Run the Race to the End | Hebrews

Hebrews 12:1-11


Well, Good Morning!

If you have got your Bible this morning, I am going to read from Hebrews 12. If you have been with us over recent weeks you will know that we have been looking into this letter to the Hebrews. And this is going to be our last look into it because next week, as Kellen has said, will be my last Sunday. And so, I want to speak in a different manner next week.

But I am going to read from Hebrews 12, and I will read from Hebrews 12:1-11.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

“Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

“And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.’

“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons.”

(And by the way, I forgot it was Father’s Day today until a couple of days ago, but here is a Father’s Day verse and you have to live with this.)

“For what son is not disciplined by his father?

“If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.

“Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!

“Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

“Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.

“Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.”

Well, that’s a rich passage and we only have the time to look at some of the main issues there. And my text really is Hebrews 12:1 – I will read it to you again.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us.”

There is a race to be run, but at the same time there are things to entangle us which will divert us, take us out of the race, and he is warning them that although these Hebrew believers were genuine believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, they were in danger of becoming entangled in things which took them out of the race.

I was reading actually just a few days ago about a man called Lloyd Scott, who set a new world record for the slowest marathon time by finishing the Edinburgh marathon in six days, four hours, thirty minutes and fifty-seven seconds. But he was wearing a 130lb deep sea diving suit.

He also ran the New York marathon, but he did that in a little shorter time, just less than six days. And he ran the London Olympics marathon course in 2012 (I don’t think the race; just the course) and he finished that also in just under six days.

And he raised many hundreds of thousands of dollars for a leukemia in children charity, which he had been himself a victim of.

When the writer says run the race marked out for us and throw off everything that hinders, he is saying get rid of those 130 lb deep sea diving suits because we can get hold of things which cling to us, which begin to weigh us down. And as we will see, we don’t even realize that’s what they are doing because they very subtly, incrementally begin to take a prominent place in our lives and they violate the purpose of the race.

The idea of the Christian life being a race is quite frequent in Paul’s writings. In Acts 20:24 he says to the leaders of the church in Ephesus,

“I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me.”

1 Corinthians 9:24 he says,

“Don’t you know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the price? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

He said to the Galatians, “You are getting sidetracked. You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?” What was it that took you off course is his challenge to them.

And in 2 Timothy 4:7 Paul, at the end of his life, said,

“I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

The Christian life is not a static thing where we come to Christ and that’s it and now, we just kind of keep ourselves out of mischief and hopefully one day get washed up on the shores of heaven and it’s little more than that.

No, it’s a race, it’s a journey, there is development, there is progression, there is movement, there is further to go. And that is true for all of us.

And to get there requires - the word he uses here is “run the race with perseverance.”

Perseverance is discipline. And again in 1 Corinthians 9:24 Paul writes,

“Run in such a way as to get the prize.

“Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

“Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air.

“No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

There is an intensity in those words. And Paul says if I am going to run this race, I do not run it aimlessly. I don’t just drift along - a little bit of Sunday Christianity, but through the week there is no serious attention to God, no serious attention to His Word.

We haven’t time to do this but if you go through Hebrews, as I have this week, to count the number of times he warns the people against the danger of drifting away, you will see it is a pre-eminent thought in this letter. He warns about drifting, he warns about turning away from the living God, he warns about them having an unbelieving heart. He talks about them being hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. He tells them they need to hold their confidence firmly to the end. He tells them to strengthen their feeble arms and to strengthen their weak knees because every one of us is vulnerable. Every one of us is vulnerable.

For some years, as you know, I was at Capernwray Hall in the north of England where we had a yearlong Bible school, which I led for a number of years.

We had students who came to us from all over the world. They were there for a year’s intensive study of the Word of God. They were all committed to Jesus Christ. They all declared that on their application forms.

They were there because they wanted to grow in Christ. They were there because they wanted to be involved in serving Christ. They were there because they wanted to know the Word of God.

The only textbook we used in that whole year was the Scriptures, the idea being that at the end of this year you will know what the Scripture says and the principles that govern the Christian life.

And I used to say at some point in the year to the students – I said, “Here is a sober, sad fact: some of you five years from now will not be walking with God. Some of you in the future will be as far away from God as you could possibly be.”

And students would say to me, “Man, that’s a bit tough, isn’t it? Why do you say that?”

Because it happens every year. Not because people deliberately, willfully reject the Gospel or reject the Christian life or reject what they have known of Christ; they just incrementally begin to drift. They incrementally allow something to take the place as the priority in their lives of the role of Jesus Christ and His agenda and His purposes and His resources.

And I have seen it happen again and again. It will happen amongst us in this crowd here this morning. Some of you already know it’s happening. And we will see in a moment ways in which it is happening in some of our lives already.

Some of us think we stand – well you are especially the dangerous ones. Take heed lest you fall.

How do we avoid this?

So, I want to look at three things in this passage, three headings. First of all, be sure to observe. There are certain things he tells us we need to observe.

Secondly, be sure of the obstacles - he points out some of those obstacles.

And be sure of the objective, which he also points out here.

So first of all, be sure to observe. And I take that from Hebrews 12:1:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Who are these great “cloud of witnesses”? I think it is highly unlikely he is talking about a crowd of spectators who have all gone before looking out of heaven and cheering us on saying, “Wow, that’s good! Keep going!”

We don’t know how much those who have gone before us, who have already died, who are already in heaven know what’s going on on earth anyway – we just don’t know.

But I don’t think that’s the meaning that the writer has in mind here. More likely the “cloud of witnesses” are the people he has just written about in Chapter 11, which we looked at last week, where he talks about a whole string of people who lived by faith. Do you remember that?

That’s why Hebrews 12:1 says,

“Therefore…”

Therefore has a reason for being there. And the therefore is the link – what has gone before is look at these men, these women, who lived by faith. Look at all the wonderful things that happened to them; look at all the terrible things that happened to them as well. Look at the fact that none of them received what they were really looking for. They were looking for a better land etc.

He says, therefore, because of this, realize that we have a cloud of witnesses to the utter sufficiency of God and look at them and listen to them and learn from them.

It is not so much that they are watching us as a cloud of witnesses, but we are watching them and their lives are to us a witness of the sufficiency of God in people’s lives.

Look at Abraham, he might say. Look at the witness of Abraham’s life. He trusted God to bring about what God had promised him, though he waited for years and years and years. He battled with doubt; the very thing God had promised was impossible at the time became more impossible as time went on.

He said, “Look at him. Don’t expect anything is going to happen like this. Look at Abraham. He is a witness to the fact you wait until God in His timing brings about what He has purposed.”

Look at the witness of Moses. Moses trusted God for what seemed to be an impossible task, that seemed to be completely outside of his ability. “I can’t; who am I?” And God said, “I will be with you.”

And Moses was nervous about that. “Well, who are You?”

“Well, I am who I Am. I am, in the present tense, totally sufficient.”

Moses had to step out in obedience to God, knowing humanly he risked everything, and he discovered God was faithful. He is a witness to what it means to live by faith in God.

Look at Abel. He was murdered because he acted in faith and his brother didn’t. And his brother was jealous and killed him.

People get killed, you know, because they are faithful to Jesus Christ and faithful to God.

Look at the witness of Noah. He mentions him, who is willing to believe something nobody else believed. And they mocked him and thought he was a fool, but he believed it because God had said it to him.

And the list goes on, as you know, men and women, many of whom had a thousand reasons for giving up, a thousand reasons for drifting away. But they didn’t. And they are the witnesses to us of the faithfulness and sufficiency of God when you cannot see sometimes what God is doing.

That’s why in Hebrews 11:39 it says,

“These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.”

Which means this: none of us get it all here and now. And we are aware of what we don’t have. We are aware of what isn’t yet real. We are aware of what has not yet come to fruition in our lives.

But keep trusting Him. Keep trusting Him. Keep persevering. Perseverance is a good word in the New Testament.

Revelation 2:3 to the church in Ephesus, Jesus, who wrote that letter, says,

“You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.”

Many of us do get discouraged. There are times in all of our lives when we do wonder what God is doing. We wonder if He is doing anything at all. We do wonder why our prayers are unanswered and we ask, “is it because I am praying wrongly, I am not praying enough? Is there something in my life that is stopping my prayers getting through or is it because God is not answering them?”

And we battle with these things. I battle with these things; I am sure most of us have.

We sometimes wonder is it even true? Am I kidding myself?

I know a guy who said to me not long ago that he wasn’t sure if God existed or not and he wanted to believe but he didn’t really have enough evidence to believe. So, he said, “I was standing on – it was a wooded path – and I said, ‘God if You are real, move that piece of wood from there over to here.’ And nothing happened.”

So that’s his answer. There is no God.

God doesn’t play tricks like that, does He? We wonder why doesn’t God – I mean there is so much mess in the world – why doesn’t God make Himself so incredibly obvious to people so that everybody would know? Either believe or reject and reject would be the hard thing to do because the evidence is so strong.

All these questions have been asked before as well. These questions have been asked by these folks in the Old Testament Scriptures because although there were victories in Hebrews 11 that were seen through the Old Testament history, there were also fears, there were disappointments, there were defeats, there were unanswered prayers.

I will read again; I read these verses last week, in Hebrews 11:35:

“Others were tortured and refused to be released…Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.

“They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world wasn’t worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

“Yet, these were all commended for their faith.”

Not for their faith to get out of their problems. You know, you are going to be sawn in two, for instance – that’s one of the things he cites. “Well, I have faith that God is going to get me out of this.”

No, we have faith in God no matter what happens circumstantially.

And one of the easiest ways to drift away from God is to become a fair-weather Christian that says, “If God will make life good for me, I will trust Him. And if the sun is shining and the sky is blue and the grass is green, I will worship Him and love Him and serve Him.”

“If the lights go out and I don’t know what’s going on and life becomes hard and inevitably doubts begin to rise within our hearts, I am not going to doubt my doubts; I am going to believe my doubts and doubt what I believe, because what I believe is that God is good and God is present and God is doing something.”

And so, he says to avoid all of this, be sure to observe – to avoid being diverted from the race, be sure to observe what God has done in other people’s lives in the past and don’t just read the good stories. Read the tough stories as well.

Secondly, be sure of the obstacles because he goes on to say in the middle of Hebrews 12:1,

“Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.”

There are things that hinder. There are things that entangle. And the things that entangle are not normally intentional. We suddenly find things beginning to get in the way in our lives and we get diverted and before long we are wrapped up in them, and before long we are sidetracked.

It is not necessarily the wrong things that get us into trouble; it is often the right things that get us into trouble because we think they are okay.

Did you ever notice that when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, He was not tempted to do one thing that was wrong?

It’s not wrong to turn stone into bread; I mean there is no law against that.

It wasn’t wrong for people to recognize He was the Son of God by jumping off the temple.

It wasn’t wrong for Him to be invited to rule the world. One day He would.

The most subtle attacks from the devil are taking the things that are in themselves legitimate, in themselves nothing wrong with them, but feeding them into our lives in a wrong way for a wrong purpose.

John Piper writes,

“The fight of faith or the race of the Christian life is not fought well or run well by asking, ‘What’s wrong with this?’ or ‘What’s wrong with that?’ but by asking, ‘Is this the way of greater faith in God and a greater love and a greater purity and a greater courage and a greater humility and a greater patience and a greater self-control – not is it a sin, but does it help me run the race? Or is it in the way?”

“Young people especially,” John Piper goes on to say “don’t ask about your music or your movies or your parties or your habits or your social media, ‘what’s wrong with it?’ but ask ‘does it hinder my growth in Jesus?’”

It’s not just young people who need to ask that question.

And he says, deliberately and intentionally throw off everything that hinders.

If you go back to that list in Hebrews 11 from the Old Testament, there are people not in that list who should have been in that list.

Cain should have been in that list but he wanted his relationship with God to be on his own terms, at his own expense which was as low as an expense as he could have.

He ended up killing his brother because his brother lived by faith and trusted God and listened to God.

Esau should have been on that list. He was the firstborn son of Jacob [Isaac] but Esau wanted everything easily and cheaply so he lost his birthright to his brother Jacob on whom, what should have been on Esau, the blessing of God fell on Jacob instead, and Jacob became the line through which the nation of Israel came.

King Saul should have been on this list. King Saul was appointed by God and the Spirit of God came on him. He demonstrated God was with him and everybody recognized it. But he got too big for his boots. He became a little bit too important in his own thinking. And Saul began to think that “normal rules don’t apply to me.” And God had to put him off the throne and raise up David who replaced him.

The antidote to these dangers requires diligence and discipline, this passage tells us.

If you look at the book of Hebrews as a whole, it teaches the Christian life is both a life of resting and a life of wrestling. These are not contradictory. To a life of resting because back in Hebrews 4 , for instance,

“Since the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.” [Hebrews 4:1]

This is a rest in the sufficiency of God. It is a rest into which all believers are invited but we don’t take the burden on our own shoulders; we transpose the burden on to His shoulders of our lives.

We cast all our care upon Him, as the New Testament says, because He cares for us.

This is a rest into which we are invited, and it is a wonderful, wonderful rest.

You know in Matthew 11:28 Jesus said,

“Come to me if you are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you; learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

So, He talks here about somebody who is burdened and weary and I will give you rest. What do you think He means? If you were carrying a heavy burden that was just weighing you down and you were feeling exhausted and I came along to you and said, “I will give you a rest,” what would you expect me to do?

Would you expect me to give you a book on techniques for carrying burdens easier? Would you expect me to give you new straps to carry the burden with? Would you expect me to stand and sing songs to cheer you on to help you carry the burden?

No, if I said, “I will give you a rest,” you would expect me to take your burden off your back and put it on mine and you rest.

Now that is a wonderful aspect of the Gospel that we rest in His strength, we rest in His sufficiency.

But in that same verse, same passage in Hebrews 4:9, he says,

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work just as God did from his.

“Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest.”

That sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Make every effort to enter rest. Why? Because there is a resting side and there is also a wrestling side. And that wrestling side includes,

“Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.”

That’s discipline. We have to consciously say is this something which is going to lead and suck me away from God and into sin?

Many of us play easily with sin and we think “I am never going to commit the sin, but I like to just, you know, play around it in my mind.”

And before long you are overwhelmed.

I heard Calisto Odede who is from Nairobi, Kenya speaking on one occasion. And he told what he said was an African story.

He said the law of the land said, “You must not eat porcupines.”

He said, “One day a man was found hunting porcupines.”

Someone said to him, “Do you not know that the law says that you must not eat porcupines?”

He said, “Yes, but it doesn’t say you mustn’t hunt porcupines.

Next day he was found carrying a porcupine. And somebody said, “Don’t you know the law says you must not eat porcupines?”

“Yes, but it does not say you must not carry porcupines.”

Next day he was skinning the porcupine.

Somebody said, “Do you not know that the law says you must not eat porcupines?”

“Yes, but it does not say you must not skin porcupines.”

Next day he was smelling the porcupine.

“Don’t you know there is a law that says you must not eat porcupines?”

“Yes, I do but it does not say you must not smell porcupines.”

Next day he was roasting the porcupine.

“Don’t you know there is a law that says you must not eat porcupines?”

“Yes, but it does not say you must not roast porcupines.”

Next, he was seen licking the porcupine.

“Don’t you know there is a law that says you must not eat porcupines?”

“Yes, I know but there is no law that says you must not lick porcupines.”

And of course, next time he was eating the porcupine.

We play that way with sin so often.

No, I am not going to eat the porcupine. I am not going to commit this sin where I may have some vulnerability, where I know there is a strong temptation, but I am going to beware here. I might think about it. I might imagine, but I am not going to do it.

I have been there a million times. And we are fools if we don’t recognize that once you are hooked you will go right the way through.

We cannot play with sin, for sin is a master, and until it is master, it has not finished its job. It will master us.

That’s why throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.

We are all different. We have different sins that easily entangle us. Those are the sins against which we put our biggest barriers, we must put our biggest barriers.

And to show how serious this battle is, in Hebrews 12:4 he says,

“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

Now again, referring back to Hebrews 11, there were many there who did shed their blood in the resistance of sin, the resistance of evil.

Some of you don’t take it that seriously, is what he is saying. You have not resisted sin in your struggle with it to that ultimate extent.

And then Hebrews talks about how God will keep us on track in the next verses. Hebrews 12:5, he says,

“Have you forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and punishes everyone he accepts as a son.’”

He is saying, to help us stay on track, God will bring loving, kind, remedial, painful discipline into our lives. The discipline of God is not punishment.

Hebrews teaches us more than any other book in the New Testament that the punishment for sin was fully met when Christ died on the cross.

In Hebrews 9:26,

“He appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

Once and for all.

Hebrews 9:28:

“Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people.”

Therefore, it is over and done. God does not punish us and God does not judge us in this life simply because He judged us in Christ and His judgement was satisfied by Christ.

That’s why we have to be very cautious about people who will jump up with the idea that when something bad goes wrong with a nation or something terrible happens, God is judging us and people usually then try to identify the cause for which God is judging them.

We are hearing that just recently.

It is true we can reap the consequence of our own sin, but God’s judgement was met in Jesus Christ on the cross. It is true if we live foolishly, we will reap what we sow, as Paul said in Galatians 6:4.

“If you sow to please the sinful nature, from that nature you will reap destruction.”

So, there is a cause and effect in sins and the destruction of sin in our own lives. But though God has judged sin, and as we acknowledge our sin and appropriate His death as satisfying the justice of God, the discipline of God continues as something else.

He speaks of the Lord’s discipline in these verses; he speaks of the Lord’s rebuke. This is not punitive, certainly not vindictive; it is refining, it is purifying, it is pruning.

How this comes to us we can’t predict but there is a clue here in Hebrews 12:7:

“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons.”

Any hardship can be a means of making us more dependent on God, of refining us. That’s why don’t reject the hardships in your life because any hardship, any trial, any sickness, any suffering may be an instrument to deepen our trust in God and our experience of God.

Be very careful of trying to pray away all your difficulties and all your problems. Of course, we pray about them but we must submit them to the will of God because those are the things which bring us closer to God again and again. Those are things which will wean us off the folly of our sin that we become engrossed in.

Now I know some of us are troubled by this because we make the equation between God being a God of love to those who are His people being comfortable.

That link is made all the time. But it is not a link the Scripture gives us in this life. This passage helps us understand why, in the Christian life, life is sometimes hard, why there is adversity, why there is sickness, why there are atrocities against the people of God and why God doesn’t just fix them and move away because He disciplines us, Hebrews 12:10 says,

“…for our good that we may share in his holiness.”

His holiness – our good. And those are connected.

And sometimes we are driven to greater holiness in Christ when things that we have been depending on are pulled away or we find that we are beyond our own natural resources and we don’t know what to do and we have nowhere to go but to God, which should be the first place, but it often isn’t.

Now I know I look back on tough times, hard times, even self-inflicted things in my own life that were a result of being drawn away and not throwing off things that hinder and being taken up with sins that easily have entangled. And I look back and I know that God has used them to discipline and correct.

And circumstances in our lives, I am sure most of us can see that.

It is for our good; it is for His holiness.

Never pleasant of course - Hebrews 12:11 acknowledges that.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

Of course, it is not pleasant. Of course, it is painful. Things in life are unpleasant, things in life are painful, but these are going to be the very things that produce a harvest of righteousness and peace, says the writer.

And so be sure of the obstacles that we are going to face which include those things which hinder us and sin which entangles us. And God’s remedy is to bring the discipline of a father into our lives.

And one last quick thing: be sure of the objective.

Hebrews 12:2 then says,

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”

Chapter 12 is a commentary on Chapter 11, which I think it is, which is the chapter on living by faith. He says, “Fix your eyes on Jesus because He is the author and finisher (or the perfecter as the NIV puts it) of our faith. [Hebrews 12:2]

You know we are tempted to fix our eyes on the difficulties, aren’t we? We are tempted to fix our eyes on the things that hinder us. We fix our eyes on the sins that entangle us and we say, “How am I going to deal with that?”

We fix our eyes on the hardships we are going through. We fix our eyes on the discipline of God that comes into our lives, and we say, “How can I cope with that, that, this, this, this?” And we don’t fix our eyes on Jesus.

Preoccupation with Jesus is the best way to live with our troubles and our hardships.

I am going to engage in a bizarre little exercise for a moment but it may help us to see this. If you have got a good imagination this morning, I want you to imagine a pink elephant and I want you to imagine it is sitting in a tree.

Okay, so get that picture in your mind of a big pink elephant. It is sitting in a tree clinging to branches or sitting between branches. Have you got that in your mind? Can you all see the elephant in the tree? Sure? Nobody’s snoozing?

Now I want you to take the elephant out of the tree in your mind’s eye. Take the elephant out of the tree. So, you have just got the tree left. How’s it going?

Okay, leave that. Here’s another thing. I want you to imagine a giraffe going down a rabbit hole. And I want you to imagine how that giraffe with its long neck, long legs, gets itself folded up enough to go down that rabbit hole. Do you – can you imagine that?

Have you got that picture in your mind? You think I am going to say something that is going to embarrass you, don’t you?

What’s happened to the elephant now as you are focusing on the giraffe? When you try to get the giraffe out of the tree, it’s difficult isn’t it? You are still conscious of it; it is still there.

If you focus on the giraffe in the rabbit hole, you forget the elephant.

Maybe that didn’t work, and if I didn’t, sorry about that. But the point is this that when we battle with sin and we battle with temptations and we battle with the hardships in our lives and we battle with the issues that weigh us down, though they may be, and they may be used as a discipline of God in our lives, fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith.

Fix your eyes on the fact “You are the One who began this and You are the one who will complete this,” and know that He is more committed to us than we are committed to Him – more committed to us than we are committed to Him. And He will lead us and He will produce in us His holiness.

Don’t go looking for it – you won’t see it; other people will see it. We see the whole mess inside but other people see the presence of God in your life.

And we know that He is trustworthy because in Hebrews 13:8 he says,

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

So, the God of Hebrews 11 that they trusted, that is the example to us, to look at them, this cloud of witnesses; we live today with the same God in Jesus Christ who is so utterly, completely and totally trustworthy.

There is a race to be run and let us run with perseverance, says the writer, the race that is marked out for us.

A few weeks ago, we had the Mully Children’s Family Choir here and they sang to us a beautiful African song. And I want you to hear it again as we close.

Some of us know some of the stories of those young people and what an anthem that song is for their lives.

But you notice,

There is a race that I must run,
There are victories to be won,
Give me power every hour to be true.

Not power every hour to win, but to be true, and then the winning will look after itself.

Let’s pray together.

Father, we thank You from our hearts this morning that You are present with us and that by Your Holy Spirit You have spoken to different ones of us. For some of us, we have been looking into Your Word and we find ourselves looking into a mirror and it reveals and exposes my own heart.

But thank You it is never a mirror designed to condemn us with what it shows, but to show us we can move beyond to sharing Your holiness and experiencing what is for our good.

And I pray You will help us, Lord Jesus, to really take seriously this journey that will bring the deepest satisfaction into our own hearts.