(Team service) 6.00p.m.

Hebrews 12:1-17

At the start of Hebrews 12 we have one of the great 'therefores' of the Bible:

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 perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the Cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of God.

The writer begins by telling us to get rid of any obstacles to the life of faith: the only life which God finds pleasing. Throw off anything that hinders. The word used here is a strong word: it has the feel of thrusting away, pushing to one side. The World Athletic championships have just started, and before any event starts, the runners must take off their track suits, which would otherwise be added weight that would hinder them.

How much there is in life to hinder our walk with Jesus; our walk of faith; our walk, too, of witness. We live in a materialistic, pleasure-oriented society, one intent of personal satisfaction. Now, it's not wrong to have times of leisure, time of pleasure; a word in season during a Bank Holiday weekend. But we need to be sure these things do not get in the way of our Christian life, work or witness. If they do we must 'thrust them away'. And we must be ruthless with ourselves, The writer will go on to speak of God's discipline. We may be sure that if we indulge ourselves in things we shouldn't, then God's hand of discipline will be upon us.

You've perhaps heard the saying, "Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on". Well, when things go wrong, we look round for someone or something to blame and if we can't find someone then we blame Satan. But maybe, sometimes, it's God's discipline. We need discernment, and if it be so then we must be ruthless. It may not be our lifestyle; it may be sin Let us throw off the sin which so easily entangles.

So, we go on to the exhortation:

Let us run with patience the race set out before us

Not only here does the New Testament speak of the Christian life as a race; something to which we apply ourselves with all our strength and vigour. Where do we expend all our energies? And a race does have a finishing line; a goal. What is our goal? Verse 2 goes on to tell us what (or who) that goal should be.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus

'Fix our eyes on' was originally a word denoting a turning-the-eyes-away-from'. Turn you eyes away from all those things that hinder: look to Jesus. When you run a race, you'll perform best if you keep your eyes fixed on the track ahead of you. There's so much to divert our attention

Fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

Fix your eyes on Jesus. Turn your gaze. If you look to yourself you'll see either a bloated ego or sin and weakness. If you look to your circumstances you'll see all the things arrayed against you. We will be distracted people

No: 'look to Jesus'. Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. Jesus, as a man, lived by faith: he was its beginning, in the sense of being its founder, and too he is the giver of our faith. All those patriarchs listed in chapter 11 of Hebrews, that great 'cloud of witnesses' lived by the same kind of faith as Jesus. But Jesus is the one who made that faith perfect and complete,. He made that faith complete by bearing the pain- physical, emotional, and ,especially, spiritual of the Cross. Nowhere was faith more completely or implicitly required as on the Cross where Jesus bore our sin- yours and mine included, and was separated from the Father; nowhere was faith more severely tried and tested.

And, as a jewel, Jesus endured the Cross for the joy that was set before him. The joy set before him was to sit down at the right hand of the throne of God; to sit down, his work, as he proclaimed from the Cross, completed, with nothing more to be done for the salvation of sinners he came to save. It is finished, tetelestai; the debt paid, the slate wiped clean. His glory was the Father's glory, but the glory was also the throng who would sing Worthy is the Lamb that was slain. Caroline Noel has it in her great hymn At the Name of Jesus

Humbled for a season

to receive a name

from the lips of sinners

unto whom he came.

Faithfully he bore it

spotless to the last;

Brought it back victorious

when from death he passed.

In a very real sense it was the salvation of sinners which was the 'joy set before him'! Do you realise that it was for the joy he would have in you being saved that Jesus endured the Cross. And he desires that you have joy; that you know that you are saved; your salvation resting on nothing other than his complete work on the Cross.

I've dealt briefly with God's discipling of us, so let's pass on to two other verses in this evening's passage:

Verse 12: 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. The intervening verses about discipline could make us feel sorry for ourselves and pack it all in. But no! Rather 'strengthen'; not just for yourselves, but that others may not stumble; others, maybe, who are weaker. But I would end by looking briefly at verse 15:

See to it that no-one misses the grace of God.

Now notice that it doesn't say: "Make sure you don't fall short". No: See to it that no-one misses the grace of God. In the Greek that 'see to it', and these linguistic details can be important, for on it the meaning of a passage can turn, it is the word episkop'eo. It's the same word as that for 'bishop': episkopos: one who has oversight. We are to have oversight for one another. The basic idea is that the Christian life cannot be properly lived in isolation. This epistle was written to a congregation of Jews who had heard the message of the Gospel: some had fully believed and were born again; for others it was merely a matter of the head, and they wanted to stay with the familiar ritual to be safe, and our writer thus says: 

See to it that no-one misses the grace of God.

This pinpoints a danger that can be even more real in an institutional church and it's a warning about folk who spend a lifetime involved with the external trappings of religion, without the heart being touched

We shall be the more concerned if we go back to verse 3:

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men. You and I: each one of us has (and sadly sometimes we still do) stand in opposition to Jesus. We were totally against him. It was our sin which stood between him and the Father at Calvary, but he so valued our salvation that he considered the suffering as nothing. Let us be moved for those who stand on the sidelines, spectator Christians. Let us be sure that we stand firm centre ground. How? Fix your eyes on Jesus