Message Info:
- Text: Hebrews 11:32–12:3, KJV
- Series: Individual Messages (2012), No. 12
- Date: Sunday morning, January 1, 2012
- Venue: Eastside Baptist Church — Fayetteville, Arkansas
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Transcript:
⟦Transcript⟧ I remember hearing several stories growing up, and one of them that I remember hearing in particular was about a place in what’s now Mississippi called Nanih Waiya. It’s the area where the Choctaws came from before they got moved to Oklahoma. And this Nanih Waiya, I can’t remember exactly what the word means, but it’s a huge mound.
And some of the legends say that it’s the mother mound, that that’s their, I know for a fact this story is not true. They say that that’s where the Choctaw people came from. The earth split open at that mound and they came out.
And I’ve read the story of the Tower of Babel. I know where we really came from. But anyway, the story that I’m thinking of today talks about another account of where that mound came from.
That the Choctaws, as with many tribes, and I know Brother Mike shared with me some about the Cherokees too, at that time were wanderers and they would hunt and they would forage, but they didn’t have agriculture. They just kind of wandered around in the forest trying to live off the land, so to speak, and live off the animals that they could find and that they could fish. And as the tribe got too big at different times, as with any group, sometimes they would overuse the resources.
They would run short of animals, and they would have to move from place to place to find, you know, when the animals moved, they went with them. Well, the problem was in this story, the problem was that at that time, They were taught to revere their ancestors so much to the point that they could not leave them behind. And when they died, the legend goes that they would clean them up, they would dispose of the body and all that, and they would keep the clean bones and they would keep them tied up in bundles, and they would have to carry the bones with them from place to place.
And so after a few generations, you could see where this could begin to become a little bit of a problem. It’d slow you down if everybody’s carrying several bundles of bones because you just couldn’t leave them behind. You had to carry the past with you wherever you went.
And the people grew tired under the burden, and they couldn’t keep up enough with the animals, and it was causing a hardship. And just trying to stay, you know, if you’re a nomad, you have to travel light. The people in Mongolia and tribes in Africa, they still do this.
They have very few possessions, and what they have, they can pack up and go at a moment’s notice. But the religious leaders, the priests or the medicine men or witch doctors or whatever you want to call it that they had, insisted that for the sake of their spirits and their rituals, they had to carry the bones with them. There was just no way of going about it.
And it was presenting, like I said, a big hardship for the people. They couldn’t move around as they needed to. They couldn’t hunt as they needed to because they had these bones.
They had the past that they had to carry with them. Until one man, I don’t remember the name offhand if I was ever told it, but he was a chief at the time, said enough with the priests. that are keeping the people burdened down with these rituals and these bones of the ancestors.
He said, we’re going to build a huge mound. We’re going to build a huge mound, and we’re going to bury the bones in the middle of it, and we’re going to bless it, and that should satisfy the priests. And if that doesn’t satisfy the priests, maybe our spirits will satisfy the priests.
But we’re going to bury the bones. We’re going to leave them here once and for all, and we’ll always know where they are if we need to come back to them, but we’re going to go on about our business. And the legend says that they built the mound after they had sufficiently gotten the priests in line.
They built the mound, they buried the bones, and they were free then to go off and hunt, and the tribe was more prosperous than it had been in generations. Now, how much of that is legend and how much is history? I don’t know, because it happened before the Europeans came in and wrote it down.
And I’m certainly not here to talk to you about things like ancestor worship and ceremonies involving bones and things of that nature. But what struck me about the story was when I heard it for the first time, I remembered a passage of Scripture that we’re going to look at today that talked about people being burdened by the things of their past, being burdened by things that they should not have been that kept them from moving forward as they should have been able to. And with the Choctaws, they were unable to go where they needed to go, to do what they needed to do, because they were burdened down by these things from the past. And that’s not unique to them.
It was true also of the Hebrews, the Hebrew Christians in the first century. And it’s written here in the book of Hebrews. The advice from some say Paul, some say Apollos or Barnabas.
We don’t really know for sure who wrote the book of Hebrews, but we know that it’s inspired Scripture. And whoever wrote it, they wrote this down in chapter 12, verse 1. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, and we’ll talk about that in just a minute.
He says, let us lay aside every weight, 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. He talks about the need to run the race, and he’s talking about a godly Christian life here, and he says, in order to run this race, let us lay aside these weights. Let us lay aside this sin.
Let us put these things down once and for all. That’s what made me think of the Scripture when I heard this story. I thought, you know, his religion was wrong.
They weren’t Christians at that time. They were spirit worshipers. But he’s telling them in order for them to go and hunt and move and do the things that they needed to do, let’s put these things down once and for all and go on about our business.
That’s just what the writer of Hebrews is telling the Christian people here, the Hebrew Christians. Put down these weights. Put down the sin, the things that are binding us, that are holding us back.
Let’s put these things down once and for all and follow after Christ the way we’re supposed to instead of holding on to these things from the past. 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 has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be weary to faint in your own minds. Now, I want to talk to you this morning about running the race.
I said Wednesday night that I don’t want to hit the subject too hard of it being a new year, a fresh start, because I believe every day is a fresh start. I believe every day should be a fresh start, that we wake up and recommit ourselves to serving the Lord anew. I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions, because honestly there are 364 other days of the year for us to lie to ourselves and tell ourselves we’re going to do better.
They just never seem to work out. But the fact remains, it is a new year. Today is a new day.
And it requires every day us waking up and running the race as Christians in order to make it to the finish line. What am I talking about with running the race? I’m talking about pursuing a godly Christian life.
The kind of examples, you notice in verse 1 here, he says, being compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, he says, wherefore, that word wherefore, usually when you see wherefore in the Bible, you look above it because there’s a connecting thought there. And he starts out in the previous chapter, in chapter 11, with what we call the hall of faith. I think we talked about it just recently.
Actually, we talked about verse 6 a little bit Wednesday night. But he talks about what we call the hall of faith now. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, chapter 11, verse 1.
The evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
And he goes through these instances of people in the Old Testament that lived by faith. Didn’t just live by faith, but lived godly lives by faith. And he talks about Abel, and I encourage you to read this.
I’m not going to go through every example in detail, but he talks about Abel offering his sacrifice before God of the sheep. Talks about Enoch, who walked with God so closely that he didn’t even die. God just took him.
Talks about Noah, who had faith sufficient that he built this huge ark, built this monstrosity of a boat, and for about 120 years was mocked as he preached righteousness and encouraged people to repent, and they wouldn’t listen. And yet he had faith to continue on and get in the boat when God said. It talks about Abraham and Sarah who were blessed with Isaac when biology and all these other things said it was impossible for them to have a child at 100 years of age for Abraham and 90 years of age for Sarah.
It talks about Isaac who believed God. It talks about Jacob who believed God. I just heard a new interesting take.
Well, probably not new, just new to me. But I heard an interesting take on the story of Jacob and Esau in the last week or so that God had actually said that Jacob would be the son that would come out on top. I can’t remember the exact words.
But said that Jacob would be the blessed son and that Esau would serve him. Because I’ve always thought, how dare Jacob do the things that he did and mislead his father? And what kind of motherly example was Rebecca?
Well, come to think of it, how dare Isaac try to give away to Esau what God said was Jacob’s? Anyway, won’t chase that rabbit. But Jacob believed God, it said.
Joseph, hard to find a finer example of faith in the entire Bible than Joseph, who was thrown in prison, who was falsely accused of assault. All these things happened to him, and he had done nothing to deserve it. And yet he believed God and immediately noticed God’s plan at work when his brothers were sent to him in order that they might be spared from famine.
Moses’ parents who disregarded Pharaoh’s order and saved their son Moses alive in the basket. Moses who believed God over and over again. Joshua and Israel, when they went to battle against Jericho and believed God.
Rahab, a prostitute, made it into the hall of faith because she believed God and did what was expected of her. And many heroes of the faith. Verse 32, it says, And what shall I say more?
For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David also and Samuel and the prophets. He says, what more can I tell you? There’s not time for me to list all these people.
And I notice he runs from the book of Genesis and Exodus and Joshua, talking about the earlier patriarchs and Moses and Joshua and Rahab. He only makes it through the book of Judges and maybe the book of 1 Samuel in his hall of faith, even talking about, I could go on and on. Folks, through the rest of the Bible, there are examples of people who lived godly lives, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.
That doesn’t mean space aliens, that means foreigners. Women received their dead, raised to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment.
They were stoned. They were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented.
He says, of whom the world was not worthy. Those that have done such things, these people walked by faith. And he lists all the incredible things that they did.
That they did miracles. And they were strengthened. And they did things that people couldn’t explain or understand.
People were raised from the dead. And he talks about others who endured scourging and mocking and torment. And he says of these people who walked by faith, the world was not worthy of them.
They wandered in deserts and in mountains and dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise. God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
Now he says that they did not receive the promise. The promise of what? They were promised things by God, these Old Testament saints.
One of those things was the coming of the Messiah that we’ve talked about so much in the last several months. It wasn’t that God was slack concerning His promises. It wasn’t that God declined to fulfill His promises because God promised specific things to each of these people, I believe, and He came through with His promises as He always does.
So when it says they received not the promise, it talks about being made perfect with us. It talks about the promise of the Messiah, and they did not receive the promise. It doesn’t mean God left off and just failed to keep His promises.
It means in their lifetime they did not receive the promise. God having provided some better thing for us. What, that we would have a better life?
That we would be more spiritual? Have better spiritual gifts? No, the better thing that He’s provided for us is the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Who, by the way, is also the fulfillment of the promise for them as well.
That they without us should not be made perfect. Doesn’t mean that they need us in order to be made perfect. Doesn’t mean that we perfect them.
It means that they wouldn’t have the Messiah without us. That there wasn’t a Messiah for them and a Messiah for us. but that we all together were brought to God by the same Messiah.
God provided some better thing for us. You read through that and you understand what he’s talking about with these Old Testament saints and you think, my goodness. Or at least I do.
I think that’s incredible, the things that these people did. Then he links it up with verse 1 of chapter 12 and says, Wherefore, because of this, seeing, we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. It begins to become clear who this cloud of witnesses is if you read it in context of chapter 11.
He’s talking about the Old Testament saints. He’s talking about the people who’ve gone on before us. Seeing that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, these people that have gone on before us and done such incredible things by faith, seeing that we are surrounded by them, we’re compassed about.
Anytime you see the word compass in the Bible used as a verb, it usually means encircled. We are completely surrounded by these people. 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.
He’s not telling us to be better than them. He’s telling us to be like them. What I want to talk to you about this morning is about running the race.
About running the race of the Christian life, trying to live a godly life and doing it by faith. And probably I’m going to finish this message up tonight because I have five points. And Lord help you if I try to get through all five points this morning.
But running this race of living a godly Christian life and doing it by faith. The emphasis in this is about doing it by faith. Living a godly life by faith.
If any of my messages come across as encouraging you just be good people, be nice to each other, folks, that’s not the focus of it. The plain truth is that if we could just be good and nice, if we could be perfect, just try a little harder, we wouldn’t need Jesus Christ. We needed Him for the very specific reason that we can’t be good on our own. We can’t be acceptable to God on our own.
We cannot live a godly Christian life on our own. Even once we’ve come to Christ, yes, in a positional way, as far as our standing with God, We’ve been made righteous. Let’s be honest about the fact that we are still sinners.
And the only way that we live a godly life in this life is by faith and by God working in and through us. I want to give you some advice this morning on running the race. The pursuit of a godly Christian life.
And I say give you some advice. Let me rephrase that. I’d like for the Word of God to give us all some advice this morning on running the race.
First thing that we need to know is that our examples are ordinary people who by faith lived godly lives. We look at the people of the, especially of the Old Testament, I think, I think we see a lot more of the flaws of the disciples and things because they walk so closely with Jesus and we see so much of their, now we’ve got four books, four books of the New Testament that are essentially, for the most part, dedicated to studying three years of the life of Jesus Christ and the lives of those around Him. In contrast, you’ve got the book of Genesis that covers more than 50% of human history.
You see more detail of the lives of people, I think, in the New Testament than you do most of the old people in the Old Testament. And so we see a lot more of the flaws of people like Peter, people like Paul, people like James and John. I was looking for that passage again this week.
You want us just to call down fire on them, God, or Jesus, because they didn’t do what we said? Like, we haven’t thought that before. But some of these people in the Old Testament especially, some of them we see a great deal of detail like David.
Some of them we don’t see as much detail. We see the highlights of the great things that God did in their lives and the great things that they did. And we think these people are so super spiritual, I can never live up to what they did.
We put these people on a pedestal and imagine that they are some kind of spiritual supermen. That they’re from a different class or species than any one of us. But the fact remains, these were ordinary people.
This cloud of witnesses, it’s not Moses and Elijah and all of them sitting up there with halos and wings. Folks, it’s Moses and Elijah who would be just like us if they lived in this day and time, except for they paid attention to what God said and what God wanted, whereas we’re a little bit negligent in those regards at times. These were ordinary people.
You read some of their stories and you see warts and all. Moses, after he had seen God do so many incredible miracles, he still doubted and disobeyed God. We see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and it talks about their faith and yet what are the times that they didn’t have faith?
What about the times that they messed up? Instead of waiting for God to provide his son, Abraham said, I’m not sure this is ever going to happen. I’m just going to go make it happen myself.
He had a child with his wife’s maid. The end result of that disobedience we’re still seeing today in the Middle East. As the offspring of one son battle the offspring of another son for the promise that God’s given. Folks, these were ordinary people.
He doesn’t tell us that we have to be absolutely perfect to run a godly life. Now, we are told to be holy. God expects us.
God wants our happiness. God wants our holiness. God expects holiness.
But at the same time, God understands that we are not 100% perfect. Again, if we were, there’s no need for Him to send Jesus. but with the power of the Holy Spirit, we are supposed to be ordinary people who by faith live godly lives.
Just like the examples that were given of those people. Some of these people, David I think of, sinned with Bathsheba and messed his entire family up. And these people are called heroes of faith.
Our examples are ordinary people. I can’t stress this to you enough. You think, well, he’s talking about living a godly life by faith.
That’s good for Moses. That’s good for David. I can’t be that.
Folks, we should be able to be better than Moses or David. I would hope. I would hope.
That may be a little unrealistic. But these were not perfect men. These were not the supermen that we imagine.
These were ordinary people who were called righteous because of their faith. Not because of their own goodness, but because of their faith. You understand that?
The Bible says without faith, it’s impossible to please God. All of their goodness, all of the great things that they had done on their own wouldn’t have amounted to anything had it not been for the faith. But by faith, it says they did all these things.
They subdued kingdoms. They brought prophecies. They did all these incredible things by faith. And when it talks about this cloud of witnesses, they’re godly people, but they’re ordinary people who live godly lives by faith.
That’s what our example is. And our example is not limited to the Bible. Think about some of the people who had an impact on your spiritual formation.
Some of the people we look at and say, they were a good godly example, because I can guarantee you they were ordinary people. I look at some of the men under whose teaching I’ve sat and think about the impact they’ve had on me spiritually. And I think of these as godly men, especially before I got to know them.
Not to say that they weren’t. But you listen to them teach and you think, it’s a godly man. There’s something special about him.
And then I’ve spent time around them and get to know that they’re just ordinary men with the same faults and the same struggles that I have and that you have, that they walked by faith and they were able to live godly lives in a way they would not have been able to live otherwise. Think about some of the people you’ve known. Former pastors, grandparents, friends, people that have, that to you when you think of somebody who lives a godly life, They are the example.
I think most of us could name at least a few. At least one, I hope. I can guarantee you they were sinners.
Just like you. Just like me. Just like all of the people mentioned here.
The people who lived and walked by faith. I think of some examples of people from our history. From our Baptist history, I mean.
Not our U. S. history.
But I think of some people from our Baptist history. Even after the Bible was written. Now the Bible’s already been written, so we know these are just ordinary people.
The people who lived by faith. I was reading, I believe it was yesterday, The story of a group of people in Wales, not Wales, but Wales, a country attached to England. About 1,400 years ago, around the year 600, missionaries were sent from Rome to the country of Wales, which is kind of like the Ozarks of England.
It’s kind of cut off from everything else by the mountains, and people live up in the mountains and keep to themselves, or at least they did. And missionaries were sent from Rome to go and convert people to the Roman church, and they expected to find pagans there. And when they got there, they found churches.
They found Christian people in churches. And so this missionary, this Roman missionary, by the name of Austin, called for a meeting with these churches. It was believed that they were heretical. And they had had success when they came into England at converting the Saxons.
And they said, we’re going to go do the same thing in Wales. And we’re going to convert them and we’re going to bring them into our fold. And they met with 1,200 Christians on the border between Wales and England.
1,200 pastors and church members from all over the country. had come there to meet with this missionary by the name of Austin. And these 1,200 people were given the following demand at the point of sword with the 400 English Saxon soldiers he’d brought with them.
The three demands were that they would join the state church there in England, that they would submit to the authority of the Pope, and that they would turn their children over for infant baptism. And the option was given, follow these three demands for death. And every one of the 1,200 were killed that day because they believed God and believed what the message of salvation was, that it didn’t come through a particular church.
It didn’t come through obedience to a particular individual. And it sure did not come through baptism. And on that day in the mountains, 1,200 people gave their lives. Ordinary people.
You think they knew when they got up that morning that they were going to be martyrs for the cause of Christ? I doubt it. They were going out to a church meeting.
And yet somebody said, turn against the true gospel. And they said, never. And by faith, they lived godly lives.
I could go on and on through church history and give you example after example of people. But the fact is, this cloud of witnesses that we’re given are just ordinary people who by faith live godly lives. And so as we run the race and try to pursue godliness and live godly lives ourselves, the first thing we need to do is to look to the examples that God has given us from the Bible and from our own history of people who have run the race.
They weren’t perfect. They weren’t normally anything special, but they were people who by faith ran the race. And there’s something about faith.
There’s something about believing God and taking Him in His Word and trusting that He’s going to take care of everything, that He’s going to work everything out. There’s something about being able to let go of myself and my own prejudices, my own views, my own preferences, to let go of those things and just believe God that suddenly allows me to live in a different way. And we’re to look to the example of ordinary people who by faith live godly lives.
The second thing this morning is that whatever slows us down must be cast off. Whatever slows us down in our race must be cast off. He says, let us lay aside every weight.
It’s interesting to me the way that the writer of Hebrews here mixes in metaphors and things from two different cultures because he’s writing to Jewish Christians, but at that time the Greeks had been in control, or Greek culture through the Greeks and the Romans had been in control of that part of the world for 400 years. And so they had their Jewish culture and they also had this Greek understanding of the world so he could talk about the Old Testament prophets and he could relate it to Greek things like the Olympic race. And he’s talking about them laying aside every weight like runners in the Olympics.
And they would have to lay aside everything that would slow them down. I participated in one 5K in my life with my dad. I thought I used to run around a lot as a kid and I can run fast. I went and did it with him because he wanted to do it and didn’t want to do it by himself.
I thought, oh, I’ll just go do it. I didn’t train or anything. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?
It was for the first K. Then I got passed by somebody in a wheelchair and told Dad to go on and save himself. because I was about to have a collapsed lung.
But I’ll never forget that day, seeing some of the people as they passed me in the second race. By the time I got to the end, they’re saying, clear the track, we’re ready to start the next race. Some of the people that had run in this first race and won, and now we’re going on to do the second, I got to see them a few times as they passed me.
These people had prepared. These people in their training for that 5K as they were running the streets, they had dropped pounds. This one man looked like a skeleton with skin on him.
They weren’t carrying their wallets. They weren’t wearing watches, weren’t wearing wedding rings. They had put aside everything that was going to slow them down.
One man had even shaved his legs. I don’t know what difference it made, but he came in in the top ten. So I guess maybe if I had done that, I wouldn’t have looked like a baby horse trying to run.
But my goodness, anything that could have slowed him down, could have weighed him down. Not just him, a lot of these people, they had gotten rid of it. I think that’s a perfect picture for us, what it’s talking about in the Christian life.
Anything that slows us down from the pursuit of godliness, anything that weighs us down, must be thrown out. And in a minute, he talks about, he says, lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us. He kind of contrasts the weight and the sin.
See, we automatically, when I say anything that slows us down, anything that weighs us down, we need to throw aside, we need to get rid of, we need to put away. We automatically think the wrong things. We automatically think sin.
We put those things away. The way he contrasts these, it doesn’t necessarily mean sin. Sometimes the good things can weigh us down too.
Amen? Have you ever been so busy doing good things you haven’t had time for God? You don’t have to admit it, but I’m hoping I’m not alone here.
You get so busy running around and seeing people and doing this and fixing that and making time for your family and all good pursuits. But sometimes we run around so busy trying to do all these things. A former pastor of mine used to talk about keeping the plates spinning.
We’ve seen people that spin plates for entertainment in a circus or whatever. I don’t find it entertaining. But they’ll spin these plates and they’ll get so many of them spinning.
And then they’ve just got to run around keeping them spinning. We do that in our lives. We take these good pursuits, not bad in and of themselves.
I talked about this with idolatry. Idolatry is not always the bad things. It’s anything, good or bad, that we put in God’s place.
But we get so busy with even good pursuits that we don’t have time for God. We don’t have time to spend with Him. We don’t have time to pursue the things He really expects us to do because we’re busy with the good things that we expect from ourselves or that other people expect from us.
And if we’re going to run the race, if we’re going to pursue a godly Christian life, sometimes we’re going to have to get rid of even good things that are good, but they’re a distraction. Some of those people, their wallets and cell phones and wedding rings, good things, but they would have weighed them down in
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