Run the Race

Reference

Hebrews 12:1-2

Small Group Discussion Questions

Read Hebrews 12:1-2 together. Why is it significant that the Bible describes the Christian life as a race of endurance?
One of the ways we can take courage in our own race of faith is by looking to the saints of the past. Quickly skim through Hebrews 11. Which of the examples from the Old Testament listed in Hebrews 11 speaks to you the most?
Who are Christians from your own life whose example in the faith has encouraged you?
This passage tells us that we should lay aside not only sin, but "weights" that keep us from running as hard after Jesus as we can. What is the difference between a "weight" and a sin? What are some weights that are currently weighing you down in your life?
As you think about the example of Jesus' life and ministry, how does that encourage you in your race of faith?
Ultimately, faith is the "assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). What does this mean? How should this encourage us when we are discouraged by the rewards and promises it seems like God is withholding from us in this life?

Sermon

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also 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.

There are two primary metaphors that the Bible uses to describe the Christian life. The first is that the life of the Christian is life of warfare.

Ephesians 6:12 - “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
1 Timothy 1:18 - “… wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience.”
2 Timothy 2:3-4 - “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.”
With the authority of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit we wage war against Satan, the spiritual forces of darkness, and the corrupting power of sin both in the world and in our own hearts.

The second metaphor is that the Christian life is a race of endurance.

1 Corinthians 9:24 - “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.”
2 Timothy 4:7 (combining both metaphors) - “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
What is this race? I think Paul answers that question for us in the last text we just read—2 Timothy 4:7 —I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. The race that we run as Christians is the race of faith. But this isn’t a race where we are competing against one another—this is a race of endurance with the goal of holding onto our faith in Christ until the very end. A race, as we’ll see in our text this morning, that compels us to throw aside every weight and sin that is hindering us from running as hard after Jesus as we possibly can.

When I consider this second metaphor, the Christian life as a race of faith, I can think of no better example than Jim Elliott, the 20th century missionary martyr who laid down his life for the sake of reaching the lost tribes deep in the Ecuadorian jungle. Jim Elliott’s story is remarkable to me, not only because of how it ended, but the way in which he meticulously ordered every facet of his life toward this singular aim of knowing Christ and making him known. In high school, Jim was known to place his Bible on top of his stack of textbooks in an effort to spark conversations with his fellow students. During his years spent at Wheaton College preparing for the mission field, he began keeping a journal of his prayers, meditations on Scripture, and personal reflections. God was fashioning him into a man who was intimately aware both of his deep sinfulness and the sweetness of his Savior who shed his blood to atone for that sinfulness.

But Jim’s single-minded focus on the race set before him was not confined only to private devotions—it extended to how he spent his free time and cared for his physical health. He always had scripture memory cards with him so that whether he was between classes, or even waiting in line at the cafeteria, he could take “every thought captive to Christ.” He joined the Wheaton wrestling team, believing it would help him stay in shape for the mission field. He was meticulous about getting enough sleep at night and eating the right foods that would fuel his body for the race that lay ahead of him.

He couldn’t have known that only 7 years after graduating from Wheaton, 2 years after marrying his wife Elisabeth, and just 10 months after the birth of his only child, he would be asked to lay down his life for the sake of Christ—and not just metaphorically. On January 8th, 1956, deep in the jungles of Ecuador, Jim Elliott, just 28 years old, was martyred by the Auca tribe, the very people he was trying to reach with the gospel.

We may hear a story like this, of a young godly man, killed in the very prime of his life and instinctively think, “How tragic!” But that simply reveals how far off our thinking so often is from the Bible. The question that we want to answer this morning is this: How do you live a life that truly matters? How can we, like the apostle Paul, and Jim Elliott, and every saint who has gone before us, be found faithful at the end of our race?

How do run the race of faith? We look in three directions:

Look to Saints of the Past
Look to Your Present Race
Look to Jesus

1. Look to Saints of the Past

The author of Hebrews is writing to a church primarily made up of Hebrews Christians (hence the name of the book) who were experiencing incredible persecution, both from Jews who wanted to pressure these new Christians to return to the subjection of the Law, and the Roman pagans who were angered at their refusal to honor Caesar as Lord. Hemmed in from both sides, these believers experienced significant temptation to reject the same gospel message that had saved them. Or, if not reject the gospel outright, live and speak in such a way to minimize its offense.

We see a great summary of the author’s heart for the church in 6:11-12:

“And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

Certainly there were some among the Hebrews who were tempted to walk away from the faith entirely, but there were also those who were tempted, perhaps, not to run a different race, but to run just a bit more sluggishly, and a bit less earnestly. Basically, these Christians were facing a similar temptation to us today. And so, the author of Hebrews calls them, and now calls us to take courage for the race ahead of us. The first way we can do that is by recounting the stories of saints from the past.

Remember, he says, that you are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Who is this “great cloud of witnesses?

He is referencing back to chapter 11, what is often called the “Hall of Faith—” an extensive list of followers of God, both men and women, from the Old Testament who all exercised great confidence in the promises of God, even (and maybe especially) when the fulfillment of those promises seemed impossible. And this is the very essence of faith, is it not? This is why the author of Hebrews defines faith in 11:1 as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The Hebrew Christians were in a position where the cost of earnestly following Jesus was very visible—rejection, persecution, imprisonment, even death. What wasn’t visible to them, though, and what often feels invisible to us today, was the reward—the outcome of faithfulness. This is why we should see it as a great kindness of the Lord that he has given us the gift of hindsight, the ability to look back at examples of path faithfulness and consider the outcome of their lives.

We are given 19 examples of faithfulness in Hebrews 11, and each one is well worth your attention and study, but for our purposes this morning, I want to laser in on just two examples: Abraham and Sarah.

What can we glean from the faith Abraham and Sarah, the great forefather and mother of the people of God?

First, look with me at 11:8-10:

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

God called him to leave his home, but didn’t tell him where he should actually go. He left, trusting that the Lord would show him the way. And God did lead him to the Canaan, the land of promise, but look at verse 9 again: “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents.” It almost doesn’t seem fair, does it? You might expect that if God were to call Abraham to leave a place he knew and loved, that he would provide a better place where he felt even more “at home.” But Abraham and Sarah spent the rest of their days on earth living as foreigners in a strange land, functional nomads with no permanent place to call home. This fact, John Calvin explains, is itself the self-attesting commendation of Abraham’s faith, “that he became a sojourner in the land of promise; for to be a sojourner seemed contrary to what had been promised.”

What enabled Abraham to accept what to us might have felt like a disappointing and confusing lot in life? Verse 10 tells us:

“He was looking forward to the city that foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”

Or consider the faith of his wife, Sarah in verse 11:

“By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”

If Sarah’s faith had simply been in what she could see—the physical reality of her old age—she would have had no reason to believe the promises of God. But it says that she received power to conceive, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”

“But what a minute, Aaron,” you might say, “Sarah’s faith was far from perfect. Didn’t Sarah laugh at the angel when he first told her that she would conceive? And didn’t she eventually tell Abraham to impregnate her servant Hagar after they had waited for several years for the birth of their promised son?” Yes, that is true. So why then is Sarah here commended for her faith?

Sarah’s example, not of perfect faith, but wavering faith, actually teaches us a fundamental lesson on the nature of true faith. What matters most is not the strength of your faith, but the object of your faith. What was commendable about Sarah’s faith was it’s object—God Himself! “She considered him faithful who had promised.”

When you consider the nature of your faith in God, are you more prone to feel encouraged or discouraged? This might as well be a trick question, right? If we’re being honest, who of us doesn’t feel some sense of discouragement over how often our faith wavers? How prone we are, like Sarah, to place our confidence in what we can see and understand? But friend, if this is you, take heart! What is faith other than the prevailing conviction that God is faithful to fulfill his promise, even when we are faithless? Heed again the encouragement of John Calvin who explains,

“And hence we deduce a useful doctrine, ― that when our faith in some things wavers or halts, it ceases not to be approved of God.”

How incredible is it that even weak, wavering faith like ours is cherished and commended by God!

What I find so profound about the example of Abraham and Sarah is that they died in the faith, never in their lifetimes receiving the things that God had promised. It’s so satisfying to hear stories of people who overcame great suffering and hardship to come out the other side stronger, wealthier, and more successful. We love the idea that with enough hard work and determination, we too can plough through hardship and receive great blessings in this life. And sometimes this is true. But we live in a world that is still under the curse, where even the choicest fruits are still marred by sin and brokenness. This is why we’re not surprised when we read about celebrities and the ultra-rich who reach the zenith of worldly wealth and success and are left wondering, “Is this all there is?”

C.S. Lewis says, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” This was Abraham and Sarah’s experience.

Look with me at 11:13:

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

Abraham and Sarah were given just a small taste of the blessings God had promised to them— They witnessed the birth of Isaac, but didn’t get to live to see the multitude that would descend from him, a number that the Lord said would exceed the stars in the sky. They entered the promised land, but were never at home there. They received a foretaste of the fullness God had promised them, but “greeted them from afar.” Verse 15 tells us that they could have returned to their homeland if they wanted to, but to do so would have been to forfeit the heavenly reward that God had prepared for them—their true homeland, the new heavens and the new earth.

What bearing does this have for us today? How does the example of Abraham and Sarah’s faith help us run the race that is set before us? I think we can glean two lessons:

If you choose to make this world your home, you forfeit your home in the world to come.
1. 1 John 2:15 “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
Don’t be discouraged when you don’t see the full fulfillment of God’s promises in this life. There are some who might tell you that material blessings are guaranteed for those with sufficient faith, but this is a false gospel.
1. 11:16 “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”
2. Matthew 6:19-20 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

You could spend a lifetime gleaning encouragement from all of the Old Testament saints listed in Hebrews 11, but let me commend one more resource to you—Christian biographies. Read about the lives of Christian men and women from church history who, like Abraham and Sarah, lived as sojourners and strangers in this world, living instead for the world to come! This to me is one of the most spiritually edifying practices you could do right now to strengthen your faith and fight against spiritual apathy. There are too many good biographies to choose from, but I’m going to list a few of my favorites that I want you to write down (many of which we have in our church library right now):

“So, the first direction we look in the race of faith is this: 1. Look to Saints of the Past. The second direction is this:

2. Look to Your Present Race

Back in our college days, Melissa and I went on a mission trip to a country in North Africa and France. It was a powerful experience to witness how the Lord was working through faithful Christians in a beautiful but very hard country. Toward the end of the trip, one of the other students asked the missionary who was there how we should process what was for us a profoundly moving two week experience. And I’ll never forget what he said in response.. He said, “You should pray, ‘Lord, don’t let me just be moved; let me be changed.”

This is the same message the author of Hebrews has for us this morning—don’t just be moved by the stories of Christians from the past, be changed.

Look with me again at Hebrews 12:1:

12:1 ”Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…”

Picture yourself, right now, running in the greatest race of your lifetime, keeping in your mind’s eye the stories and faces of all the dear saints who have gone before you—the Abrahams and Sarahs, the apostles, the Amy Carmichaels, the Hudson Taylors, the Jim Ellliots—who have all completed the race and held on to the faith and have received the same prize that is promised to you. In the same manner by which these brothers and sisters ran, we are called to run the race set before us.

Verse 1 gives us three instructions for how we are to run our present race:

lay aside every weight,
lay aside every sin which clings so closely,
we are to run with endurance.

We’ll take each in turn.

First, we are to “lay aside every weight.”
Marathon runners and long-distance cyclists know that in a race, every ounce matters. Every non-essential piece of clothing and gear can make the difference between winning and losing the race. If you weren’t terribly concerned about the outcome of the race, extra weight might not seem like such a big deal. Wouldn’t it be nice to have extra snacks or a cushier bike seat? Is it really so bad to try and make the race as comfortable as possible?

The temptation many of us fall into is to assume that the bar of “Christian faithfulness” is simply avoiding sin. But what a sad, low bar this is! Please hear me on this—what delivers us from our sins and secures our eternal heavenly reward is the perfect righteousness of Jesus, not our works. But it is possible to waste your life. It is possible to run the Christian race so weighed down, not just with sins, but with the comforts and pleasures of this world that you pass the finish line whimpering, wheezing, and out of breath.

1 Cor. 9:24 “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.”

Isn’t it telling that the author of Hebrews not only instructs us to lay aside the sin that entangles—that is easy for us to understand—but these “weights” as well? Sins are not the only things that can weigh down your Christian life. A weight is anything in your life that is prone to turn your gaze away from Jesus and running after him as hard as you can. So often these weights start off as good things that become excessive over time.

If you were to take an inventory of your life right now, are there areas that have become excessive? A home that is larger/more expensive than you need? Too much stuff that requires a lot of upkeep/organization? Hobbies that have become too consuming? A calendar that is overstuffed with extracurricular activities?

This extends too to how we care for our physical bodies: are you eating food that is making you physically fatigued and mentally foggy? Are you eating too much food? Have you become overly dependent on caffeine or alcohol to make it through the day?

It is not wrong to enjoy the good things in life. We know from James 1:17 that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” But the purpose of these good gifts is not to draw our attention to the gifts themselves, but to the Giver of the gifts. And so, how can you determine whether the good things you have in your life turned into weights? Ask yourself the question, “Is this thing more of an accelerant or more of an impediment to running the race of Christian faithfulness? Remember, we are not asking the question, “Is this sinful?” But, “Is this helpful?” Can I encourage you to do this, even this week? Maybe even at lunch today after church? Consider the major categories of your life—your home, your finances, your hobbies, your schedule—and ask yourself, “What are the weights that need to be laid aside?”

Second, we are to lay aside the “sin which clings so closely”
These are the heaviest burdens that slow us. The CSB translates this verses as “the sin which so easily ensnares us” which I think helps us get at the active nature of sin. There are forces that are actively at work to hold you in bondage to sin: Satan, the great deceiver, accuser, and enemy of the people of God, and your own flesh which still wages war against you. The good news for the Christian is that sin, Satan, and the flesh no longer have dominion over you. If you have trusted in Jesus’ substitutionary death for your sins on the cross, your sin no longer has the final say—Jesus does. And more than that, Jesus not only secures your deliverance from sin, but your power over sin by his Holy Spirit which is now alive in you.

Whatever pet sin you have right now that you feel totally mastered by: unforgiveness, irritability, lust, fear of man—these things that cling so closely have perhaps ensnared you for years—by the power and authority of Jesus you can put it to death and cast it aside.

How do you do this? The Bible makes it really clear.

You confess your sins to Jesus
1. 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
You confess your sins to other Christians
1. James 5:16: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
You walk in true repentance.
1. 2 Corinthians 7:10 “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”
2. Colossians 3: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you… Put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love. [Put off, and put on].
And you let Jesus, not your sin, define you.
1. Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Third, we are to run with endurance the race that is set before us
Remember again the story of Abraham and Sarah. If they had placed their confidence in seeing the full fruition of God’s promises in their lifetimes, they would have been bitterly disappointed. But they were looking forward to the better country, the heavenly Jerusalem that God had prepared for them. They ran their race with endurance, looking not, as Paul said, “to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18).

Brother and sister, maybe you are struggling this morning with confusion or bitterness as you consider all the hardship the Lord is allowing you to go through right now, despite your sincere attempts to honor and obey him. Maybe you feel a bit like you have been sold a bill of goods. If this is you, can I gently suggest that perhaps the problem is not God’s faithfulness to reward your obedience, but your timeline for when you expect the rewards to come? Run with endurance the race that is set before you. Look forward to the reward that is to come.

But there is one more place that we should look and it is the greatest of all. Let’s turn now to our final point. In the race of faith we must 1) Look to Saints of the Past, 2) Look to our present race, and 3)…

3. Look to Jesus

There are many shining examples of faith from the saints of old, but there is one to whom we look whose glory far outshines all the rest. One who left his eternal throne to enter into the broken world that our sin had fashioned. One who took on flesh and had “no form of majesty that we should look at him,” who was born not in the palace of a king, but a humble manger. One who spent 30 years of his 33-year life living faithfully in total obscurity. The One who repeatedly forfeited personal comfort and ease in service of love. The One who always had time for children, the sick and destitute—those who could offer him nothing in return. The One who said that he came not be served, “but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The One who was willing to leave the 99 in order to save the one. The One whose faith never wavered, even in the garden as his prayed with such agony that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. The One who on that same night prayed to the Father, “not my will, but yours, be done.” The One who suffered unjustly by the hands of wicked sinners and opened not his mouth. The One who willingly took on the cross, not to pay for any sins he had committed, but to pay for ours.

Look to Jesus!

He is the “founder and perfecter of our faith”

Founder: Jesus is the author of our faith. He is the one who, from before the foundation of the world, chose us in love, not for condemnation, but for salvation. He is the promised conquerer of Genesis 3 who would come and crush the head of the serpent. He is the promised Lamb of the Passover whose shed blood would shield his people from death and bring about life.

Perfecter: And Jesus is the perfecter of our faith—the one who not only began a good work in us, but promises to bring it to completion. He is the High Priest who prays for us, strengthens us, and lives to make intercession for us. He is the sender of the Holy Spirit who bears witness that we are children of God and is himself the seal and downpayment of our inheritance.

We look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross.

The key to enduring hardship is not to foster within yourself a hard stoicism that suppresses the desire for joy. Our aim—Jesus’ aim—is not less joy, or no joy, but a higher joy. Do you remember when Satan offered Jesus an off-ramp from the path of suffering during his wilderness temptation at the beginning of his ministry in Matthew 4? Satan took him up a high mountain overlooking all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and made a surprising offer—The rule of the nations! No cross, no wrath-bearing required. But all this was was a cheap imitation of the real reward—the real joy—that awaited Jesus on the other side of his finish line.

What was that reward? Hebrews tells us that for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

You see, Satan’s offer had a catch—Jesus could rule the nations, so long as Satan could rule over him. But what would have been the outcome for us if Jesus had chosen the off-ramp? We would still be dead in our sins, enemies of God, bound for eternal punishment. But praise God that Jesus did not take the off ramp! That he did not run his race looking for earthly rewards! And now Jesus is not sitting at Satan’s right hand, but God’s right hand. By his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, he has crushed Satan, and sin, and death, and on that final day he will make all his enemies into a footstool, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:10-11).

Jesus could endure the cross, despising the shame, because he was looking to the greater reward that was to come—the eternal glory of his throne as he rules and reigns with love over those he has redeemed.

And friend, because Jesus has paved that eternal pathway for us, you can do the same. You can run the race set before you and not be discouraged when the trials come and the rewards are delayed. Don’t give up! Don’t waste your life bound up in frustration over the things you feel God is withholding from you in this life. Keep running! Remember the saints who have gone before you, and the Savior who waits to greet you at the end of your race. Look to Jesus.