Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

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It’s easy to get into a rut, isn’t it? Hollywood seems to make the same movie over and over again. And we can just as easily get into a rut in our Christian lives.

We often get discouraged and distracted in our Christian walk. We see our failures, and we wonder if we’ll ever be able to please God the way we want. Sometimes living out our faith slows to a crawl. But living out our faith is more important than that! We don’t want our faith to be something merely from our past, or merely scheduled at some convenient time in the future, but something in our present. So how do we keep living out that passionate faith that we had when we first received Christ? The answer is to look to Christ.

Read Hebrews 11:39-12:2

All of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 were commended for their faith (v. 39). The chapter began by pointing out that by faith, the Old Testament believers were commended. Abel was commended by faith. Enoch was commended by faith. And now we read in verse 39 that all of these were commended through their faith. So everyone mentioned in this chapter was commended by and through his or her faith. But even though they had a faith that God approved of, and that God delighted in, they did not receive the fullness of the promises they received from God. They received the fulfillment of some promises. But the culmination of all their promises would not be in their circumstances, but in Christ. And that’s what we’d expect verse 40 to say. But that’s not what it says, at least not directly (v. 40).

So what in the world is verse 40 talking about? How can they be made perfect by anything that has to do with us? We can’t even make ourselves perfect! Trying to be perfect is like trying to beat me in Foosball. It’s not going to happen. We’re sinful, only made perfect by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, and even that perfection is something we have to wait for. It doesn’t happen in this life. And yet the text says that apart from us, they should not be made perfect. What in the world is it talking about?

Think through this with me. They didn’t receive the ultimate fulfillment of the promises. God provided something better for us. What was the better thing that God provided for us? We have the blessing of seeing Christ, who fulfilled their promises! We have something from God that all the Old Testament believers lacked. They longed to see Him, to know Him, to see the salvation that God would provide. And they did see Him, but only from afar. But we get to see Christ in His fullness. We see Him born in a manger, being cared for. We see Him as a child, asking questions that amazed the rabbis and teachers. We see Him growing in wisdom and stature, which blows my mind. We see Him revealing Himself through miracles. We see Him teaching, and serving, and loving. And we see Him die on a cross, paying the price for our sin, satisfying the wrath of God, and then rising from the grave, and ascending to the right hand of the throne of God! Oh, how the believers before Christ came longed to see Christ as we see Him!

Verses 1-2 of chapter 12 complete this thought. This is a perfect example of why the chapter and verse designations in the Bible are not inspired. The reason Old Testament believers are not made perfect apart from us is because although they all died long ago, before Christ came, we live after the coming of Christ. They are made perfect alongside us. They looked to Christ as if off in the distance, others got to experience Christ in the flesh, and we now see the fullness of what Christ did for us, but we all look to Christ, because perfection comes only through Jesus.

So we are surrounded by these witnesses, witnesses of the faithfulness of God, and now we’re encouraged by them to look to Christ and endure. I ran on the cross country team a couple years in high school. We’d run a variety of courses, but I always liked running our own course the best. It wasn’t an easy course. But I did know what to expect. But that’s not why I liked the course. It was a hard course, even though I knew what was coming next. The reason I liked it was because there was always a crowd of people I knew who would cheer me on. The course was lined with people I knew on the sides. My parents would be there. Teachers would be there. Other students would be there. While running I’d get tired but then I’d see someone I knew and could say to myself, “Hey, there’s my best friend Daniel, cheering me on to keep going,” and that would give me a boost of energy. Or, “Hey, there’s my dad, I want to make him proud,” so I’d run a little harder to impress him. Or “Hey, there’s that cute girl in my class. She doesn’t even know my name, but maybe if I run faster she’ll notice me.”

In the same way, while we have a difficult course to run with our faith, we don’t do so alone. We get encouragement from people who have run the race before us. We run awhile, and get tired, but then hey, there’s Noah, who had faith in the midst of a corrupt world, and he encourages us to keep going despite the world around us. And then we run awhile longer, but then we get tired, but then hey, there’s Moses, who had faith and led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and he encourages us to keep going despite the obstacles. And we get encouragement from each other as well.

The men and women of faith in the Bible are only some of the witnesses in this great cloud. Your church family is a part of that cloud, too. They’re there for you to encourage you. Sometimes this comes through things they say. Sometimes this comes just by the way they live. And your church needs you to be part of that cloud of witnesses as well. So be an encourager. Encourage those younger in their faith to mature. Encourage those older in their faith to persevere.

We forget sometimes that life is a race. It’s not that we should be trying to get ahead of anyone else, that’s not the point. The point is that we simply need to endure. We need to keep the faith. In order to run with endurance, the text says in verse 1 that we need to lay a couple things aside. We need to lay aside every weight and sin which clings to us. Sin hinders our walk with God. I love the way the NIV renders this part of the verse. It says, “let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” The imagery is that of being surrounded by a web of sin, that we can so easily and so often get trapped in, but we need to cast off any sin that latches onto us. Have you ever noticed how you instantly turn into a karate master the moment you walk into a spider web? We need to have that same action when it comes to cutting sin from our lives. Listen, I know we’ll never be perfect, and I know we’ll always have room to improve, but that’s no reason not to willingly and intentionally sin. We need to be the kind of people who recognize temptation in our path and fight against it. Because sometimes sin masks itself, doesn’t it? It looks so harmless, but it weighs us down, and keeps us from running the race fully for God.

When I ran on that team, we had to wear the most ridiculous uniform. It was made out of the lightest material that was incredibly smooth to the touch. The jersey didn’t just have no sleeves. It had negative sleeves. It’s like whoever made the jersey asked themselves, “How can we take even more material away from this piece of clothing.” And the shorts were even worse. I mean, calling them shorts is generous. They should have been called shorter short shorts. I had underwear longer than these shorts. But the idea is that we wanted to be as light as possible, and that nothing we wore was keeping us from getting our best time on the course.

In our Christian walk, we need to take away anything that gets in the way. There are many things that we often do that aren’t necessarily sins, but they get in the way of us fully living the Christian life. You know the things I’m talking about. Maybe for you, it’s spending so much time watching television, or playing on the computer, or reading those books that you know are just a waste of time. Life is too short. Maybe it’s time to cast off some of those weights that are weighing you down.

Life isn’t arbitrary. God has a race set before us. On race day, we’d often have to run a course that we’d never seen before, so it was important that the course be marked well. And it’s important that we follow the course so that we’d stay on track. I remember during one practice, the coach told us a new route to take. It was a 6 mile loop around town. I didn’t pay attention as well as I should have, and I ended up missing a turn I was supposed to take. So instead of running 6 miles that day, I ended up running closer to 13. I should have paid better attention to the coach’s directions, but it sure would have been nice if the course was marked better, too. The race we run in life is marked out before us. God tells us what he wants from us through His Word. We simply need to be faithful. We need to endure.

So the question comes down to this: what is our motivation to endure? It’s the same motivation that the believers in the Old Testament had. It’s the same motivation of Noah, and Abraham, and Moses. It’s the same motivation of the youngest and oldest believer. We look to Jesus. Our faith began with Jesus, and it ought to continue with Jesus. Jesus is our example, our Savior, and our God.

He’s our example because He endured with joy. Jesus endured even the most difficult, painful moment of His ministry with joy. He knew that the suffering He experienced in the moment would be followed by eternal glory and salvation for sinners. The Christian life isn’t a burden, but a joy! God doesn’t give us rules to limit us, but so that we might enjoy life to the fullest! It’s kind of like coloring a picture. The lines on the page are there to guide us to make the most beautiful piece of art. Jesus models a life surrendered to God, so look to Jesus as your example.

More importantly, though, Jesus is our Savior because He endured the cross. By doing so, he paid the price for our sin, so that if we simply trust in Him, we would be saved from our sin, and spend eternity with Him in Heaven. So look to Jesus as your Savior.

Finally, Jesus is our God. Being God the Son, He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God the Father, and has all authority. But does He have authority over your life? Sometimes it’s impossible to endure in the faith because we’re not being humble before God. Jesus is Savior and Lord, and you can’t have joy in Him unless you surrender to Him.