The Author and Finisher of Our Faith

Listen Online:

Transcript:

We’re going to be in Hebrews chapter 12 this morning. Hebrews chapter 12. Last week we took kind of an in-depth look at Hebrews chapter 11, and all throughout chapter 11, it calls us to a life of faith.

We talked about these examples, or I talked about these examples of people who’ve lived lives of faith that the Bible gives and says these are people who believed God. They believed God and took his promises as true, even when they didn’t see the fulfillment in front of them. Some of them didn’t even live to see the fulfillment in their lifetimes, yet they knew that God would come through and deliver on his promises because he has a track record.

He had even then a track record of faithfulness, and his track record is even longer today because we have more of history to look back over and see how God has kept his promises. And it tells us in Hebrews 11, 6, that without faith it is impossible to please him. We cannot please God unless we come to him in faith, unless we come to him believing, as it says at the The remainder of the verse, excuse me, that he that cometh to God must believe that he is and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

If you want to have the kind of faith that enables you to obey God, even when you don’t see how it’s going to work out, when God tells you something, the kind of faith that will enable you to take that leap, take that step to obey him, is the kind of faith that comes to God and says, I believe you are who you say you are, and I believe you are a God who keeps his promises. I believe you are a rewarder of those who diligently seek you. And I don’t know about you, but if I don’t believe somebody is going to follow through on their promises, I don’t count on those promises.

And I don’t necessarily do the things that they are wanting me to do if I don’t trust them to hold up their end of the bargain. And God will sometimes call us to obedience that is scary, quite honestly, because we don’t know how the circumstances are going to work out. We will never be able to obey him in those circumstances.

We’ll never be able to take that leap if we don’t trust him. That’s why it says without faith it’s impossible to please God. And then it gives us these examples of those who have believed him, of those who have trusted him.

And now that we’ve looked at all that from last week, we come to chapter 12, and it compares this life of faith to a race. It compares it to a foot race. And it’s not in the sense that we’re competing against each other in this race.

I know that’s what we tend to think of as a race. We’re competing against one another to see who gets to the finish line first. But really, it’s a race in the sense that we’re striving to run well and to overcome the obstacles that are put before us. I’ve learned a lot about running in the last few years because my dad, as he passed 50, decided, you know what, I’m tired of being really overweight and walking with a cane.

I’m going to take up running. And I thought he was insane when he did it. Actually, I ran a 5K with him, and I was convinced he was insane.

he outran me but I’ve learned about this just from talking to him going with him to races standing at the finish line cheering him on um you know and I’ve one of the things that I’ve learned from my dad is that some people don’t run the race to be first across the finish line you know there are some people who run for the prizes and who run for the money but uh some people like my dad are running just to finish. And if he finishes the race, he considers that he’s won. And my dad is almost 60 now and he’s running marathons.

I don’t understand that. Maybe I’ll be there someday. I don’t like running at this point.

When I lived in Arkansas, I’d drive him up to Bentonville every year for the Bentonville marathon. And while he’s, I’d drop him off and he’s there lining up with all these hundreds of people to go run, and I’d go sit in the waiting area of the Walmart visitor center and put my feet up and have a donut and watch all these other people run. It wasn’t really on my list of things to do, but I’ve learned about him.

I’ve learned about this from him and the reasons for running. Everybody has a reason for the race they’re running, and like I said, some people, a very few in these crowds that go to these marathons run for the prize money. Most of them run for the accomplishment of having run well and having finished well.

And I have decided I run if there’s a snake. That’s about the only reason. So this passage compares the life of faith to a race and to a runner in the race.

And it describes it as something that we undertake for a reason. We don’t get in this race just because we wake up one morning and think, you know what would be fun? having to make really difficult choices in life, having to be obedient to God even though it’s scary and I don’t see how the plan ends, that sounds like fun.

Now, we get into this race for a reason, and it’s something that we want to do to the best of our ability. So we’re going to look at Hebrews chapter 12. We’re only going to look at two verses this morning.

Now, don’t let that make you excited. Yay, we’re going to get out early. Not necessarily.

Sometimes I have more to say about two verses than about 40. But let’s just look at both of them real quick. It says, starting in verse 1, Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Okay, let’s look at the beginning part of verse 1, where it says, wherefore seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. This cloud of witnesses that it’s talking about refers back to this hall of faith that we looked at last week in Hebrews chapter 11. All those people that were named in that chapter, and then even we get to verse 32 of that chapter, and he says, and I’m running out of time.

So we know there are more people that he could have given us examples of. Really, what we’re talking about is all those who’ve gone on before us. And that can be those that it mentions here from the Old Testament.

In our day, there are people who have gone on before us and who have run the race of faith well all the way to the finish line, and we can look to them for examples as well, of the same kind of people who’ve run well and finished their course. All of these are our cloud of witnesses. They’re the cloud of witnesses.

They’re the ones that he’s saying, look to them, look to their example. And all of this works together to encourage us to do the same thing and to run the race to live the life of faith. And what I’ve seen, as I said, accompanying my dad to some of these marathons, is runners will stick together sometimes.

And I don’t mean necessarily they’ll stay together in the same point on the race, but my dad is part of running clubs. I never knew there was such a thing. I called him last Saturday while I was working in the yard, and asked him if he wanted something I was getting rid of.

And he said, hang on, I’ll call you back. He was coming out of a running class. I said, you take a class for running?

I thought you just kind of knew how. No, I understand there are techniques and breathing things that they need to learn, but it just struck me as funny, a running class. I thought that was supposed to come naturally.

But he’s in running clubs and running classes, and these people will get together, and they’ll carload or whatever they do the night before, and they’ll meet each other at the starting line, and they’ll be there for each other at the finish line. Sometimes they’ll carpool to out-of-town races, I mean, they stick together. And one of the things that I’ve learned is that many times your buddies, if they finish the race before you do, they’ll be there down as you’re coming down the chute for the finish line, and they’ll be part of that crowd that’s cheering you on as you’re coming up trying to finish.

And I would think that kind of encouragement is very needed after you’re 26 miles into running, running for 26 miles. Sometimes they’ll stay and they’ll cheer you on. as those who have gone on before and finished the race are cheering you on as you’re coming toward the finish line.

And I think that’s part of the image that we get here, this cloud of witnesses. There are people who have gone on before us. I’m not saying they can literally see us.

I don’t believe people can see us from heaven. But we have their examples. It’s like they’re there at the finish line cheering us on.

As we get 13 miles into the race, we’re halfway through and your legs start to cramp up and you’re ready to quit. If it’s me, you’re two and a half K into a five K and you think you’re going to die. You need somebody there cheering you on.

You need somebody there that shows you, hey, you can do this. I did it too. And you can do it.

And so we have that example we can look to, that cloud of witnesses. For some, you had parents or grandparents who finished the race of faith and they were faithful believers and you can look to their example. Some of you don’t have that, but you had other people who’ve invested in you over the years and they’ve gone on to heaven and you’ve seen how they ran the race well, you can look to them.

We can look to the heroes of the faith. We can look at those who’ve gone on before. We can look at those that are recorded in our Bible and see that these are not just mythical figures.

These are real people who had real problems, who had real fears, but really trusted in God in their lives and did things that they wouldn’t otherwise do simply because they took God at his word. When we get 20 miles into the marathon and we feel discouraged, when we feel like we’re ready to give up, when we’re tempted to give up, we’re called to remember this cloud of witnesses. Now, after this, it says, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us.

If you’re going to run a race well, you don’t want to carry a lot of extra stuff with you. It’s one of the things that I hate about running. I intend to start running.

I know I kind of laugh at it. I intend to because I see what it’s done for my dad. My dad probably weighs less than I do at this point.

And so I intend to do it, but every time I start out, I just hate it. And I have to start out slow. I hate it.

But one of the things I hate is the feeling of being unprepared because I leave the house. I want my cell phone. I want to be able to get in touch with somebody.

I need my wallet. You know, what if something happens? I need some money.

I need a knife because you never know. I want my car keys. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my car keys if I’m nowhere near my car, but I want those.

I want my gun. I have crazy neighbors, and I’m not crazy enough to go out and run up and down the street without some protection. I want all these things.

You can’t carry everything in your house with you when you go running, and I feel really unprepared. It’s sort of the opposite of going hunting and fishing, where you take the pack in and you’ve got everything you’d ever need. running you have to leave a lot of stuff behind you have to figure out what you’re going to carry how you’re going to carry it I did have to go and buy a special holster because I learned that if you run with an ankle holster you wobble to one side you’ve got to be careful about the weight and what you take and where you put it y’all didn’t even see this and you’re laughing you’re just picturing it aren’t you stop we’ll never get finished I’m sure we’ve got video here somewhere of me running when that snake was coiled up the.

. . Anyway, you don’t want to carry a lot of extra stuff.

You want to be strategic about what you do carry. And so this tells us to lay aside all the. .

. Every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us. If you want to run well, you’re going to have to determine there are going to be some things you’re going to leave behind.

And sin is going to weigh you down in the race of faith more than anything else. Hear me on that. Sin, disobedience to God, things that God says no, and you say, no, God, I’m going to hold on to them anyway.

You might as well try to carry barbells and whatever those weights are. I forget what they’re called that you put on the, you can tell I’m an athlete, right? Whatever those big weights are that you put on the bar.

And you might as well carry a bunch of those with you when you try to go running. That’s what sin does to you. And it says that sin doth so easily beset us.

There’s a Greek word here for beset, and it’s. . .

I knew how to pronounce it in the office. Euparistadon. That’s for you, Lavana.

The Greek word for beset here describes a competitor. The Greeks would use that word for a competitor. So when the writer of Hebrews here said that sin does easily beset you, he’s describing sin as your competitor.

Your competitor, who you’re running against, is not all the other people who are in the race. It’s the sin that’s trying to weigh you down. Because this describes a competitor who’s out there and he’s fighting dirty.

He’s trying to trip you up. So if you think you’re in a race against somebody and they’re out there trying to kick you as you run, they’re out there trying to trip you up, trying to knock you over, that’s what sin is doing. We’re not running this race against each other.

We’re running this race against sin. And so many times Christians think, Christians think, oh, it’s just a little bit of sin. It’s not going to hurt anything.

That’s exactly what sin wants you to believe. But what sin does is it grows. It’s like quicksand.

I’m mixing metaphors over here like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like quicksand. It sucks you in further than you intended to go.

You stick a toe in and next thing you know, you’re up to your chin. Sin is a competitor, but fights dirty. Doesn’t fight fair.

Satan will do everything he can to try to trip you up. And so what we have to realize is sin is not something we can just put in our pocket and go running. sin is something that will keep us from running the race and so if there are things in our lives that that lead us to disobey god if there are things that we’re holding on to that we know are displeasing to god but we think oh it’s just a little thing we need to get rid of it we need to empty our pockets every morning when we set out sin is trying to thwart us and if we want to if we want to run a race to live a life of faith we’ve got to realize that sin is going to do anything it can to kick our legs out from under us.

Now he says at the end of verse 1, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Let us run with patience. All throughout this, this idea of running the race means living a life of faith.

So keep that in mind, living a life of faith. And in the context of everything that we’ve seen in chapters 11 and 12, this means trusting God in every area of our lives. Faith in God means there’s no part of my life where I don’t God.

That’s hard to do sometimes. I’m saying that as the preacher. I’m supposed to be the one, oh, it’s easy to trust God.

No, it’s hard to trust God sometimes because there are some things that I don’t want to let go of at least the illusion of control of. When it comes to my children, when it comes to my finances, when it comes to, there are things that is hard to trust God and God will tell you sometimes to do things that don’t make sense with the little bit of information that you have. That’s where faith comes in.

Not necessarily that we see how everything is going to work out in the future, but we can look at the evidence. Remember last week I told you faith is not blind belief. We look at the evidence in the past, and we see everything that God has promised, and we see every time that God has fulfilled those promises, and we realize that even if we can’t trust that the circumstances, we can’t trust what the circumstances are going to be, we can trust God because of his track record and who he is.

That’s what faith is. So we need to be able to trust God. It means believing God because of his track record of faithfulness.

It means believing his promises for the future because we’ve seen the fulfillment of his promises in the past. Believing his promises before we see the fulfillment and obeying him without having to see the entire plan. That’s the hardest part for me, honestly. I believe God when it’s just something I’m thinking about up here.

But when he calls me to actually do something and I don’t have the entire plan in hand, I say, wait a minute. Wait a minute. God, you want me to do what?

But faith says, even if I don’t have the whole plan in hand, I trust you. Even if I don’t know every twist and turn of this racetrack, God, I trust you. And that’s a place in life I desperately want to get to, where I can say, God, I’ll obey you.

I’ll do what you say, even if I don’t have the whole plan in hand. That’s part of running the race. And then running the race with patience means enduring the race, even when it’s difficult and even when we want to quit.

Because no matter how well you’ve trained for the race, no matter how long you’ve trained for the marathon, There comes a time when you get 13 miles in and you think, man, I really would like to quit and just go get a donut. Maybe I brought my cell phone with me. I can get an Uber to pick me up and take me over there because my car is 13 miles away.

There’s a time when you’re going to want to quit. That’s not just true of races. That’s true of the Christian life.

There comes a time when things get difficult and we think, God, I don’t want to do this anymore. Not necessarily that I want to stop being a Christian, but whatever God’s called us to do that’s difficult, we think, God, I don’t want to do this anymore. If I can be just real transparent for a minute, there are times I have thought in my life, God, I don’t want to be a pastor anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. Overall, the overall trajectory of my life, I love doing what God’s called me to do. But there are days that it’s not easy.

And I know I’m not alone in that. All of you have things that God’s called you to do, and they’re not always easy. And we get a few miles in, and we may think, God, this is hard.

I don’t want to do it anymore. Perseverance. running with patience is doing it anyway.

Because it’s not the circumstances that led us to obey in the first place, it was our trust in God. And so our circumstances may change and make the obedience more difficult, but if you’re in the race because you believe God and not because of your circumstances, the circumstances may change and get more difficult, but God never changes. And the God you trusted at the starting line is the God you can trust 13 miles in.

And it also says, it talks about running with patience the race that is set before us. And as I read over that phrase, the race set before us, I realized we don’t always get to determine where the track goes. We don’t always get to determine the course of the race.

I started out on that ridiculous 5k that I did with dad, not knowing that it found every hill in Norman and went uphill both ways. If I’d had my way, we would have started on 36th Street and just gone straight south all the way to the river, downhill all the way. I didn’t get to pick the race course.

Once I committed to do the race, okay, it’s difficult, but we’re going to do this. I got passed by people pushing strollers and people in wheelchairs, but I finished. Sometimes you’ve just got to run with patience.

The race set before you. Realize, I don’t get to decide what the course is. It’s all about realizing what’s your job and what’s not your job.

We have trouble sometimes with picky eaters at our house. No, I’m not one of them, as you can tell. And our pediatrician says something all the time that we have to remind ourselves because we don’t want to fight every day with the kids about eating.

She will say that it is the parent’s job to decide when to eat and what to eat, and it’s the kid’s job to decide how much to eat. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have agreed with that, but I’m tired now. So I’m willing to go along with it.

And I realize it’s not my job to force feed them. They’ll eat when they get hungry. I have to realize the same thing with God.

A lot of the things that I think are my job are really his. And if I just stay in my own lane and do my own job and realize it’s not my job to decide where the track goes, it’s God’s job to decide where the track goes and where it takes me, it’s my job to run with patience. The race that is set before me, not the race that I set for myself.

Now let’s look at verse 2. It says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Now the end of verse 1 talks about running with patience.

That’s easy to say, and it’s very difficult to do. If it were easy to do, we wouldn’t need to have a message on it. It wouldn’t even need to be put in the book of Hebrews.

It’s easy to say and it’s difficult to do. The only way we can do it is by doing what it says in verse 2. Looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

We cannot run the race with patience. We cannot endure when things get difficult unless we’re looking ahead to Jesus. Unless we’re keeping our eyes fixed squarely on Jesus.

It calls him the author and finisher of our faith here. These words are really important to understand, especially in this context of running this word. Author is the word archigos, which we’ve studied before back in May when we were looking at, I believe it was Hebrews chapter 2, that calls Jesus the captain of our salvation.

It’s the same word. And as I told you then, there’s not a perfect English translation of that word. It means something like chief leader or chief bringer.

And when we looked at Hebrews chapter 2, all these different English translations of the Bible used different words. They said author, they said captain, founder, source, pioneer, all these words that talk about him laying the course, laying the track, leading the way. And what this means is he’s the one who sets the course out for us.

He’s the one who tells us, who determines where we’re going to go. He’s the one who leads the way through the course. We can finish if we keep our eyes on Jesus.

If we have somebody ahead of us where we keep our eyes fixed on him and run toward him. And have very limited experience with running. But at the second K, I told my dad, go on, save yourself.

I’ll catch up. You know why I kept running other than the fact that, by golly, I said I was going to do this, I’m going to do it. It was because I had the keys and I drove dad there and he’s about a half a kilometer ahead of me and I’ve got to keep going.

Otherwise, I’m going to have to do this one way or the other. I’m going to have to go back to where the car is because I drove. So I’d watch my dad a half a kilometer, a kilometer or so up the track, and I don’t think he ran as fast as he possibly could.

He left room for me to catch up. But eventually, because I kept thinking I’ve got to get back to dad and kept my eyes on dad, I finished. We’re not going to run with patience unless we’ve got somewhere that we’re going to look at, and Jesus is where we keep our eyes.

He’s the one who lays the track before us, and he’s the reason why we run, and that brings us into the word finisher. He’s the author and finisher of our faith. That word finisher comes from the word teleotes, which is related to what Jesus said on the cross, it is finished, to telestai.

Those words both mean that something is completed, something has been fully accomplished. And so for him to be the finisher of our faith, he’s the finish line, ladies and gentlemen. He’s what we’re approaching.

We’re not running towards some arbitrary point of spiritual maturity where we can say, look at me, I’ve arrived, I’m a faithful Christian. No, our pursuit is no matter how long God keeps us in this race to get up every morning and keep chasing after Jesus Christ. He’s what we’re running toward. He’s what we’re pursuing.

He’s the prize that’s waiting for us. You know, I said every runner runs for something. For some, it’s cash.

For some, it’s prestige. For some, it’s just, hey, I finished. For some, there’s health reasons.

Everybody’s got a reason. Everybody’s Jesus is our prize at the end of the race of faith. He’s the reason why we run.

We pursue him and we get closer to the prize of being more like him. So by calling him the author and finisher of our faith, Hebrews is teaching us here that running as we run this race to live the life of faith, Jesus is everything. He’s everything in this race.

If you came in here this morning with the idea that Christianity is just a list of do’s and don’ts, it’s a checklist of things that you can and should do just so you can be a better person, and so you can look better, have a better life, whatever the reason is, that it’s this list of do’s and don’ts that are an end unto themselves, then let me correct that notion. The reason for all of this is Jesus. If it’s not for the fact that Jesus died to pay for our sins and fall on the cross and rose again to give us hope of eternal life in heaven, if it’s not for all the things that Jesus had promised us, then all the things that Christianity tells you to do are meaningless.

Without a relationship with Jesus, there’s no point in putting yourself through the difficulty of the Christian life. We run because of Jesus. And that doesn’t mean that we run so that we can please God by our own efforts.

We’re not living this life to show how good we are. Again, on the contrary, Jesus paid for our sins in full. He’s extended us forgiveness.

He’s given us eternal life, and he brought us into a relationship with the Father through what he did on the cross. That’s why we run. Because of this, once we receive that offer of salvation, we run because we’re driven to honor him in the best way we possibly can.

When our faith shows up, we honor him when our faith shows up and shows out through an obedience that says, I can obey you because I trust you. Now let’s look at the end of verse two. who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

This is describing Jesus. Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Even as Jesus was purchasing our salvation, he offered us one more example of faith.

The Father sent him to die for us, and he came here willingly. We think our calling is hard. The Son was called by the Father to come and die in the most gruesome way possible to pay for the sins of a bunch of people who didn’t deserve it and wouldn’t appreciate it.

And yet he did it because he trusted that the Father had a plan and he endured the cross, despising the shame, but looking forward to the glory that was set before him. And the Father came through. The Father fulfilled his promises just like he always does because God the Father raised God the Son to live and to walk in newness of life.

And now the Son sits glorified at the Father’s right hand. Where again, he’s not just sitting there for his own enjoyment. As I’ve said throughout this series, He’s interceding for you.

He’s advocating. God the Son is advocating on your behalf with God the Father this morning. Now, if you’re a believer and you want to run well, it means you want to live a life of obedience.

It requires faith to obey God because we don’t see his entire plan. We don’t see the entire track when we start out. So to make it ever closer to the finish line requires faith.

It requires believing that God is who he says he is and that he’ll do what he says he’ll do. So this passage gives us four reminders of how to run the race of faith. Well, first of all, we look back on God’s faithfulness.

Look back on God’s faithfulness because verse 1 reminds us of all those who’ve gone on before. And so to those of you who’ve trusted in Christ, if there are times that you’re running this race but your faith feels weak and you think, I don’t know how I’m possibly going to trust God to work in this situation. He’s called me to do this or he tells me to do that.

I don’t see how I can possibly do that. And it’s really difficult to trust him in this circumstance. When your faith feels weak, remind yourself of all the ways that God has been faithful.

Nothing will convince you of God’s ability and God’s willingness to be faithful in your circumstances than to remind yourself of all the other times he’s been faithful in other circumstances. That can be looking back at the people in the Bible, like the people listed in chapter 11. that can be taking stock of your own life and seeing where God has been faithful before.

There’s a particular situation that every couple of months just pops up in my life, and I kind of go to pieces a little bit, until somebody, whether it’s my wife or my mother, reminds me God has always taken care of this before. And I think, you know what, you’re absolutely right. And usually that calms me down, that thought of how God has always come through before.

So we’re reminded, look back on God’s faithfulness, first of all. Second of all, look around and trim the sin from your life. Look around at what weight you’re carrying with you.

Look around at all the stuff that’s stuck to you, all the sin that’s trying to thwart your efforts and get rid of it. Verse 1 tells us to lay aside the sin that trips us up. And folks, that means we need to sometimes take a good long look at our lives and be ruthless about the things that are there.

I don’t mean violent when I say the word ruthless. Hopefully you understand that. But sometimes we like to hold on to things because, oh God, I can’t let that go.

I go through this every time I clean at the house. Oh, I can’t let that go. I might need it.

We do that with sin. We do that with things that are hindering our walk with God. Oh, but I might need it.

We hold it close. Sometimes we’ve got to decide what matters more to us, the ability to run with patience the race set before us or this thing we’re holding on to. And 

Powered by atecplugins.com