Supreme Pursuit
Hebrews • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Scripture Reading: Isaiah 35:1-7
Kid’s Time:
Proposition:
Interrogative:
Transitional Statement: 6 Actions We Must Take when we experience the discipline of God.
1. Strengthen Up
1. Strengthen Up
12 Therefore, Strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble,
Hands that are weak — hands that can’t hold anything
Strengthen —
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains 25.152 τὰ παραλελυμένα γόνατα ἀνορθόω
ἀνορθόω: (an idiom, literally ‘straighten paralyzed knees’) to gain encouragement by a strong resolve
Not only our own hands but the hands of others who have been weakened.
Knees
31 Yet those who hope in Yahweh Will gain new power; They will mount up with wings like eagles; They will run and not get tired; They will walk and not become weary.
1 The wilderness and the desert will be glad, And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom; Like the crocus
3 Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
Like a coach encouraging his team. Don’t give up! You can do more than you think that you can. God would not have put you through this if He didn’t think you could handle it. He doesn’t discipline you to break you but to make you stronger.
2. Straighten Out
2. Straighten Out
13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
Paths — Wheel tracks. You are following in the tracks of faith that the saint of chapter 11 left for you and you leaving tracks behind for others to follow.
When you run you have to follow the lanes. If you start zig-zagging all over the track you are going to make the run take longer and you are going to start running into other teammates. “Lame” can mean limping. When that happens you can do more damage to yourself and others around you. Other believers are following in your footsteps. If you start running erratically, you might take out the spiritual legs of someone who is limping and knock their legs completely out of joint.
John MacArthur — the father who went out to get drunk again, and he was walking through the snow to the bar. And he hadn’t gone very far from his house, and he thought something was following him. And he turned around, and here was his little boy, six years old, stretching as far as he could to make sure he put his feet in his dad’s footsteps in the snow. And his dad said, “Where are you going?”
He says, “I’m just following your footsteps, Dad.” And as the story goes, his dad went home and broke down and cried, and some – through some other instrumentation, God sent somebody, and that man became saved and later told that story.
3. Strive
3. Strive
14 Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord,
You already have peace with God as a believer, so we need to strive for peace with others.
18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.
You were also sanctified
11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
You already are sanctified positionally as a believer, so pursue that sanctification by living it out in your life. Strive to live a set apart life. Do what is right and just as the Lord Jesus would.
If you want people to see Jesus, see God, then strive for peace and holiness in your life and they will see God in you.
19 My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you—
4. Succeed
4. Succeed
15 seeing to it that no one falls short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;
Seeing to It —
Lexham Research Lexicon of the Greek New Testament ἐπισκοπέω
ἐπισκοπέω (episkopeō), VB. take care; see to it; oversee. fut.act. ἐπισκοπήσει. Hebrew equivalent: פקד (1). LTW
from the word bishop or overseer/elder/pastor. Elders take oversight of and are responsible for the members of the church. We see to it that God’s Word is honored in our church. Here’s what this means, You need to take responsibility of those who look like they might fall short of the grace of God. Don’t bury your head in the sand, look around and care about each other.
Fall short — Those who make a profession of faith but are thinking about giving in whether they are going back to Judaism or other false religious systems.
Do you think there might be someone in our church that is unsaved even though they even attend regularly? go talk to them!
5. Suppress
5. Suppress
15 seeing to it that no one falls short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;
Root of bitterness —
18 so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.
defiled — spiritually contaminated or morally filthy. Fall into sin. Do you know people who used to attend our church who have tuned away into moral filth? You can be the spiritual suppressor that helps them get back on track.
6. Safe Guard
6. Safe Guard
16 that also there be no sexually immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.
29 When Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and he was famished;
30 and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished.” Therefore his name was called Edom.
31 But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”
32 Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?”
33 And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.
34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and rose and went on his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.
17 For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.
He said he wanted repentance but what he wanted more was to murder Jacob.
40 “By your sword you shall live, And your brother you shall serve; But it shall come about when you become restless, That you will break his yoke from your neck.”
