A Command to Remember IV: The Object of Our Focus

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and Teddy James is with me again, and we're looking at the theme of running the

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Christian race from Hebrews chapter 12. So, Teddy, why don't you reintroduce us to those first three verses?

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Yeah, so Hebrews 12, 1 through 3. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary and faint -hearted.

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So, the reason we're looking at the passage is because, as we, at the beginning of a new year, we're looking at the question, how can we run well in 2025?

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Not just as individuals, but if you have a family where there are believers in the family. As believers, those that are believers in the family, how do you run well?

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And certainly, a church. How does a church run well? Well, and also, one of the things that you have brought up a few times are the idea of negative splits, right?

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How can we run better in 2025 than we did in 24, 23? Yeah, yeah.

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How can we do that? And so, the writer of Hebrews really is such a significant help, and perhaps

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Hebrews is a book that some have neglected because of the terrifying warnings, but the nature of those warnings, the shocking nature of them,

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I think, is at the heart of their value. They make us stop and take account of our spiritual progress.

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Am I looking at Christ, which is the cure to, you know, turning away and going back to the old life?

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Well, look at Christ. There's no one that compares. What else would you go to? But then there's the warning signs.

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Be careful here. This is a place where many people who have been self -deceived, thinking they're believers, have been careless here and have fallen away from Christ at this, you know, temptation and demonstrated that they never were

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Christ's. The believer sees the warning sign and doesn't say to himself or herself, oh, well, that's just for lost people, so I don't have to worry about it.

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But because we believe Christ, we see the warning and we recognize that's His handwriting. So, I will stay away from that edge.

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I will stay as far from that as possible. And by believing, we continue to persevere as He preserves us, and we press on all the way to the end.

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We looked at Hebrews 12. Again, let's kind of back up in our mind.

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In Hebrews chapter 10, the writer warns against falling away from our profession.

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We say we love Christ, but do we? Be careful that we don't just have a religion of words.

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And the writer of Hebrews says, remember those early days, Christian, when you embraced

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Christ and you lost a lot because you followed Christ. You suffered the, you know, the theft of your property with joy.

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And you have been persecuted either because you love Christ or because you love other people that also love

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Christ. Chapter 11 then, which follows those warnings, you know, don't turn back, don't turn away.

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And he says at the end of chapter 10, and I know you are not the kind of people that are going to turn away.

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I mean, you're the real thing. So, then chapter 11, he gives a series of quick biographical sketches of others who walked with God through difficult times, and all they had to live on was the fact that God doesn't lie.

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So, what God has revealed to be real and true is sufficient for a whole life.

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Even if you don't get to hold it in your hands in this life, it will come. He will be faithful.

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And so, chapter 12 mentions all those that were given in the quick biographical sketches of chapter 11, and they're called this cloud of witnesses, this great company, this gallery,

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J .C. Ryle says, this gallery of witnesses that are not witnessing our life as much as they have been witnessing to us.

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They're eyewitnesses of the faithfulness of God. Now, having so many eyewitnesses surrounding us, telling us that he can be trusted, no matter what you're going through at home, at church, in a nation, or individual struggles, what do we do?

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Well, we strip away the things that would slow us in the race, and we run looking.

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And last week, we pointed out something unique about this verb in the Greek, and...

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Yeah, so, aphorontes, right? Right. And so, it's that... In the Koine Greek, where you can stitch different things that precede the word and things that come at the end of the word.

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And so, aphorontes ais, meaning away from, look toward.

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And we missed that nuance in the English translations, but essentially, what it means is, in order for us to look toward Christ, we first have to look away from everything else.

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Everything else that we've looked to for comfort, for hope, even things we've looked to for reconciliation with God.

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You know, in the Catholic system, where you would look to your own works or look to the treasury of merits. No, we must look away from everything and look only at Christ.

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Yeah, and that's not... You know, we can describe those two activities away from looking toward.

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We can describe them as two separate things. In a sense, we're really talking about repentance and faith.

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But in reality, they're sewn together. There's an organic connection. The work of God in the heart causes a person, in turning to Christ, to be willing to turn away from whatever has been the false hope or the distraction, whether it's an outwardly sinful thing, shameful, or whether it's an outwardly amoral thing.

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It's not right or wrong. It's something that God allows us to have in this life, and it's a pleasant thing.

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And the gift has suddenly become the substitute for the giver. So, we look away from good things, good experiences, sinful things, distracting things, false hopes, as we're turning to Christ.

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It's all one great movement. And, you know, the argument of which comes first, faith or repentance,

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I think is not really that helpful of an argument because they are connected. You can't have a repentance right now saying, well, what are you doing right now?

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Well, spiritually right now, I'm looking away from everything. And then maybe in a couple of days, I'm going to start looking at Christ. Well, that's more of like, you know, the self -help penance.

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First, let me empty everything out of my life. Let me make myself better. Yeah, right. And then when I'm presentable, then

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I'll go to the king. But we don't go to the king dragging with us all of our favorite sins and say to him, if you will thrill me, then

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I'd be willing to let some of these old lovers go. You know, I mean, that's not the way we approach God. So, it is a throwing away to grab hold of.

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It is a turning toward. And to turn toward him, I must turn away from these other things. So, it's an organic whole, a coin that has two sides.

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So, we talked about looking away from last week. This week, we want to hit looking toward.

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And we're only going to be able to mention a few things. There's just so much that we could say because really,

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Scripture from, you know, from Genesis 3 where we have the first mention of hope for sinners to Revelation 22 where we see

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Christ exalted. Really, between those two chapters, the whole Scripture is in some manner telling us to look to Christ.

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It is the one story. The Scripture is several stories put together. But there's an overarching redemptive – there's the redemptive arc is what we call it.

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And it is the redemptive arc of Christ himself. Now, looking to Christ in this passage is described as fixing your eyes.

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The New American Standard says fixing your eyes on Jesus. So, Teddy, if someone were to say to you, you know, we're supposed to look to Christ.

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That's true, but the writer here doesn't say to Christ or to the anointed one, the

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Messiah. He says to Jesus. So, what comes to your mind when you think of why would God use that particular designation for his son?

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Yeah, it is the personal name of Jesus, and it wraps up everything that Jesus has done.

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He is the God -man. When we think of Jesus being the God -man, we have to also think, you know, when

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Moses asked to see God's glory, right, and God says, nobody can see my glory and live, but I'll cover you, you know, in the cleft of the rock.

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I'll cover you with my hand so you can see my back. We think of Isaiah and the angels with their six wings.

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They cover their faces. They cover their feet with two. They fly. They cannot behold the glory of God, and yet in Jesus, that's exactly what we can do.

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We can see all the perfections, all the holiness, all the righteousness of God wrapped up in the

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God -man Jesus. Yeah, the Puritan writers often said that in the study of God, so theology, the noonday divinity, the clearest, brightest area of theology is looking at the character of the triune

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God as we see it displayed in his son. So here in Christ, we have the manifestation, the unveiling, the arrival of God in a way that humans can look at and not be destroyed.

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He is the image of the invisible God, Paul says in Colossians, all the fullness of God dwelling in him bodily, substantially, truly, not just symbolically like the glory of God in an

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Old Testament holy of holies, but there is the true union between deity and humanity, and it's a mystery that no one can explain.

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How could the infinite God fit into a finite human body? It baffles the mind.

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And then in Hebrews, we read that he is the radiance of the Father's glory.

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He is the outshining of the invisible but real perfections of the divine nature because he is the exact representation, the new

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American standard says, of his character. And isn't it funny that in our culture, particularly I think in the

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Western culture today, we've taken Jesus and minimized him to the point that we have overemphasized, if I could say it that way, overemphasized the humanity of Jesus to make him so much like ourselves that it is easy for us to miss the glory of Christ, the

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God -man -ness. Yeah, I guess we would say it's always a difficult balancing act as we look at him in Scripture, and Scripture gives the perfect balance, but when we buy a book on the person of Christ, no matter how good the book is, which reminds me, our giveaway.

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So this is the new printing of Isaac Ambrose, the Puritan Isaac Ambrose, who wrote a book on looking unto

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Jesus. It is probably the most complete Christology that we have from that century.

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Owen, John Owen, wrote a number of books on the person of Christ, but I think

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Ambrose is probably the most complete, and it has been out of print for a long time, but it's been put back into print by Pillar and Ground Publications from New Jersey.

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And that really is an expensive thing to publish a book, especially a book this big, and to do it in the right way because a book of 600 pages, if you do a paperback, it tends to fall apart.

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So this is a nice copy, and it looks like they've done a good job, and we're going to be doing a giveaway, so explain the giveaway.

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There will be a link in the show notes if you're watching this. There's also going to be a card in the top corner, but all you've got to do is look at the show notes.

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Now, if you are signed up to get the emails from Media Gratte, we send out two emails a week, one on Thursdays that basically tells you what the podcast is, and then we do one on Tuesday that's a devotional based on Puritans or readings or even part of our studies, just a devotional thought, and that's the only two you're going to get from us a week, so no spam.

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But if you're already signed up for our emails, then you're already entered to win, and if not, then now's a good time.

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You could sign up for it, click the link, and then you can also share the link for others just to share the love a little bit.

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I'm not on our email list. Well, then you're not going to win. I know. I'm going to get on our email list.

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You were saying even great books that are about Christ that we read. Yeah, even great books, no matter how good they are, they may focus on one aspect of Christ, and you can't say everything, but Scripture, when we keep going back to Scripture over and over, and the best books drive us back to the

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Word of God, we see this perfect balance, deity and humanity, which brings us to this question, where are we going to look at Christ?

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Where are we going to consider Christ? And that has to be the Scriptures.

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Old Testament, we have these kind of pencil sketches, these black -and -white old photos that are a little grainy, like visiting your grandparents and pre -digital picture time.

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You see these photo albums, and you look at them, and you recognize them because you know them. You say, that's

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Grandma when she was my age, when she was 25. Look at her hair. Look at the glasses.

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Look at the clothes. So Old Testament, black -and -white. New Testament, high definition.

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It's the clarity there, but they're both unveiling the same glory, the glory of God in the person of the

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Son. Theodore Monod, who wrote a little pamphlet called Looking Unto Jesus. He was a French pastor, and that pamphlet, you can find it online.

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Teddy can put a link to it or put the whole pamphlet online. It's just probably about 20 pages, and each page is very small.

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This little pamphlet is a simple exhortation to look to Christ and nothing else.

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Monod says, where do we search for this Christ? He says, in the Scriptures, to learn there what

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He is and what He has done, what He gives and what He desires to find in His character, our pattern, in His teachings, our instruction, in His precepts, our law, in His promises, our support, in His person and His work, a full satisfaction provided for every need of our souls.

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So we're looking at Christ in the Scriptures, not the Jesus that our religious culture has handed us.

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Hopefully you've grown up surrounded by Christianity that gives a clear picture of Christ, but no matter how clear the picture we're getting from the sermons or books or godly older believers, we are duty -bound to go back again and again to Scripture, as if we had never seen this person.

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We look at Him again, and we see new things. There is the fuel of the

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Christian life. What He's doing is the foundation. Who He is is the treasure of our heart, and He is the goal, the aim, the finish line, as well as the example, the way of the

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Christian life. Yeah, I've thought about... So this came about from a sermon that you preached this past Sunday, and so I'll put a link to that as well.

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We're sending them to the show notes for a lot of things in this episode. So we'll put that as well.

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But I thought about that this week, John. So I have unfortunately lost my wallet somewhere in my house.

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I think that my youngest daughter picked it up as a toy, and she did something with it. But I have thought so often of this because in every nook and cranny of my house, in every drawer, under every couch, under every cushion,

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I've been looking for this wallet. And I got to thinking about it. That's exactly how we should be doing with Scripture and the person of Jesus.

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We look in every nook and cranny. We look, and we're always looking because Christ is throughout the

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Scriptures. And that is what it takes, and it takes that kind of intentionality. But one of the things that I realized when

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I was doing this, because it's so easy for me to buy into the lie, no, I'm too busy. My head,

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I have to be focused on work things, and I have to be focused on homeschool things, and I have to be focused on house fixing things.

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But what was amazing to me was no matter how busy I was, when I saw somewhere in the house that I hadn't looked for my wallet,

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I was able to take a few minutes and go look in that place for my wallet. How many times do we have two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, where we could stop and say, okay,

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Christ, show me yourself here. Let me look and gaze upon you again afresh with new eyes like you were saying.

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Yeah, I was talking with my wife this morning or around lunchtime, and she said that after we looked at this passage together on Sunday as a church, she decided that she would set aside specific times each day, so it wouldn't just remain a good intention, but like you said, to be very intentional.

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So at this time each day, you can set an alarm on your phone, a reminder. I will stop, and I will consider some aspect of Christ.

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I've been thinking of how do we view Christ. You can think of the passages that describe the character of God, the attributes of God.

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Those are all true of the God -man as well. Though he may have restrained the expression of those attributes, that is our

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God. It's the second person of the Trinity possessing fully, identically, eternally the same divine nature, not just one -third of the divine nature, but the fullness of that divine nature in that mysterious way is united to our humanity.

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So if it describes God as the immutable, incomprehensible, and unchanging

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God, then I can stop for a moment at lunch, review that verse, and then turn my heart toward Him just for a moment and commune with Him, delight in Him, hope in Him, lean hard on Him, as He's described in that particular passage.

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Now, what exactly are we seeing when we look at Christ, or where in Scriptures? There are different aspects of His person and of His work that we can look at.

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They seem limitless. But in Hebrews, there are a few specific things mentioned.

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His gladly enduring the cross, His striving against sin to the point of sweating drops of blood.

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But it also mentions that He's the author and finisher of our faith. So when we say that, what comes to your mind?

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Well, I mean, I can't help but think of anything except for when you preached on this Sunday. So I kind of get to cheat a little bit.

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But before God laid the foundations of the world, He elected a people that He would present to the

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Son. He entrusted to the Son to redeem them. And so He is the author of our faith, meaning that before we were born,

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God decreed that we would have faith. But then also that when we die, when we enter into eternity, our faith will no longer be just faith.

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Because we will have seen Christ face to face. And with that, that's the end of faith.

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Because why hope for what you've already seen, right? And so Christ is not only the author of our faith.

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He is also the finisher of our faith. And He will give us the perseverance that we need.

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He will preserve us until the very end. Yeah, the gift of faith, the sustaining of the gift, and the completion of faith when we see

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Him face to face. And we no longer live by trusting His Word, but we live in the realities, in the substance of those shadows.

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You know, with nothing between us and our Lord. No sin, no sense of guilt, but for eternally, timelessly enjoying the realities.

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I think, you know, one thing we could say is, while Hebrews mentions a couple of specifics in chapter 12, which are particularly suited to those who profess to love

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Christ, but are in the midst of such a difficult time, they're tempted to think, maybe

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I should just go back to the old system, to Judaism. It's respectable, it's, you know, it's historical, it's beautiful, you know, all my friends are still there, my family, perhaps

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I should just go back. And of course the writer in Hebrews is saying, there's nothing there for you.

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If you remove the Messiah from Judaism, then Judaism is just a shell now.

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You know, the old covenant is from God, it was a gracious covenant, it was perfectly suited for its use, but it was meant to be temporary, it was meant to lead to the flowering of the new covenant.

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And if you say, I'm turning my back on Christ and going back to the old covenant shadows, then you have symbols that will never have a substance.

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And so it's hopeless. Right. It is empty because it's Christless. So the specifics that are mentioned there are important, but I want us to just get a general look, because saying author and finisher of our faith, we could say he is the beginning and the end, and he is everything in between of our

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Christianity. And so really we can widen that out to every way that God has become our salvation.

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So we looked at a lot of things together Sunday, which we won't have time to do, but let's just maybe each of us pick a favorite, and one favorite each, and then we'll talk about the cross.

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So you're not allowed to pick the cross, all right? So I'll give you my favorite, one of my favorites, all right? My favorite at the moment.

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And that is to think of viewing Christ in those short, quick glimpses we have in scripture of the son of God in eternity past, particularly in light of his being chosen to be our redeemer.

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You mentioned that God has said in scripture, that amazing thing, that his love preceded our love for him.

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He loved us, set his heart upon us, chose us even before he created.

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So he chooses to send mercy to his enemies and not just justice. But if you think about it, that choice is an empty choice if he has not also simultaneously, so to speak, chosen a captain or a champion for us.

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So when we speak of these things, we're speaking in the way that we think of as humans, the choice in time.

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And that's not the way God operates. He's a timeless being. So it has always been the delight of the triune

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God to redeem a people, to redeem his enemies, and to do it through the labor of the son.

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It has always been the delight of the son to embrace the father's choice of him, that he would be the one who would redeem a people at such terrible cost to himself for love of the father, for love of the people.

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And so we see an eternity past. And this is not clearly spelled out in scripture, but we have enough of these glimpses to see.

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Think of Isaiah 42, behold my servant whom I uphold.

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All right, so that doesn't speak of eternity. But then the next thing he says is, behold my chosen one in whom my soul delights.

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Now in Isaiah 42, he's saying these things prior to the incarnation of Christ. So in eternity past,

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I appointed a servant on my behalf who would accomplish all that needs to be done for you to be rescued.

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I chose him. He is the elect one. Or as Peter says, foreordained, foreknown, for this task.

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He is the great choice of the father. And all that flows in salvation, even election or predestination of the sinner to be brought to Christ and to be given peace with God through his son, even that, all of that rests on a greater choice, we could say.

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And the primary choice is that the father has chosen the son. He has eternally delighted in the son not only as the second person of the

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Trinity and when there's a perfect love between father, son, and spirit being expressed, but as the one who would be united to sinners to accomplish their redemption.

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And so, you know, to stop and think about that, there's so much hope for the Christian. There's so much for us to delight in.

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Absolutely. And for me, I think for me, it would have to be the teaching. So it is that teaching of Christ, the teaching of who he is.

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I mean, when you think of Matthew 6 and the Sermon on the Mount, that the only most complete sermon that we have of Jesus in his teaching, everything in it is so clear.

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It's so clear as to who God the father is and who Jesus as God is, but then also who the believer is and how we are to walk in his steps.

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But then it's not just for the believer, but when you look at how he taught those who were not believers, who antagonized him, and he stood before the

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Pharisees and withstood their attacks, withstood the darts that were thrown at him and never once questioned the father's provision for him.

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I mean, he says, you know, speaking to the young ruler, I have, what is it?

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Foxes have holes. And the birds have nests. Yeah, but I have nowhere to lay my head, right?

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Entrusting himself so that even when he has nothing and what he has, people are trying to take.

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So the Pharisees are coming in and trying to make things difficult. They're persecuting him. And Jesus just never exerts his own rights.

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As their creator, he could have just turned them into dust and he chooses not to. Instead, he presents the gospel to them.

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He teaches them. And so there's so many, so many examples throughout the

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New Testament where you do see this teaching of Christ that is just, there's so many great things there for us that we could spend a lifetime meditating on them and never move past.

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Yeah, and Peter talks about Christ's suffering as an example set for us to follow, that he did not revile in return, but kept entrusting himself to the one who judges righteously.

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So like you said, Christ shares the gospel with those that mock him. He also warns them and rebukes them.

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And that is the thing, he has that perfect balance. Right, but that worldly attitude, the attitude that they have, the pride, the self -centeredness, that never shows up in his responses to them.

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But it's also, and I can't help but contrast it to the kind of modern idea of what a man, or like a manly

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Christian should be. That should be defined by Christ. Yeah, yeah.

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And it is by his teaching. Yeah, the human. Well, we also of course see, we want to look at the cross as the great jewel of seeing

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God displayed so clearly. And Zachariah, all the way back in Zachariah chapter 12, we find that looking at Christ crucified for us, that is the beginning of turning to God and it breaks our hearts.

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Zachariah writes in verse 10 of that chapter, I will pour out on the house of David, God says, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication or of prayer, so that they will look on me whom they have pierced and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son and they will weep bitterly over him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

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And if we're unsure about who that's referring to, is that really referring to Christ on the cross and that God will pour out his spirit on the people and there will be among humanity, there will be a group of people that see it so clearly that they break their hearts as if their own firstborn had died because they realized their sin has been placed there.

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But John chapter 19, John explains there that this is speaking of Christ.

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When we think of looking at the cross, whether we think of it from the human perspective, the expiation of our sins, my sin transferred to him, like the

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Old Testament picture of the priest laying his hands on the head of the animal and prayer and my sin is transferred to the animal symbolically and that animal is either butchered or taken out of the camp.

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But our sin laid on Christ and we see our sin removed or whether we think of it from God's perspective, propitiation, that his righteous wrath is satisfied by the right and full payment due to him.

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Or whether we think of it as a ransom, I'm freed by this.

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So, we can come to the cross from various aspects. We can think of it as the triumph,

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Colossians chapter 2, that at the cross, the writings, the law's anger against us was written above Christ.

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He dies, he's raised, and in his resurrection, he publicly triumphs over every enemy of our soul.

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So, we can look at the cross from all these different ways. Spurgeon talks about this and he's from the

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Psalms when it talks about looking to God and their faces are radiant. He talks about looking at God in the person of his son on the cross and he says this,

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We invite you to look to this scene that you may be lightened. What are your doubts this morning?

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Whatever they be, they can find a kind and fond solution here by looking at Christ on the cross.

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You have come here perhaps doubting God's mercy. Look to Christ upon the cross and can you doubt it then?

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If God were not full of mercy and plenteous in his compassion, would he have given his son to bleed and die?

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Think you that a father would rend his darling from his heart and nail him to a tree? That he might suffer an ignominious death for our sakes and yet be a hard, merciless father without pity?

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God forbid this impious thought, this unholy thought. There must be mercy in the heart of God or else there had never been a cross on Calvary.

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But do you doubt God's power to save? Are you saying in yourself this morning, How can he forgive so great a sinner as I am?

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Oh, look there, sinner, look there to the great atonement made to the utmost ransom paid.

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Do you think that the blood has not an efficacy to pardon and to justify?

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So, wonderful little paragraph from Spurgeon. Whatever the doubts and the fears that arise in a true believer, we look to Christ.

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And really what Spurgeon is doing there is he's looking at both the ability and the willingness.

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And that's something that we've talked about a lot. Christ is both able and willing to save.

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Now, let's kind of pull all this together. There are those that will not look to Christ. And, you know, the only looking to Christ they ever have in their life is when they can't avoid it.

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Isaac Ambrose talks about this 400 years ago. People who maybe are required to go to church.

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And so they hear about Jesus. Maybe you are in a home where there are other believers or at a workplace with other believers.

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Maybe your neighbors are believers. And while you wouldn't call yourself an atheist, looking to Jesus is not a thing that you ever do purposefully.

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And we were talking before the podcast about there are some people that might look to Jesus in the midst of their religion, but it's really not because they want to.

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No, it's because they think... Well, it is a... we just used the word, the

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Catholic word... Penance? Yes, it's a form of penance. It's almost like, this is my religious duty.

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And so if I've done this, then I have right standing with God. Yeah, so I'm a good person.

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I go to my church or, you know, I listen to some Christian podcasts. But if you ask me what thrills me about religion, it is not this person.

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It's everything else but the person, whether it's how the doctrines fit together or the duties.

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Or it's even the future promise. It's the idea of heaven, right? And the escape of hell.

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So one thing that we do want to warn against, even in this, even for those who may be listening to a podcast or watching a podcast, don't settle for a secondhand look at Christ.

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Yeah, I remember a quote that Spurgeon said, I cannot see Christ with another man's eyes. You know, I cannot know him with another man's mind, love him with another man's heart.

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You know, I must, you know, personally, I must know him, see him, love him.

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Of course, there are reasons that we won't look to God. The Proverbs in Proverbs 10, it says, the wicked in his proud countenance does not seek

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God. God is in none of his thoughts. And so if we are a self -sufficient people in our own imagination, we might tip our hat to Christ.

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But the idea of waking up and setting the focus on some particular aspect of Christ and finding all our hope there depending on that today, that's so foreign to the hypocrite who has a religion of words, but he is not in love with Christ.

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Well, and it's also because it seems like such a simple thing, like, oh, I'm just going to look, I'm just going to gaze upon Christ.

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In the sermon Sunday, you pointed to Naaman, who went to Elisha because he had leprosy and he had a slave girl who was a

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Hebrew, and she said, well, there's this prophet in Israel who can heal you. And Elisha doesn't even come out to meet him, sends a servant, and the servant's with the word and says, go wash yourself in the

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Jordan River and you'll be healed. And Naaman refuses to do it. He's too proud. That's too simple of a thing for him to do.

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And then Naaman's servant comes and says, if he had asked you to do some great feat, you would have done it.

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And so often, especially in our religious culture, we want to look at the gospel at looking at Christ and say, no, that's far too simple.

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I must do more. There has to be more to it. And I want to earn it.

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Yeah, of course, there's more to the Christian life because everything flows from that saving look.

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But faith, Paul said in his day, faith is offensive. It's offensive to the

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Greeks, he said. You know, telling a Jew you're not right enough, you need

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Christ. Well, that offended their moral pride. But telling the Greek, you can't fix yourself with your intellect and your new life hack, your new scheme, that offended them.

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What do you mean, I transfer all my trust to a crucified Jew and that is at the heart of all my hope?

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That's nonsense. There's got to be something more. Now, of course, we're not saying that the theme of looking to Jesus or the concept of trusting

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Jesus for everything, that doesn't save anyone. It is the act of looking that is the mechanic that God has given us by which we receive.

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And as God works in us, you know, supplying all we need to look away from and to look toward, and as we receive through faith this union with Christ, which we talked about a lot last year, in Him, everything flows from that living connection of faith.

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And so while there is so much more that comes out of it, there is nothing that we bring to God but this desperate dependence.

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And by that, we are given everything. And that's so simple, you know, it's offensive.

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It is simple, but it's also that is the thing that happens when we are first converted, but then it has to also happen in every season of the

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Christian life. Yes, yes, the way in is the way forward. You know, we continue to look away from and look to.

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Let me read a quote. We'll have to kind of bring this together. This is what Theodore Monod said.

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He said, To go forth from ourselves and to forget ourselves, he's talking to the

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Christian, so that our darkness may flee away before the brightness of his face, so that our joys may be holy and our sorrow restrained, that he may cast us down and that he may raise us up, that he may afflict us and that he may comfort us, that he may despoil us and he may enrich us, that he may teach us to pray, that he may answer our prayers, that while leaving us in the world he may separate us from it, our life being hidden with him and God and our behavior bearing witness to him before men.

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So, looking at him and away from ourselves as we run the Christian race, all these things are occurring.

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Isaac Ambrose, toward the end of his introduction to the book, he gives some words to Christians who complain.

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Oh, you know, my pace is so slow. My prayer life stinks. You know, I need to know my

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Bible better. My heart gets so cold. And he tells them, looking to Christ, really setting your focus on him, in all the ways that we can do that, that is at the heart of the cure for all these complaints.

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Teddy, why don't you read us that quote from Isaac Ambrose. Looking to Jesus will preserve the health of all your graces.

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You that complain of deafness and dullness, that you cannot love Christ nor rejoice in his love, that you have no life in prayer nor any other duty, and yet you never tried this quickening path, or at least you are careless and inconsistent in it.

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What, are you not the cause of your own complaints? Yeah. Rutherford said when he was in prison, he wrote in a letter to his people who are kind of giving the same complaint.

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Oh, you know, we're just, we're so dry and cold. And he said, Christ is the fountain for you.

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So go to the fountain and drink, you know, go to him with these complaints. Find in him the fuel for today's obedience, the foundation for hope, you know, for a clear conscience.

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The example that you're going to follow today, the reason you're going to wake up today, the goal of all you're going to do today, it's all in Christ.

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So go to the fountain. And he said, we aren't thirsty people when we sit around and just complain.

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We are dry and we complain dryly of our dryness instead of going to a fountain.

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And that, I think, is quite a perceptive statement. Well, Theodore Monod in his little pamphlet, he kind of pulls it all together with these words.

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He says, look unto Jesus now if we have never looked at him before.

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Look unto Jesus afresh if we've ceased doing so. Look unto Jesus only.

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Unto Jesus still. Unto Jesus always. With a gaze more and more constant, more and more confident, changed into the same image from glory to glory, 2

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Corinthians 3. And thus awaiting the hour when he will call us to pass from earth to heaven and from time to eternity, the promised hour, the blessed hour, when we at last, we shall be like him.

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For we shall see him as he is. Next week, we're going to begin a new series.

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And it's one that I think follows really well on looking unto Jesus. And that is we're going to be looking at the topic of prayer.

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Both private and corporate. Right, that will be with Hugh Morris. And that will be with Jeremy and I.

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Hugh Morrison is a man that we've introduced on our podcast before. He's a church planter and pastor with HeartCry Missionary Society in Nova Scotia on the island of Cape Breton.

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And Hugh is a very faithful, humble, quite an encouraging and convicting man all in one.

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And then Jeremy Walker, which most of our folks will know. And also, I have to apologize to our listeners.

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I teased this out several weeks ago. But because we decided to do this series and we knew we were going to do the series with Hugh, we thought that that series with Jeremy would just be much better.

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I think it would serve much better to follow these two series than to play it when we hadn't planned. Private and corporate prayer.