Hebrews 12:1-17: No excuses

Introduction

Hebrews 11 was a great ‘hall of faith’ speech, reminding us of all the great ‘heroes of the faith’ who came before us in the Old Testament. Hebrews 12:1-3 is really the ‘conclusion’ of that speech and it gives us the answer to why all those people matter. Remember, the author is trying to encourage his readers, and us, not to give up on Jesus - do not abandon this faith. He’s going to give 3 reasons why we should keep going, and then end with an encouragement to help each other keep going.

12:1: If they did it, so can you.

He’s just listed so many great heroes of the faith and now he tells us what their lives mean for us: they are witnesses to what it means live life by faith. It will have it’s highs and lows, but they did it, and so you can you!

For the original audience reading this, the OT people were the most relevant ‘faith heroes’ they had. Guess what? in the 2000 years since, the Church has had countless saints added to their number that has given us more examples of what it means to live by faith!

That ‘great cloud of witnesses’ grows every single day. Many of you can probably name your own ‘heroes of the faith’ that have been examples to you.

Many think that this ‘great cloud’ refers to dead Christians who are ‘watching’ us. And maybe they are. But it doesn’t necessarily have to mean that. Living or dead, the saints that have come before us all testify to what it means to live a life faithful to Christ. And that should encourage us to keep going!

So since they lived the faith life, what do we do?

‘lay aside very weight’ - anything, good or bad, that might get in our way of following Jesus, we need to get rid of it!

‘sin which clings so closely’ - the imagery here is of Greek athletes who would train naked (Our word ‘gymnasium’ comes from the Greek word that means ‘naked’). Just like an athlete gets rid of anything that will slow them down, so do we.

‘let us run with endurance the race that is set before us’ - the Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint. Jesus describes those who make it a sprint as seeds who ‘grew up quickly, but when the troubles of life came, they withered and died’. Living a life of faith takes endurance - especially when persecution and ‘troubles’ come.

Did any of you ever see Rocky? In the end, Rocky didn’t win the knock out - but he ‘went the distance’ with Apollo Creed. Rocky built up his endurance to sustain him throughout the fight - and even though Creed ‘technically’ won, everyone knew Rocky was the real winner (even Creed himself!)

12:2-4: The Best Example of All

If all the saints before us aren’t good enough examples, then look to the perfect example: Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the ‘founder and perfecter’ of our faith. Nobody has done it better, because He literally made. All the saints of old only looked to their future hope with faith. Jesus is the hope. Jesus is the faith.

The text here actually says, ‘perfecter of the faith’. It’s not just ‘our’ faith - there is only one faith, one way, to God and it’s through Jesus.

As we live the Christian life, much like someone running a race, not only do we have a crowd of runners cheering us on - we also have Jesus himself at the finish line.

Have you ever had a goal in mind? The best way to accomplish that goal is to keep it right in front of us. Keep Jesus in front of you!

What makes Jesus the perfect example of the Christian life?

He ran the race before any of us did. He ‘endured the cross, despising the shame’. And he did it for the ‘joy set before him’. What was that joy? Being crowned with glory and being ‘seated at the right hand of the throne of God’.

Just a quick reminder of what it meant for Jesus to ‘endure the cross’: “The cross is the worst form of punishment that the Romans refused to allow their own citizens to be crucified, regardless of what the person had done. The great Roman statesman Marcus Tullius (43BC) called crucifixion ‘a most cruel and disgusting punishment.’ He went on to say, “It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is atrocious to flog one, sheer murder to slay one; what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? it is impossible to find the word for such an abomination.” The cross was so distressing that another Roman figure, Cicero wrote “Let the very mention of the cross be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes and his ears.” These quotes reinforce the fact that, the cross as a Roman form of Capital Punishment is the worst act of evil. We often ignore the nakedness on the cross, yet all who crucified including Jesus were stripped off their clothes and suffered shame and humiliation before nails were driven through their hands and feet. Such was the horror of the cross Jesus the perfect and innocent Son of God was willing to give in because our lives are precious in the eyes of God.” (By Rev. Philemon Akao, St. Mark School of Theology, Canberra, Australia).

Jesus endured all that, and notice this: ‘despised the shame’. Jesus literally looked down upon the shame of the cross - he mocked it.

So what does this mean for all of us? Well if Jesus ‘endured from sinners such hostility against himself’, we really have no good reason to walk away when we endure hardship (and even persecution).

In verse 4, the author calls out the readers saying that in their ‘struggle against sin’ they had not ‘resisted to the point of shedding blood’. The ‘sin’ he’s referring to here is the sin of persecution. In chapter 10 we were told that at one time they had been eager to have their property stolen, stand with prisoners, and more. Despite all that, they hadn’t been physically hurt or killed for their faith - like Jesus was.

This should be very relevant to us. We are blessed to live in a place where Christianity is becoming less and less popular by the day - but we ourselves haven’t had to deal with persecution to the point where we’ve shed blood (thankfully.) If we find ourselves thinking, ‘This is just getting too difficult.’ our inspiration should be remembering what Jesus himself endured on our behalf.

12:5-11: Another reason? Discipline

The next reason the author gives for us not to abandon the faith: our hardships and trials for being Christians should be seen as discipline from God.

He quotes Proverbs 3:11-12 as evidence that God disciplines those he loves.

Think of the implication of discipline: if He disciplines us, that means he considers us children. John tells us that that’s exactly what Christ came to do: make us children of God. In fact the inverse should be more worrisome: if we’re not being disciplined are we really God’s children?

We all know how earthly discipline works (or how it should work): a good father disciplines their children ‘the best way they know how’. Our Heavenly Father disciplines us for better reasons. It reminds me of Jesus saying, “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts, how much more will your Father in heaven give to those of you who ask?”

Earthly fathers discipline ‘for a little while’, but our Heavenly Father disciplines us for our entire lives - He wants to continue to prune us to produce good fruit, and to refine us.

Think about what Peter said: 1 Peter 1:6-7 “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

And James 1:2-4 “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Our earthly fathers disciplined us ‘as seemed best to them’, but our Heavenly Father disciplines us for ‘our good’ - namely to share in His holiness. The Lord wants to ‘perfect’ us and ‘make us holy, as our Father in heaven is holy’.

But we all know that discipline isn’t very fun in the moment. Hardships, trials, persecutions, none of those will be ‘fun’. Jesus endured the cross for the ‘joy set before him’, but that didn’t mean he ‘enjoyed’ the experience.

Just as Christ was crowned with glory after what he endured, we know that our discipline ‘yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness’.

Many of you have probably heard of Tom Brady. Generally considered the greatest quarterback in NFL history, and of the greatest athletes of all time. How did he do it? It’s well known that he put his body through a grueling regimen for over 20 years to sustain him. For example, he never ate certain foods, even in the off season, and he never drank alcohol during the season. These were all things that his peers marveled at, because they didn’t want to do it. Did Tom enjoy those things? Probably not. But they produced results.

How much greater is our faith with tested and tried? Physically, spiritually, mentally. Whatever it may be, God wants to ‘toughen us up’, to make us holy, to help us produce righteousness.

12: 12-17: We’re all in this together.

1. Living out our faith, the Christian life, may be a marathon, but we’re not competing against one another. We’re competing with each other. Make no doubt about it, this is a team sport.

2. The Church is called the ‘body of Christ’, and every member of this body matters. So ‘lift your drooping hands’ and ‘strengthen your weak knees’ and ‘make straight paths for your feet’. Are any parts of this body struggling to keep up? We have to help them!

a. He’s alluding to Isaiah 35:3 “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.” and Proverbs 4:26-27 “Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”

b. Do you know of anyone in our church right now who is struggling with their faith? Have you noticed they’ve stopped participating in our church community? Maybe you’ve noticed they are doing things they shouldn’t be doing? Don’t ignore them! Lift them up, strengthen them, make straight their paths. ‘So that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.’

c. Think again about what James has to say, 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.”

3. The author ends this section by giving several commands for the community:

a. ‘Strive for peace with everyone’ - nothing is worse for the Church than division and strife. The devil knows that if he can tear us apart and get us ‘one on one’, he has a better chance at leading us astray.

b. ‘and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord’ - ‘the holiness’ refers to the active, lifelong process of sanctification. It’s not a one and done type of thing.

c. ‘See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God’ - ‘See to it’ is the word from which we get ‘overseer’. We have to look out for one another! God’s grace is a gift, but we can fail to obtain it - the image is that of a group of travelers, but one or two begin to lag behind the group and ultimately don’t make to the end of their journey. Keep an eye out for stragglers, nobody gets left behind!

d. ‘that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled’ - This is referring to individuals who may pop up in the Church and start leading others astray. He’s referencing Deuteronomy 29:18 “Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit,”

i. It only takes one disgruntled church member to start whispering in the ears of others - especially those who may already be weak and tired.

“Who needs church anymore, let’s go play golf instead.”

“I can’t believe what the Sunday School teacher said. I’m never coming back - and if you do, we can’t be friends.”

“I don’t like what the Pastor and Elders decided. Let’s go start our own church.”

And on and on and on. When ‘bitter roots’ start to pop up, we need to address them quickly before they spread.

ii. For what it’s worth, here is what Moses said about those in Deuteronomy who apostatize and then bring others down with them:

The LORD will never be willing to forgive.

The LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.

The LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster.

Jesus speaks similarly when he says, “If anyone causes these little ones to stumble, it would be better for a millstone to be wrapped around their neck and them be tossed into the ocean.”

e. ‘that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau’ - What a strange connection! The word ‘unholy’ means to ‘make common’. Esau as you may remember, treated his birthright (which was very sacred) as something so ‘common’ that he traded it for a bowl of soup! And when he tried to get it back, even ‘with tears’ he couldn’t change Isaac’s mind.

i. And so it is with sexual immorality, and immorality of any kind really. These things are sacred, and when we treat them as ‘common’ things, we are actually more like Esau and than Christ-Followers.

Conclusion

I don’t know what trials and tribulations you have personally endured. I don’t know how close they’ve brought you to walking away from Jesus. I’m not sure how much persecution you’ve endured (but I’m fairly confident that like the original readers, it hasn’t yet been ‘to the point of shedding blood’). I want to pray that you never endure hardships for you faith. But what kind of prayer would that be? No, I pray that you endure those hardships. Whether it’s cultural persecution, physical persecution, shame, embarrassment, sin, or whatever else that may tempt us away from Jesus - I pray that we look back at those who came before us for inspiration, and ahead of us to Jesus our Lord as we run the race together. I pray that we don’t give up on each other, but help one another across the finish line. In this church, nobody gets left behind.