Running on Straight Paths (Hebrews 12:12-13)

Good morning everybody, glad to see you here and your bright smiling faces on.

This dreary day. Would you please stand with us as we sing our call to worship this morning, Standing on the Promises.

Promises that cannot fail, when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail. By the living word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God. Standing, standing on the promises of God my Savior.

Standing, I'm standing on the worshiping. I too you did say shall address work, yea they shall come stretch forth who save me we shall. There are a few announcements that you will find in your.

Bulletin that are of importance so please see your bulletin for those. Turn your Bibles if you will to the book of Proverbs to chapter 3. The book of Proverbs to chapter 3. We're gonna read together beginning at verse 13 and read to the end of v. 26.

Proverbs 3, v. 13. How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. For her profit is better than the profit of silver and her gain better than fine gold. She is more precious than jewels and nothing you desire compares with her.

Long life is in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her and happy are all who hold her fast. The Lord by wisdom founded the earth by understanding He established the heavens.

By His knowledge the deeps were broken up and the skies drip with dew. My son, let them not vanish from your sight. Keep sound wisdom and discretion so they will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck.

Then you will walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid. When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. Do not be afraid of sudden fear nor of the onslaught of the wicked when it comes.

For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught. Never pronounced that foot before in my life. I apologize for that. Will you please stand with me as we pray. Let's bow our heads.

Our Father, what a joy and delight it is to be called out of darkness and into light by the Gospel of your dear Son. We thank you for the work of your Spirit which has done this in our hearts. You have called us and equipped us and given us everything that we need that we may walk in holiness and righteousness and truth.

We pray that you would establish our steps in your Word and in the upright paths. We pray that you would unite our hearts together in obedience to your Word and conform us to the image of Christ that you may be glorified in and through your people and your church and through us as a local expression of your much greater and much larger body of Christ.

So we pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts today and that our worship would be sweet to you as we look upon your truth and see in your Word the Lord Jesus Christ, our Father, and the Holy Spirit, our blessed and triune God, and all the work that you have done in saving us and securing us for yourself and for your glory and for our good.

So we pray that you would establish our feet in these things and encourage our hearts together in them. As we worship you, we pray for the strength to focus our minds and our hearts, our affections and our thoughts upon you and you alone, that we may be conformed to the image of Christ and we behold him with the eyes of faith.

We ask this in his name.

Amen.

Occupy my lower everywhere

Chapter five, verses 17 to 19, it says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things passed away, behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. We're gonna end our music service this morning and sing Forgiven.

Lord, forgive us for our pride When our faith becomes a show Trust in righteous deeds to hide All the stains below We have judged your sons and daughters For the sin that is our own May we now forgive each other's sins

The Straight Path of Wisdom in Proverbs

Will you please turn now in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, to chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12. We're gonna read together verses 12 and 13. And before we do, let's pray. Our Father, it is with joy that we can turn to your word and see the work that you have done for us and the work that you do in us.

We thank you that your grace is sufficient for our understanding and that you have given us light in your word. And we pray that you would shine that light upon our hearts and upon our minds, upon our souls, our inner man, so that we may be conformed by your word to the image of Christ, to be strengthened in it and by it.

And we pray that you would edify our hearts, equip us, reprove us where that is necessary. And we pray that your word would do the work of strengthening us for our walk in holiness and in righteousness and in the truth.

We pray this for the glory of Christ in his name, amen. The Bible frequently uses the imagery of paths or ways to describe our conduct, our walk with the Lord, our life, our course in this world. The choices that we make, the habits that we form, the life that we live, these are described as our paths and our ways.

And it is surprising when you start to do a search for those words, just how frequently that comes up.

In Scripture.

It's not like an occasional analogy. It's all the way through the Old Testament, the New Testament. You find it particularly in the book of Proverbs and in the book of Psalms. I'm going to give you a couple of examples and show you the ways in which Scripture uses this language,.

This description.

Jesus used the idea of a broad road and a narrow road to describe the courses, the gates that lead to heaven and to hell. Remember Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction.

And there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and there are few who find it. In the Old Testament, you see the path to life and the path to death described in numerous places.

Jeremiah 21, verse eight, you shall say to this people, thus says the Lord, behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. That's pretty stark. I mean, there's only two ways, the way of life and the way of death.

So there's not a third way, there's not a fourth way or a fifth way or multiple ways. There's the path that leads to life and there's the path that leads to death. Proverbs 16, 25, there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

Man in his natural state assesses the options that he has and he says, this seems right. I'm going to do it my way, I'm going to choose my path and he goes down that thinking that the end is good, but he gets to the end of it and realizes I've been walking on the path that leads to death.

And sometimes unfortunately, you are brought into that path, you are brought into the gravity of that and by the time you realize that this ends in death, it's too late. There is the way of fools and the way of the righteous.

Proverbs 21, verse 15, the way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel. Proverbs 21, verse 16, a man who wanders from the way of understanding will rest in the assembly of the dead.

God's path is called the way of life. Job 23, verses 10 through 12, but he, Job is saying this, but he, the Lord knows the way I take. When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot has held fast to his path.

I have kept his way and not turned aside. I have not departed from the command of his lips. I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Psalm one, verse one, how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

And I can see by the grins on some of your faces, you were already thinking of that verse before I even read it. He does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners. There's a path, there is a way, there is a course.

Psalm 16, verse 11, you will make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. In your right hand, there are pleasures forever. Psalm 17, verse four, as for the deeds of men, by the word of your lips, I have kept from the paths of the violent.

My steps have held fast to your paths. My feet have not slipped. Psalm 23, verse three, he restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. Psalm 25, verse four, make me to know your ways, O Lord.

Teach me your paths. All the paths of the Lord are loving kindness and truth to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. It is so common in scripture. We sometimes read through large passages of scripture, we read this language and we don't even think about what is being described here.

Paths, ways, courses, choices. This is the language that scripture uses to describe our lifestyle, our conduct and our walk in this world. It is the language that is used in Hebrews 12, verse 13. Make straight paths for your feet so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint.

This is the second command in a list of five that follows on the passage that deals with God disciplining his children. Those five commands that we just briefly looked at last week in terms of naming them, we got through the first one, which was strengthen the hands that are weak in verse 12 and the knees that are feeble.

Those five commands in scripture are things that you and I are to do in light of God's discipline. In preparation for discipline, in the midst of discipline and on the other side of discipline, these are the commands that we are given to make sure that God's discipline is not wasted on us.

Or you could say that these five commands are addressed to us so that we might avoid five different pitfalls that discipline might bring to us. Five things that we can fall into or mistakes or errors that we can make in the midst of discipline.

We saw the first one last week. There is the danger that we might faint because of our weakness and so we are commanded in verse 12 to strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble.

The second danger is that we might stumble because of the path that we are on, because of the way that we choose, because of the course or conduct of our lives. We might inadvertently but actually quite intentionally put stumbling blocks in our path that make our running the race difficult if not impossible.

And that is what the author is dealing with here in verse 13, make straight paths for your feet so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. I want you to notice the importance here in verse 13 of straight paths.

The author's returning to the race analogy back from verses one through three. I love it when that happens because it makes the editing a joy for the people who do that after the service, but I've been struggling all week long with weak lungs and a cough, so thus my voice is a little more subdued, which might just fit sort of the mood of the message anyway.

The author's returning to the race analogy in verses one through three that he started this chapter with. And when he talks about strengthening the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble in verse 12, he's talking about those parts of our bodies that are instrumental in running the race and running it well.

And he is using another race analogy here in verse 13, make straight paths for your feet. In other words, the course that you are to run should be straight, you need to run a straight race. You never see an Olympic runner wandering all over the track back and forth, off into the sidelines, behind the visitors, chatting with the coach, you never see that happen.

Why?

Because he wants to run the race, he's running for a prize, he's diligent and disciplined, he knows how to win. And winning does not involve wandering into other people's lanes and staggering all over the course.

And so this is the same kind of analogy. You're to make straight paths for your feet so that when you are running, you're running with your eyes fixed straight ahead, lest you stumble and trip or interfere with other people.

That's the analogy. It's the language of Proverbs 4, verses 25 through 27. Let your eyes look directly ahead and let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you. Watch the path of your feet and all your ways will be established.

Do not turn to the right or to the left, turn your foot from evil. You see the right and the left wandering off in either one of these directions is characterized in the Proverbs as foolishness, evil, iniquity, sin, rebellion.

And so if you're going to run your race, you have to run fixing your eyes straight ahead. Do not deviate, do not wander, do not alter your course, keep a straight path. Proverbs 2, verse 15 describes the evil men and the Proverbs says their paths are crooked and they are devious in their ways.

It is the evil man in Scripture that wanders around. It's the evil man in Scripture that starts off on a good path and then wanders immediately into this and likes this and then comes back for the good path for a little bit and then wanders off again.

His way is crooked. And if you're standing back looking on it, looking back on it, do you remember the old cartoons that they used to have? Was it Marmaduke or one of those single frame cartoons where you would see Dennis the Menace or one of those, where you'd see the course that he made around the playground or something else.

If you had to follow the dotted line, it would entertain your eye, you could see where he started and where he went. If you were to watch the path of a wicked man, he just wanders all over the place, blown about with every wind of doctrine, always finding and ever finding some new fascination, some new hobby horse, some new thing he's doing, some new agenda that he has.

And he goes back and forth like a ship tossed at sea with no straight course, no straight bearing. And you wonder where he's going, where he came from, where he's going to end up. That is not how we run a race.

Instead, we run a race with our eyes fixed straight ahead on the prize. Knowing for what it is that we are running and running with endurance and with diligence. Proverbs 4, verse 10, hear my son and accept my sayings and the years of your life will be many.

I have directed you in the way of wisdom. I have led you in upright paths. When you walk, your steps will not be impeded. And if you run, you will not stumble. Isn't that desirous? Isn't that something that we should long for?

That we would walk, our steps would not be impeded and we will not stumble when we run? Take hold of instruction. Do not let go. Guard her for she is your life. Do not enter the path of the wicked and do not proceed in the way of evil men.

Avoid it. Do not pass by it. Turn away from it and pass on. For they cannot sleep unless they do evil and they are robbed of sleep unless they make someone else stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.

And so the author of Proverbs is saying, embrace wisdom and instruction and the fear of God. Walk in the upright paths. It is clearly laid out for us in scripture. We know what that looks like. We know what iniquity looks like.

God has given us all of that. He shined the light on the path and He just simply says, walk in it with diligence, walk in it with precision and walk straight ahead. Keep your eye on the prize and press on.

And inevitably, if you wander in your gaze, if you gander away from the course, you will end up going the way that you look. Have you ever watched an Olympic runner? Where do they look? Straight ahead.

Not looking back to see how far ahead of the competition they are. Not off to the coach to see if he has any last minute instructions. Not looking up into the stands to see if their family members are there or what their mom thinks of how they're running.

You don't see any of that. While they're running their race, they look straight ahead with a focus and a precision and an intensity that burns like the heat of a thousand suns.

Why?

Because they know that the minute they gander, they wander. That's how it works. The minute you gander, you wander. So do not allow yourself to gander or you will wander. Make straight paths for your feet.

Make it a straight one. Now, there's three concerns here, I think, in the passage that the author is addressing or three ways of applying this. First, morally speaking, there is a concern here for our own godliness.

Guard your own life and conduct. Do not deviate from the way to the way of the wicked or get off the path of uprightness and righteousness and wisdom. This will only lead to destruction and debauchery and bondage and falling into immorality inevitably.

Inevitably. Do not wander off into that path thinking that you can take fire into your lap and not be burned. You can't. So don't chart that course. Don't go that direction. Don't intentionally think to yourself, I'll just wander for a little bit and see how this works.

That is how you make shipwreck of your faith and become an apostate. Do not place things in your life that create moral hazards. Do not heed to temptation. Do not deviate from uprightness. No runner will set a course and think that he can do so setting it through a hazardous area or throwing obstacles in his path and thinking that somehow gonna enable him to run better or run well or win the prize.

No runner intentionally sets before him dangers and traps and snares and uneven ground. And the church is filled particularly in recent history in our own time, the church is filled with examples of people who started well and then wandered off the course.

And this is what all of the warning passages in the book of Hebrew address. People who start off well are not really among us and they wander off the course. We're not talking about losing salvation. We're talking about people who deviate from the way they go out from among us and prove that they were never of us to begin with.

And we've seen multiple examples of this. We've seen coalitions around the gospel, right? Gospel-centered coalitions, gospel coalitions of people. We've seen people getting together for the gospel. And then within 10 to 12 to 15 years, these organizations of gospel coalitions and togetherness for the gospel end up falling apart, the wheels come off of them.

Why?

Because the people who run these organizations become more concerned with appealing to the world and conforming to the world system and being squeezed into the world's mold and being applauded and approved by the world that their craven desire for approval becomes itself the very thing that makes them a theological shell of their former selves.

And so they fall apart, they disassemble, they quit doing what they were normally doing or become their own self-parody. And you read their stuff and you wonder, am I reading something that comes from a coalition of gospel people or am I reading something that comes from the Babylon Bee?

How does that happen? It happens when people wander from the paths. You get off mission, you get off focus, you get off path. Romans 13, verse 14 says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for your flesh.

What does your flesh love? Do not provide anything for it. That's how you take a step off of the path. I'm just gonna provide this for my flesh. My flesh desires this, I'm gonna give my flesh this thing.

You kill your flesh. You attack that thing. You deny it. Like a fire, it needs oxygen. You deny it the oxygen that it craves. Guard your life against the people, the opportunities, the places, the things that threaten to undo you because they tempt you to wander.

They sway you off of your course. Guard your heart because out of it flows all the issues of life. Not all friendships are healthy, not all entertainment is edifying, not all recreation promotes godliness, not all approval is good.

Sometimes you can be approved by all the wrong people and sometimes you can be hated by all the right people. Stay in your lane. That's the second one. This has to do with a concern for others. The first concern is our own moral formation, our own morality, our own course, the way that we walk.

And that is a concern for us. This is a concern for others. When you wander from the path, when you step off and you begin to veer to the right or to the left, you're going to inevitably interfere with other people who are also running their race, right?

This is the race analogy. This is the author's way of saying in our modern vernacular, stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. You set your eyes straight ahead, you make straight paths for your feet, you stay between those lines because the minute you begin to wander from your lane, you're going to inevitably bump into somebody else, you're going to cause them to trip or cause them to stumble.

And how many times have we seen that in our own churches, in our own day, men and women who make great moral failure or wander off the path or stray into sin and immorality end up becoming stumbling block for somebody else who is also running the race?

How many times have you seen one person's fall from grace, one person's plunge into immorality and straying from the path ends up having resounding effects upon their family, their church, their employment, their neighbors, and their testimony for Christ?

Stay in your lane. The minute you deviate from that, you're going to run into somebody else, you're going to cause them to trip and stumble, and you may permanently take them out of the race in terms of making progress in their own faith.

And you don't want to do that. Third, there is the concern for the others who follow. And I love the fact that the word for paths in verse 13 is the word trochia, and it describes the track of a wheel, a path or a rut.

It describes the cut of a wheel that was left behind. So like a wagon that would go through a field and lay down all of the grass behind it. You could chart the course of that wagon and where it went by just looking at the grass that was laid down by it, or a wagon that would cut through a field and leave ruts or paths or a well-worn path where it had gone.

That's the word that is used here. And it is a reminder that others are following this, and if you and I are to run our race well, we need to make our paths straight. So not just so that we ourselves will be able to run the race, and not just so that we don't interfere with other people who are also running with us.

But friends, we need to do this for the others who will follow behind us and look at the path that we have run. And we want them to be able to say, that's a straight path. That's what I want to follow.

Isn't that apart from the moral failings of the heroes of Hebrews chapter 11, and they did have those, everybody has those, but isn't that the very thing that we saw all the way through Hebrews chapter 11?

We looked at some of these men, we said, this is what you admire. This is the kind of path you stay on. It's what makes them heroes. You are to set a course that is worth following so that once you have run it, you will leave a rut that other people can follow.

That's the goal. You leave a rut that other people can follow. A clearly defined straight path. So men, are you living the kind of life that you would want your son to emulate? Would you want your daughter to marry a man who treats her the way that you treat her mother?

Do you want your children to follow your priorities, adopt your habits, duplicate your patterns? Do you want them to have the same level of self-control and discipline as you do when you're alone? Do you want that for your children?

Run a straight course so that you leave ruts for others to follow. Women, would you be happy if your son's wife treated him the way you treat his father? Would you be pleased if your daughter or your granddaughter modeled their lives after yours?

If those who come after you duplicated your walk with the Lord, had the same priorities, the same habits, and the same patterns? Choose straight paths for your feet. Live the life that you want others to see you live, and live it in private, and live it in public.

Be the same person at home as you are at work, as you are at the grocery store, as you are here on a Sunday morning. That is the very definition of integrity. Without hypocrisy, it is sincerity. You do this, we do this together so that we may run well and receive the prize, not thwarting our own efforts, not causing other people to stumble, and so that we may leave a path that others will follow.

Notice the second phrase here, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. That is something of a difficult phrasing to translate. It's something of a difficult phrasing to understand, simply because we don't know what the author means by lame limb, because he doesn't describe it here.

We don't know what he means by healed. We can kind of start to put together the pieces and look at the context, and there are a couple of options that come to the forefront. There are two hindrances to running.

I think I'm gonna try and explain this, and let me get a shot at it. There are two hindrances to running. First, there are hindrances that are outside of you, that some of which you have control over, some of which you don't, right?

There are natural obstacles that pop up that you have no control over. I was running well, and then cancer hindered me. Cancer became an object in my life, or a sickness, or a debilitation, or the death of a loved one.

Something happened that threatened my course, and I was tempted to deviate off of it. There are things that are outside of you that cause hindrances in your running, and then there are things that are part of us that cause hindrances in our running, like what?

Lameness, crippledness, weakness. Those are the things that can also make running difficult. So one possibility is that what is being described here is the fact that you and I are broken people, and in terms of running a Christian race and being diligent and faithful in it, every person in this room is lame in some way.

We're all broken people. We all have besetting sins. We all have weaknesses that make running the race difficult. We all have our battles that we have to fight, our flesh that we have to resist, temptation that we have to turn away from, repentance that we need to do.

We all have these things, so we're all weak. There's, with all of us, a certain lameness. So we are to make our paths straight and run in the upright races so that our lameness and our weakness will not end in our ruin, namely the limb being put out of joint.

So if you're set to run your race and you know that I have a lameness in this, this is, there's a difficulty here, right? It's a lust, it's a tendency, it's a propensity, it's a weakness. Okay, here's the secret.

Don't put stuff in your path that will make you trip, lame person.

That's the idea.

Make your path straight. It's much easier to run a straight race as somebody with a lame limb than it is to run a crooked race with a lame limb. Why make your race intentionally more difficult than it already is?

Running is already that difficult. So why add to the difficulty by putting things in the path that will distract us and trip us up and make it even more difficult to run? The result then is that we would trip and put our lame limb out of joint and then that's even worse.

At least with something that's lame in this sense, you can kind of hobble along with it and you're not going to run really quickly or well, but at least you can make some progress. But if you're put out of the race and you fall to the ground and your limb is entirely put out of joint, then you're out of the race entirely.

That's the idea.

A second possibility, if that's what the author is describing here, then the healing, let me back up just a second, the healing would be that the straight path overcomes the lameness of the limb or compensates for the lameness of the limb.

In other words, make your path straight so that the lameness does not take you out of the race. The second possibility here is that the author has in mind others who are harmed by our race when we deviate from the path.

That would be the other person running with us is the lame limb, the person who is struggling or coming along, the other runner. And if you and I deviate from our course and we stagger into their lane, metaphorically speaking, and we trip them up and they fall down.

And hit the pavement.

And then they're put out of the race, either temporarily or permanently because of something that we have done that has interfered with them, caused a bad example and caused them to stumble or to fall into sin.

So it's possible that verse 13 is describing weak ones that verse 12 alludes to, weak members or weak people who are in the race but they are lame and they are limping and then we stagger into their path and cause them to fall down.

We make our paths straight so that our race is an encouragement and not a discouragement or a despondency to those who are apt to discouragement and despondency. If you falter, you might become a stumbling block to others.

And we all know people whose race was ruined because someone that they loved and respected and admired fell into a grave moral sin. Their progress in the things of God was stopped or severely limited and hampered or hindered because somebody else left their path and refused to run a straight course.

And so they were put out of the way and we're not talking about here a loss of salvation. We've covered that in the book of Hebrews. We're not talking about a loss of salvation. Instead, we're talking about being hindered in your race, talking about falling down on the course as it were, turning people who are, and this can also apply to turning people who are on the fence regarding Christianity and they're kind of wavering back and forth, not sure if they should make a commitment or not.

They're considering the claims of Christ and then they see some hypocrite and they say, not for me. You've run into these people in witnessing encounters, no doubt. People who have said, yeah, I went to that church and I did this thing a couple of months in, I found out this was going on, this guy was doing this or that guy harmed me.

If that's the type of people that Christianity welcomes, I want no part in the church. You see, then you begin putting other people out potentially of the race and become an excuse for them to reject the truth.

The phrase out of joint, put out of joint in verse 13, describing the lame limb, it's an interesting word. This is the only place in the New Testament, it's used five times. It's the only place in the New Testament where it is translated, put out of joint.

Every other place that it is used, it is translated to turn away or to avoid or to turn out of a course. Like 1 Timothy 1 .6, for some men straying from these things have turned aside, that's the word, turned aside to fruitless discussion.

1 Timothy 5 .15, some have already turned aside to follow Satan. 2 Timothy 4 .4, some will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. And 1 Timothy 6 .20, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding, that is turning aside from worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge.

So there in all the other references, all the other uses of this word in the New Testament all describe turning aside, jumping off course, making a turn, avoiding something. And so that could shine a little bit of light on what the author is describing here.

It might be what the author is describing is our own besetting sin with the limb that is lame and we then are encouraged to make straight paths so that our running is easier. Or it might be that the author is describing others, other believers who are weak and that our running a deviating course and not running a straight path would cause them to stumble and to fall.

And we would set them off course and they would be turned aside off of the race. How horrible would that be? Here's the point of the analogy. Our race is difficult enough, isn't it? It's difficult enough.