A Command to Remember III: Look Away from the Bad…and the Good

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and Teddy and I are looking again at Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 and 2.

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So, last week we said that in order in the new year 2025, if we're going to turn away from that paralyzing doubt and despondency that can creep in, like Newton we want to say, regardless of what encouraging or discouraging

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I can see in my own experiences, my heart is toward Christ. And that brings us to Hebrews 12, and if we're going to run well, we are going to have to strip away the extra weights, anything that would inhibit our pace, but we're also going to have to run looking.

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But this looking is an away from looking toward, literally in the original language, away from all else looking toward Jesus.

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Removing this preoccupation that we have at times with other things, and turning the focus toward Christ with hope and delight and trust.

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It's the act of faith. There's a lot of things that in this, and last week we talked about, you know, what does looking away mean?

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We tried to define it, and so this week we want to take a look at, no pun intended, we want to look at what we need to look away from, the specific things, and just kind of in some generalities here.

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As we get started, it is very easy to, what we're going to look at, is we have to look away from the bad things.

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Now, before you skip ahead, or before you kind of zone out, because it's easy for us to say, well

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I'm a Christian, so obviously I know that I need to look away from the bad things. But consider how many times in Scripture, letters written by Paul, written by the writer of Hebrews, they're writing to professed believers, to churches, and they have to give the command, look away from sin.

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In Colossians, set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. Consider even

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Ambrose, which we're getting a lot of help, it's not so late in the episode that we're bringing the book up this time, we're using the book

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Looking Unto Jesus by Isaac Ambrose as a lot of help for this series. And one of the things that Ambrose says,

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Christian, so he's making it very clear who he's speaking to, he's not speaking to the unconverted, it is for us.

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Christian, I beseech you, look off all other things, especially evil things.

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And he says this, listen close, I am pleading with you for a hard thing.

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He recognizes how difficult that this is going to be, and he says, he goes on saying that he needs all the rhetoric of angels because only

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God can do this for us. Well, we're going to talk today about what things we look off of or away from in order to fill up on Christ in the new year, and we'll start with the obvious things.

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We would say these are openly bad, openly sinful things, things that we know this is not right.

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That doesn't mean it's easy for us at all times in our Christian life to avoid the attraction of them, but I think they are easier to spot.

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Absolutely. Well, and the key there is, if you feel the need to justify it, probably not a good thing. Yeah. So one of these could be our old life, especially if we remember our life before Christ, and we kind of look back at times with the lens that the enemy puts in front of our eyes, and we're glad to believe it, that the old life, well, it wasn't very noble, perhaps, and it was pre -Christian, but we might fall into the error that Israel fell into where we say, well, but sometimes

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I think it was pretty good, and maybe I would even say in deep within my soul, but not out loud, sometimes

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I think it was better back there. My life was easier. Easier or more fun. Yeah, and so the

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Christian can fall into that trap when we don't see clearly, and in doubting

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God, and you know, going through difficult times, the fog descends, and we believe the lie that the old life wasn't all that bad.

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I remember being a kid, and we had a big Eskimo Spitz, and I loved this dog.

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It was so nice, and I was sitting down with it, and she was the sweetest dog. I would sit on the front porch, and she would come up and put her head on my shoulder, on my lap, and I would just pet her, and I remember looking at my dad saying, man, sometimes

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I wish I was like I was a dog. A dog's life just seemed so easy, and it seemed so just peaceful, you know?

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You just have fun, but just, you know, running and getting a ball or whatever, and he said, well, yeah.

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He said, but you know, they don't play baseball. They don't have, and he even did, he did take it spiritual with me.

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He said, also, they don't have souls. They can't commune with God, but it's the reality is, we can look at those other lives, our past life, with rose -colored lenses, and say, oh, sometimes

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I wish it was that way, but it goes back to what we talked about in the last episode. It's covetousness.

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It's not looking at all the graces that God has given us in the new life, and we have examples of this, and we have commands and warnings.

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Genesis 19, you remember that God is rescuing Lot and his family from Sodom and Gomorrah, and that valley is going to be destroyed by God's judgment, and the angelic messengers have to take the family by the hand and just basically drag them out of the city, and the command is given that when they are leaving the city, they are not to look back, and Lot's wife looks back, and she's turned into a pillar of salt, and you know, there are times if we're not careful where we begin to look back at the old life, and we believe the lies that it wasn't so bad, and it's not true, but it's the kind of thing that if you believe, your heart can gaze back, and it will make it impossible for you to really run well, the

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Christian race, if you're always looking back thinking, actually, sin wasn't so terrible a master as people pretend.

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In Hebrews 11, we have the example of people who pressed on, and in verse 13 through verse 16, it kind of sums up the fact that these believers in the

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Old Testament, especially as we think about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you know, they left their homeland, and they traveled, and they were nomads for their entire life.

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None of them got to live in the Promised Land, so they hoped in God's faithfulness.

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He will keep His Word. It may not even happen in my lifetime, but I'm going to keep hoping and keep following God, and I'm not going to go back just because it gets difficult, and the writer of Hebrews makes that point.

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He said, all these died in faith without having received the promises, but having seen them, and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

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For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own, and indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, so if they had been day after day dreaming of home, they would have had opportunity to return.

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But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their

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God, for He has prepared a city for them. And so, wonderful illustration.

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We don't go back to the old life, and we don't sit pining for the old life, and oh, if only I weren't a

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Christian, I might go do this again, because that old life was a lie, and we don't look at it with that fondness.

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And Paul gives great advice in Romans. He says, you know, in chapter 6, in verse 21, he talks about the old life that they had before Christ.

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He said, therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?

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For the outcome of those things is death. So, when you think back on the old life,

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Paul said, now let's be honest, let's think honestly. The old life is something you're ashamed of, and it never paid you with life.

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It paid with death. Everything, it destroyed everything. So, we have to look away from the old life, but that's not all.

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What other things, Teddy, would you say we have to look away from other bad things as well? Right, there's other bad things that, without looking back, there's present sinful temptations and pleasures that are before us today, that are so easy for us to get entangled with.

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Yeah, you can give a glance, especially with all of our electronic devices. You can give a look and then feel shame, and then you can return, and then when you can't look, you can think about what you saw.

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It can be in the area of lust. Obviously, the internet has so many horrific doors open to you if you want to destroy yourself with lust, but there's greed, you know, there's pride, there's anything that makes you the center of the world, and you want that pleasure because it recognizes your significance.

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And so, things that perhaps you wouldn't be happy to tell everyone that you are interested in.

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So, you know, again, as you mentioned, Paul and other writers have to warn the Christians, do not, do not give your heart to the sensual pleasures of the world in your culture all around you.

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And that has to be said, because we're not above that. Right. And the moment that we think we are, we let the guard down, and we reject the protection of the

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Lord, even. And we say, because I don't have to fight this, this is not a problem for me, we're...it's

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an easy trap for us to fall into at that point. Ambrose gave an illustration about a person who struggled to look away from sin's pleasure, and it's

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Augustine, who eventually became the great church father, or leader, theologian, pastor, and example.

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In his book, Confessions, he talks about his, right before his conversion, the agonizing struggle he had to give up plain old sinful pleasure.

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And Augustine was a very intelligent young man, he was a very successful, ambitious, and, you know, amiable guy.

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He was a bit of a partier, and his mother, Monica, broke her heart over his, over her son's lost condition, and it looked like, you know, to the world it looked like Augustine was a lost man getting everything he wanted.

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He had a live -in mistress, he was, you know, a licentious fellow.

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But as God began to convict him, even his sinful pleasures began to bother him.

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And this is what Ambrose writes. He says, we have a lively example of this in Augustine's conversion.

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He would indeed have had Christ. He said he wanted Christ, and he wanted his pleasures too.

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But when he saw that he could not have both, what a conflict was in him. He was in his backyard, in his orchard, and he was sitting there and thinking, and he said it was like all of his sinful pleasures, personified, were representing themselves before his eyes.

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They were just kind of walking in front of his mind's eye, and saying, what? Are you going to depart from us forever?

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And will we no longer be with you forever? Oh Lord, said

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Augustine when he wrote his confessions, turn away my mind from thinking that which they objected to in my soul.

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In other words, help me not to believe their lies, you know, you'll never be happy without us. What filth,

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Augustine writes, what shameful pleasures did they lay in front of my eyes?

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And after a while, this struggle, after this struggle, a shower of tears came from his eyes, and casting himself on the ground in his backyard under a fig tree, he cried out to God, oh

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Lord, how long, how long will I say to you tomorrow, tomorrow, you know, tomorrow

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I'll give up my favorite sins? Why not say today, Lord? Why should there not be an end of my filthy life at this very hour?

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And immediately after that is when he makes his famous statement that it was like he heard a voice that said, take up and read, and he picked up his

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Bible, and he read from Romans, and it was the Lord's dealing with him at that point, which really brings

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Augustine from loving the world to loving Christ, looking to sinful pleasure to looking to Christ.

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Another thing that we have to be careful is not to have our heart always looking for approval, and this can come, you know, at work.

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Now that you're a Christian, what will people think of you? It can come in your family too, you know, if you're a

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Christian in a family that's not full of Christians. You know, we just came through the holiday season. What will they think of me when they talk to me this year?

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This is the first year they've met me, and I'm a believer now, and so I don't want to talk about the things.

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I don't want to laugh at the jokes that I laughed at and talked about. I don't want to watch the same things, or I'm not interested in the things that I once was interested in.

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What will they think of me? Will I lose their approval? And that is always something that's easy to say, but I have never found it easy to lose the approval of anyone.

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It's much harder than we want to admit. Absolutely. Even if we think that, you know, we're the strong, independent type,

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I don't care what anybody thinks. Well, you do, and it's not that it's improper to consider how others do view you.

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I mean, one of the requirements of elders and deacons is that they have a good reputation among the unbelievers.

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So it's not that it's wrong to think how will something, how, I mean, we're called to live godly lives before other people as well, but we can have that inordinate view, and honestly, an idolatrous view of what other people think of us, and Ambrose has this great illustration of it.

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You know, imagine this very wealthy man in the heart of a city owns a business, runs a bank, and outside his window, he sees a feather floating in the air, and it's just carried on by the wind, and he drops his important, busy work, runs out the door into moving traffic, and he starts trying to jump up and grab this feather.

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He's risked it all, and let's say he succeeds. Well, all he's got is a feather.

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Let's say he fails and he dies. He did it all for a feather, and when we think of these different, you know, when we think of other people's opinion of us as higher than we ought, really and truly, as Ambrose later says, they are nothing but a breath.

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They're as light as a feather. To bring it to a more modern illustration, Dave Ramsey, I remember going through his money course back when

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Allison and I first got married, and he said one of the biggest reasons that people go into debt is that they spend money they don't have for things they don't need to impress people they don't like, and that's always struck me because it's not always just the people we know and we care and we do love.

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There's a time, or there are times, where we even try to heighten the view of ourselves in people we don't even know.

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Yeah. Yeah, Jesus points out in John 5 to the Pharisees who are slaves of what people think of them, even though you might consider that this group of people doesn't care what anybody likes, you know.

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They don't care what you think. All they care about is being good, you know, self -righteous people, but actually they're very concerned about their reputation in the wrong way, and so Jesus says in John 5 verse 44, how can you believe?

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He says to these people, you know, obviously they're not going to follow Christ because they're not going to give up the good reputation that they have with the other

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Pharisees. How can you believe? When you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only

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God, you want man's approval, so you're not going to risk that to follow

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Christ wholeheartedly. You ought to want God's approval, not man's.

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Well, unless we think we're above it, Peter did the same thing. Yeah, and Moses, again in Hebrews 11, he is an example that we can follow.

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By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure ill -treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

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So, in light of what's ahead for a believer, Moses feels that the hardest, most difficult things that God gives his children are better than the most pleasant gifts

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Pharaoh's palace could provide. So, so sweet and so encouraging for us that God gave us that example.

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But, John, it's not just the views of other people and the opinions of others.

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It's not just the wicked things that we have to look away from. There are times where we have to look away from good things, and we kind of teased this out in the last episode.

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We said there's going to be some good things. So what do we mean by that? What does it mean to look away from the good things?

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Yeah, I think if we consider the gifts that God gives us, everything from things or money, pleasant events, relationships probably are always at the top of the list.

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Those are most important to us. Our good health, the abilities

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God has given different people. Some people are very bright, and some people are very charming, and some people are very athletic, and whatever it is, these are gifts from God.

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And when the gift becomes the thing we are preoccupied with, it becomes really a thing that's all about us.

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And we kind of make it subservient to us. We become the center of its existence.

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And instead of God's gifts making us trust Him because He's so kind to us, and to love

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Him more for love because He's given us these gifts, we love Him even more. We turn and we take the love that should be directed to Him, and we become really idolatrous, loving the things

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He's given us instead of loving Him. They become a substitute. Right. Well, it's even like we talked about last week.

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It's the husband or the wife falling in love with the ring and saying, hey, I just want to spend an afternoon with my ring. Yeah, or the house, or a car, or a child.

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Now that I have been given a child in a marriage, this is really what I want, and I'm satisfied.

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My soul is satisfied with this gift, and I don't want the giver. He can back up now. And so that's always a danger.

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But think about it like we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Even where Paul says in Philippians 3, forgetting what lies behind you,

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I'm pressing on. I count all things as rubbish. What's he talking about? Well, not the shameful things of immorality.

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He looks back on his life, and he's been discussing all the privileges and benefits he had as a

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Jew. I grew up in the right church, and my parents read me the right book, and we sang the right songs, and I knew the right

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God's name. But all of that for me was a part of my self -righteousness.

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I valued all that to the point that I didn't want Christ. But when Christ conquers Saul, and he is renamed

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Paul, and he's a servant of Christ, Paul looks back on that and says, it's all garbage compared to knowing

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Christ more and to having a righteousness that only he can give. So think about a couple of things we have to look away from if they become substitutes for present, hungry, earnest, pressing forward in the

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Christian life. So you have to look away from past experiences sometimes.

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We can all look back, if we've been believers for any time, and see periods where the

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Lord was very kind to us. But what happens if you've drifted from the Lord, and you're still going through the external motions in a mechanical manner, but that yearning for God and that nearness of God, that cultivated, sweet, uninterrupted fellowship between your soul and your

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God, there's a loss of that. Because that's not constant, and we don't have time to look at all the passages, but while the relationship is constant, the fellowship within the relationship,

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I am still a child of God, even when my heart is cold toward my God. But there is a loss of the enjoyment of the fullness of this covenant that comes with what the

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Bible, the metaphor in the Scripture for this intimacy is God's nearness. So, you know,

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James has to say, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. You know, cleanse your hands, get rid of this double -mindedness, and God will return.

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Or, you know, Revelation 3, Christ on the outside of the church in Laodicea, knocking on the door, saying, if you'll repent,

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I'll come in and sup with you. There will be a restoration of this nearness. So, if I look back on past seasons where I had great experiences with the

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Lord, and that soothes my conscience when

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I notice that I don't have those now, and I'm not talking about living on our emotions, but I don't even want those really.

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And I realized my walk with the Lord used to be a very near walk, and now it feels like God is a distant concept.

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And you might feel terrified at that and think, oh my goodness, I need to do something about this.

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I can't just keep going along like this. But then suddenly the enemy says to us, but remember all those great experiences you had, and you think, oh, that's right,

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I'm safe. I had those. And, you know, even though they're in the past, I remember I used to do that too.

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I remember I used to feel that way. And, you know, and we use that as a band -aid for a conscience, which is screaming that we have drifted from the

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Lord. But it's not just experiences. You can think of usefulness, service, growth, you know?

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Yeah, well, you have, if you had seasons of growth, of great growth, and I think that often, at least one of the lies that I hear is, well, that was for that season.

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And now you're just in a different season of the Christian life. Yeah, or you've matured. Right, you've matured beyond that. And the reality is we know better.

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Yeah, as a baby Christian, you lived on your feelings, but now you've learned not to live on your feelings. And it's... You almost get the idea that the mark of mature faith is a non -experiential

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Christianity, that I don't delight in Him. I don't cry out to Him. I don't plead with Him.

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No, I just worship because of who He is, and that means that that's just it. And it's love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, right? It's all of us.

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And what is so easy for us to do is to say, well, I love

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God. I loved Him with more of my being in this season, but now

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I've kind of compartmentalized that or whatever justification we give, but we do it as a

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Band -Aid rather than pressing on. And that's what this is about. We have to... If we're going to look at Christ, we must press on and do so.

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And I think it's not just true of individuals. It happens in churches where we can become enamored with the past blessings that God has given us, the seasons of extraordinary grace, you know, many, many conversions.

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Maybe your church has planted other churches. You've trained young men, you know, for the ministry.

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You've sent out young ladies into the mission field. You know, you remember times where famous preachers came and preached and it really impacted you.

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And those things are used to quiet your conscience when you come together again the next

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Sunday, and it seems like you're just going through the motions. So instead of saying to God, why are we just going through the motions?

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God, where is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Where is the God that we once seemed to walk with?

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Have we drifted from you? Have we turned our heart and turned our eyes to other things, other gods?

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And right when that conscience is pricked, we say, oh, our church is still a fine church because I remember back when we used to, we had...

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Yeah. So John, let me ask you, it's a practical pastoral question. Let's say

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I look back at my life and over the last, over 2024, and as I'm looking toward 2025,

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I realize I spent the last year, as you said a couple of weeks ago, using the past graces of the

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Lord as a pillow to rest my head upon. What does repentance look like in that?

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Yeah, I think that to stir ourselves, we do look at Christ. And if we can only seem to get a dim, fuzzy view of Him, or we despair and think

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He's wonderful, but I've drifted so long, there's no hope. I'm a

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B -class citizen. He'll never call me to run alongside Him again, so to speak. So I think that also it's helpful, it's essential really to be a part of a church where other believers are also yearning to walk with Him, because there will be times where we go through, sadly, not necessary, but because of our sinfulness, where we may go through cold periods and we need to be a part of a group of other true believers, and some of them may be cool toward the

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Lord at the same time, but others will not be. And they stir us to think, why am

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I back here? Why am I not where I once was? But I think biographies are great, but repentance, yeah,

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I think repentance has to start with the, God, what is it?

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I'm going to meet with you, and I have my notebook and my pen. What is it that I'm filling up on that I'm okay to be so empty of what once thrilled me with Christ?

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And that's it. It is that crying out to the Lord, but it's also, it's exactly what we're talking about.

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This is why I wanted to ask you that question. This is both the conviction and the first step of that repentance.

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It is that looking unto Christ. It is that, as the

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Israelites looked to the bronze serpent in the wilderness, they looked with faith. So it wasn't just a glance up, right?

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It was a staring intently. I'm going to look at this thing until God saves me or heals me.

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It's the same thing. Christ, I'm going to meet with you, crying out to you until you show me what it is

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I've been filling up on, what it is that's causing you to be fuzzy in my vision, and until you remove those things, and you and I, along with you, wage war upon those things until they're killed.

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Yeah, so to cry out to God, like the psalmist, Psalm 119,

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I think it's verse 37, where he says, you know, that God would turn his eyes from beholding vanity or emptiness.

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God, help me to break this inappropriate relationship that my heart has right now with all the emptiness of the world, and then

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I want to turn it toward you, and you've got to fill it. And one, I think, we were talking before the episode, one of the most obvious and probably most significant steps forward, and it's so simple, but because it's tied to so much, it's not so easy, and one of the things we can do is the electronic devices that we have, we can guide them in a way so that they do not lead us to be less

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Christ -like. So that would, of course, include filters, adult or teenager or child, you know, it's those

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Christian adults that will say, well, my kid's iPad is filtered, but mine isn't, and I think, well, why not, you know?

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But then also there's, it's not just things that should be filtered, it's, you know, there's the ability for 10 ,000 distractions to come to you in beautiful, you know, pictures and statements, like, oh, you need this, and oh, look at this, and here's this story that you've been wanting to, you know, oh, oh, so -and -so said this, and this is a new thing that so -and -so did, you know, on the world stage, and so to put the phone away, to silence these things, to turn the

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TV off in order to, and I don't mean there's never a time for those, but to prune those back in order to have time to turn your eyes away from those things and to the things that really have worth.

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Yeah, when, it's easy when we're in a, when we feel really good and when we're in a moment of strength to say, yeah, when the opportunity comes for me to choose

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Christ, to look at Christ, or to choose to be distracted, I'm going to choose to look at Christ, but we all know that, you know, we so often give into distractions, and so I genuinely do recommend, and this is something that I've done, there's so many things you can put on your phone, there's apps that you can put on your phone, screen, what's it called?

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Screen time. Screen time, if you have an iOS device. Android, I'm sure, has something similar to that, but do something external that at least makes you stop and think.

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I was watching something, so one thing to keep in mind, there are companies and there are individuals who are paid millions of dollars to design the internet in such a way that it gives you constant dopamine hits, and there were app usage that the creator of the infinite scroll made millions of dollars on that code, because what they found was if you just had to keep scrolling instead of hitting the next page, hitting the next page is a decision, scrolling is not, and so they saw app usage increase by hundreds of percent, and it was just because they removed the decision to go to the next page, so they are, and by they,

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I mean every social media company, every technology company out there, they are designing everything in such a way to keep you locked in, and so it takes some discipline or maybe even some external help to pull yourself away from that and spend some time focused.

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Next week, we're going to begin to look at the sweet side of the command, and that is having removed anything that might clog, that would distract or defile, and pulling our gaze away from that and detaching our desires from that, we turn them to Christ, and how is it that we look to Christ?