapter 42 talks about that God coming, but chapter 41 is out of place, and so obviously some editor just threw it in.

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But actually, the weirdness of chapter 41 is 90 % of its value because 41, two different times, verse 24 and 29, the command to look shows up.

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And in both of those places, we are commanded to stop before we look at the coming

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Savior God. We are commanded to look at idols and at idol -makers and see how stinking empty they are.

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You have to compare. You have to see sin for what it is before you see

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Christ. So if you're an idolatrous people like the people were in Isaiah's day, you cannot move from the announcement of good news to filling up on the scenes of Christ.

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Especially not if you're already full. Right, because you're an idolater. You're already in love with other lovers.

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You're already, as you mentioned, you have a heart crowded full of idols. You don't have room for this picture of God.

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It will mean nothing to you. You're like, well, as the Proverbs say, Proverbs 27, the sated or the satisfied or the stuffed soul.

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Oh, I can't hold anymore. The satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb.

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To a starving man, anything tastes good. But to a person who just ate the biggest meal of their entire life, if you then, five minutes later, bring them their favorite dessert, they will say, oh,

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I can't even think of food. And how much less though? Something like vegetables or the things that are genuinely good for you.

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You'll have no appetite for it. You're talking like a man that's on the paleo diet. Hey, don't get me started. Don't bring that in here because I'm not.

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Okay, so we're not going to talk about my diet, but we will talk about 1 Thessalonians 1 that continues this idea.

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And it talks about, it is a people that Paul's writing to and they have turned away from the dead fake gods, the idols, to the living

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God. Yes, and that has to be that just the nature of who God is and the nature of what we are.

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We cannot simply look to Christ. There must be a looking away. And this is seen so perfectly in Hebrews chapter 12, but it shows up in the original language and not as clearly in our

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English translations. And I know that preachers sometimes will say the Greek word here for whatever is, and they say pretty much the same thing, the

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English translation already said, and you feel like why did you even bother mentioning that because it was already pretty clear.

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But there are occasions where the original language does carry a significant truth that may not come out just in that translation that you're looking at.

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The translators do a good job, but the reality is it was written in another language and there's nuance in other languages that's really hard to convey in translation work.

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Yeah, and so teachers in the church have to do their work to be able to bring that out. Good commentaries will bring that out.

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But I don't want to give the impression that if you don't have a Greek and Hebrew library that you can't find the true meaning of the text.

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It's there. And it's there in Hebrews as long as you read Hebrews in context to the rest of the

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Bible. But if you were to come to Hebrews 12 and you just quickly read over, you might not be blamed for thinking all

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I have to do is look to Christ. This idea of looking away from other things, it's not even there, but it is there.

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Now in the Hebrew and in verse 2 of chapter 12, fixing our eyes on Jesus is the new

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American standard or looking unto Jesus is the King James what

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I remember reading. So this phrase in English, it's kind of a paraphrase of two

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Greek words, aphorontes ais, and we don't need that.

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We don't have to pretend that we're Greek scholars, but let me mention what this means.

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Aphorontes is a prefix and a verb, all right?

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So the main verb is to look. The prefix apho or apo means away from.

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So literally, if we were being very wooden in our translation, that Greek verb, which

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Greek verbs, unlike English verbs, you can sew other things onto them. So we have a prefix and a verb and it's one word, away from look.

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Okay. Then what follows is the preposition ais, toward. Away from look, toward.

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So that's the literal translation. That's the literal Greek. Away from, look toward. So if you were the Greek reader, if you were the first century reader of Hebrews, that's what you would, even a casual reading, that's what you would walk away with.

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Yeah, you would see that. Then we'd lose that in the English. And somehow we've lost that in this English translation. Looking unto

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Jesus, but it didn't mention away from other things, looking unto

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Jesus or new American standard, fixing our eyes on Jesus. Great. But what about the other part?

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Ripping your preoccupation off of, tearing your gaze away from anything that would inhibit a wholehearted, you know, this uninhibited, trusting, longing, delighting look at Christ.

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So there's a quick illustration I want to give on this. For Christmas, my wife's parents got my children dirt bike, a dirt bike.

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Now, it's a really small dirt bike. It's 50cc. Have you broke it yet? Well, it's big enough for me.

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Yeah, I thought so. And my father -in -law told me, because I'm not really comfortable on dirt bikes and motorcycles,

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I'm getting there. Well, with 50cc. Well, you know, you gotta start training.

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Basically. Okay, go ahead. We have a 150cc now. Okay. But so I got on this 50cc, and one of the things that my father -in -law told me, he said, look where you wanna go, not where you don't wanna go.

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And as I'm riding on a trail, I see this massive bush.

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And I think to myself, I don't want to go there. And so naturally, I look there.

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And immediately, I crash right into the bush. A few weeks later, a friend of mine, actually

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Chuck Vagat's son, Malachi, comes over and he visits, and he sees the little dirt bike. And he says,

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I want to go for a ride. And I said, all right, I'm gonna tell you what I was told. Look where you want to go, not where you don't want to go.

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And immediately, he runs into a different bush. But it does strike me, because the reality is, you cannot look toward unless you are looking away.

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And if we want to run toward Christ, as Hebrews 12 tells us, that is where we have to fix our eyes.

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And the looking or fixing our eyes on Christ necessitates the looking away from everything else.

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Yeah, let's talk a little bit about why. I think that this looking away from and looking toward is a wonderful, very practical, symbolic metaphor for repentance and faith.

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Repentance, turning your back on in order to turn toward. Or if you prefer, turning toward Christ.

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And in turning toward Christ, I must turn my back on the old lovers. So repentance and faith.

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Clear the road if you want the king to come close, John said, as preparing the people for Jesus.

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Repent and believe. Turn away from, quit hoping in, the empty hopes, so that you might hope in Christ.

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But I want us to think a little bit about why. One of the reasons, and I've said it a number of times already, but I want to clarify.

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One of the reasons is the nature of who God is and the nature of who we are. But then there's also a third, the nature of our relationship.

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So think of the nature of who God is. God is, He is the creator of all of us and He is presently sustaining believers, unbelievers, atheists, it doesn't matter.

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If you're alive on planet earth, you are being sustained by this creator. And God says through Paul, when he writes to the

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Colossians, that covetousness, always looking for happiness in something you don't yet have.

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Chapter 3, verse 5, covetousness, he says, don't let that in your life. And then he describes, there's this little apostrophe, covetousness, that is, which is, idolatry.

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So when our lives, like most Americans, when we wake up and we, because we have so much extra in our life, we could wake up and spend every day of our life thinking, if I can just save up a little, or if I can just put more on the credit card, tomorrow

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I can get this thing that I don't have today and I'll be happy. And the believer is tempted with that lie, and the unbeliever, of course, lives by that lie.

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So, we cannot think that we can look to God with any benefit to our soul if we are clutching an idol.

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It would be like, you know, the people in the Old Testament coming up to God to worship him, but bringing the golden calf in tow and say, here's my sacrifice, and I want to praise the

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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But we also brought our favorite idol, the golden calf, our other

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God. And obviously, we know that that would be, it would be completely rejected by God.

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But use another, well, let me move to the second thing, the nature of a human.

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The nature of a human soul is that we are not infinite, and we cannot expand our heart and our mind and our life infinitely to include every idol the world offers us, every false hope it offers us, and then

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Jesus, too. So, there's just no room for Jesus. You gave the illustration of eating, and that's true.

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You cannot just throw more of Jesus on your life. How many of us have, as we look back on the years that have preceded, and if you've been a

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Christian for some period, how many sermons have we heard? How many good books have we read?

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You know, how many conversations have we listened to? How many worship services have we attended?

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How many times have we had our quiet time, and we've thought, wow, that is such a wonderful picture of the fullness of God.

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I want that, and we try to throw it on top. But we've never plowed the soil of the heart, or at least it's been a long time.

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And we've become hard, the fallow ground is hard, and it's crowded with other things. The weeds are filling the land.

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There's just no room for the seed. And so, we try to add more of God to a life that's already full, and it never produces anything noticeable.

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Yeah, and it goes back. You were talking about this in the First Beholder God Study. If we don't do that plowing of the soil, then for the seeds to sink in, there's no room for them to sink in, and they can't grow deep.

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I know for my own life, there have been so many times when I've read these amazing passages on the beauty of Christ.

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You know, reading the letters of Rutherford, and I wonder, God, You've done this for Rutherford.

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Why do I not have this? Why have I not seen this? Why have I not lived upon this?

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And looking at the life, looking at my life, I realize it's because I have so filled every nook and cranny with things that are not necessarily bad, but they are filled.

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And we'll get into that in the next episode. Yeah, so the nature of a human is we can't keep adding

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God to a life that's already crammed full, and God isn't interested in that either. So the illustration that Paul gives, or whoever writes

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Hebrews gives in Hebrews 12, it's a great picture there. When you run a race, if we watch the

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Olympics and the runners are running a race, no runner runs the race looking backwards. No runner runs the race looking left and right the entire time.

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There have been famous runners who have lost races by a hair because right before they cross the finish line, they're turning to the side to see if someone is close to them, and the other person is leaning forward looking ahead.

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So nobody runs a race like that. We know that. Let's think of a third reason, though.

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It's also the nature of our relationship with our God. It's not just that He will not accept an idolatrous worship, and we can't have a life crammed full of things and add more of Jesus on top of it.

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It's that for the believer, we're the bride of Christ.

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We've been brought into His family. We've been betrothed to Him. There is that union with Christ that's like a union between a husband and a wife.

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There is a loving, exclusive union. There is a love that is unique. It's a love that we don't share with everyone else that we see.

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We have this kind of love only for our spouse, and we are theirs, and they are ours.

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Now, would our spouse be okay with our marital relationship if we said,

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I love thinking about you. At work, I just think of you, and I can't wait to get home.

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But sometimes—but that's in the afternoon. Mornings, usually I think about Sally and so -and -so, all my old girlfriends.

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I think about them too. Oh, it just fills my heart with them. But then I think about you also. The nature of the relationship is it's an exclusive love, and we cannot have an eye at the empty hopes and promises of self, however it takes, the mask it takes.

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Whatever the world promises us, that can't be gazed upon and then also look at Christ at the same time.

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You can't look at two objects like that at the same time. One will be in focus. One will be fuzzy.

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I mean, we do this every time we do a podcast. You go to the cameras more than once, and you make

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AC come and sit beside me so that you can make sure that there's a clear focus.

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Because we all know with our iPhones or whatever we have, if you try to take a picture and there's multiple objects that are in view, you can tap your phone's camera, and it will focus in on one face, say.

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And that becomes clear because the way we focus is one thing is very clear, and other things get a little less clear.

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So either we will look at the idols, the old lovers that used to satisfy us, and we'll say,

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I need these. And you give a little squint at Christ, or you're going to look at Christ.

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But if you look at the idols, Christ becomes fuzzy, and if you focus your heart on Christ, the old lovers become fuzzy.

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James chapter 4, where James says that there are problems in the church because of their selfishness.

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And then he says, you adulterers and adulteresses, don't you know? And you think, oh my goodness, the church is full of adultery, but it is, but it's not physical.

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Well, it's the same as the Old Testament. Exactly. Yeah, so you adulteresses and adulterers, do you not know,

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James says, that those that wish to be a friend of the world make themselves an enemy of God? So it's not going out and doing everything the world does that grieves

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God only. It's even the desire. It's looking out the window. It's the look. Yeah, so the look at the old girlfriend, the look at the old boyfriend breaks the heart of the spouse.

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So there is no way for us to run well looking unto

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Jesus if we will not look away from these other things. Yeah, Ambrose. So I think this is actually the first time we've mentioned

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Ambrose. So a lot of the help that we're getting from this came from Isaac Ambrose, his book,

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Looking Unto Jesus. And in case you missed last week's episode, we're doing a giveaway. We're going to give two copies of this book away.

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To do that, you just enter our – just sign up for the Media Gratia emails. I've got a link for that in the show notes below.

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But one of the things that he says is, he says, when we have enough of God and Christ and yet we desire to make up our happiness in the creature.

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So that's anything created. Anything created. That is adultery with God.

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And when you – that hit me so hard because when you really do think, you know, we did a series of podcast episodes on how we are united with Christ, right?

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Union with Christ, the believers' union with Christ. We talked about how we are the bride of Christ.

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When we pursue any satisfaction, happiness, contentment from anything outside of our husband, it is spiritual adultery.

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Yeah, and we're not saying that God doesn't provide many comforts and pleasures in this life through creation.

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And we'll talk about that in the next episode. But it is the giver that is always the delight.

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Well, it's just like when you're married, you're not going to stare at the ring and say, oh, I love this ring.

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You know, I'm fascinated by the ring. Right. It's the one who gave it. Yeah, nobody says to their wife or husband,

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I'd like to spend some time this afternoon with my ring. Not you. You know? So let me close this episode, and we'll pick back up next week with looking at, well, exactly what do we look away from?

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Because it's not just wicked things. But let me close with a quote from Ambrose.

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And in the early chapters where he talks about what is looking away from in order to look to, he warns.

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And this is a bit of a paraphrase because Ambrose wrote in the 1600s. He said this, those admiring thoughts.

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And he's talking about the loving, admiring thoughts that a Christian gives to the world.

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Like, oh, that will make me happy. He says, those admiring thoughts, they are Christ's.

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They belong to Christ. They're for Christ. You know, why are you giving them to the world? Those painstaking efforts are

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Christ's. That love is Christ's. That time, that care, that earnestness is

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Christ's. They are all Christ's. That is, they all belong to Christ.

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And will you give them to the world? So we'll look next week at exactly what is it that we should be looking off of in order to make room for more of Christ in 2025.