Live Encouraged

Introduction

Read Hebrews 12

The entirety of chapter 11 was highlighting for us those who have gone before us that the Lord brought safely to the other side.

The purpose of chapter 11 is revealed in Hebrews 12:1 as a chapter of encouragement, telling those Jewish believers to trust in God’s process.

How we live is results oriented. When it comes to our spiritual walk, we don’t seek constant development, we’d rather it just be that God give it to us all at one time, but that’s now how it works.

God works by systematically developing us into the person that He needs us to be so that His will is accomplished.

Coach Saban and Results Oriented Leadership

I was listening to an interview with Nick Saban, and he was talking about how to win.

He said that he was the head coach at Michigan State early in his career, and he was playing a team that Saturday that was way more talented than his team.

He said, “I knew we weren’t going to win, but I didn’t want to tell my guys that. I didn’t know what to say.”

His next step was to call a psychologist and tell this professional his dilemma. He said to the psychologist, “I am about to walk into our locker room knowing that we are going to get beat. What do I tell this group of boys instead of telling them that.” What the psychologist said that day was something that helped him shape his legacy. The psychologist said, “Nick, you’re too results oriented. You need to take it play-by-play, and make everything about process and not outcomes.”

Saban realized from that conversation that winning and losing isn’t important but that the process of development is what makes champions. The reason that process and not outcomes makes a champion is because process allows people to be encouraged through failure.

The Lord Jesus has His own legacy of winning, He’s undefeated, and He’s created champions in every age and in every generation. The Lord has produced more winners than any other coach you can think of, and he wants you to be a champion too. He wants you to be encouraged to live the Christian life as He puts you through His process of development.

I. Consider the Legacy of Jesus

A. His Winners

Hebrews 12:1 NKJV

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with endurance.

We know that the Lord Jesus can produce a lasting faith in us because He has done it in the life of others.

These others that are listed in ch. 11 are among the most successful people in the world, but they are also great failures.

And it wasn’t their ability that caused them to overcome their failures, but it was the process of development that the Lord walked them through, combined with their faith in Him.

They said, “Lord, I have failed, and I cannot see, but I am going to trust in You!” And that ability to trust in the Lord’s plans is what encouraged them to become faith heroes.

And so, we are to read the triumphs of these men and women in the Bible and are to be encouraged, knowing that God brought them through the same process that He is bringing us through.

Romans 15:4 NKJV

For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.

That word patience means “endurance,” and the word comfort means “encouragement.”

The only way for us to have both endurance in trials and encouragement in affliction is to look at the lives of others that Jesus has changed.

B. His Work

This is a call to personal action when we consider His work. For, the Bible says that He is accomplishing His work in us.

Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,”

1. The Weights

If an athlete is going to be physically in shape, he is going to condition and he is going to use weights.

Weights aren’t always necessarily bad things. An athlete that wins doesn’t make choices between good and bad, they make choices between better and best.

So, in the Christian life, even the “good” things might not be what is best for us. They might be hobbies or habits that slow us down in our progression, that we need to abandon so that we can live encouraged.

1 Corinthians 6:12 NKJV

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

So, in the Christian life, we need to consider the weights that we carry and choose the way that is “best” and not simply “good.”

2. The Sin That Entangles

This particular sin he is addressing here in the book of Hebrews is the sin of unbelief.

He is talking to the Jews. He has been telling them throughout the whole book that Jesus is superior, and not to believe in Him is blasphemy.

We aren’t all excused from this sin. I know we aren’t because we live our lives at various times and in various ways in unbelief.

We are prone to have what is called a “failure of faith.” And we cease to trust God, and we revert back to making our own decisions instead of living according to His wisdom.

We don’t deny the Lord, we just live like He’s dead.

C. HIs Walk

When we want to become champions, there is always someone that we look up to. In the Christian life, we need to be looking up to Jesus and we are to “walk” like Him. To “walk” like someone means to imitate them, to appropriate them, and to adopt their habits.

That is what the author is describing here, to adopt the walk of the Lord Jesus

Hebrews 12:2–4 “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 who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.”

1. Adopt His Attitude

“Looking unto Jesus” means to trust in Him. And trusting Him means that we have a change of heart and a change of attitude because of all that His Word promises to us.

When the Lord was on earth, He lived by faith. What we find all throughout the gospels is that Jesus was praying. Daily, He was in communication with God, trusting God and doing what was asked of Him, play-by-play as God unfolded the process of salvation to the whole world.

Therefore, we ought to adopt this attitude of faith.

We don’t want to have seasons of faith or days of faith, we want to live our lives with an attitude that says, “God, I trust You!”

2. Adopt His Joy

Hebrews 12:2 “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.”

When we understand that God is our exceedingly great reward and our ultimate joy, then we can endure any of life’s discouragement.

One observation you need to make concerning the gospels is that the Lord Jesus never used His divine power to provide for His own personal needs. Satan attempted to tempt Him to do it, but the Lord refused based on God’s instructions.

So, when we say, “I cannot have the Joy that Jesus had because He was God”, we miss the reality that the Lord Jesus came to live and to die as a man so that He could know His creation in every area.

And because we know this about our Lord Jesus, we understand that we can adopt His joy “by faith” in God’s promises and live encouraged.

3. Adopt His Endurance

Hebrews 12:3 “For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.”

That is, the Lord Jesus has produced winners that endured, He Himself endured, and you can endure as well, no matter what comes.

Jesus doesn’t leave us to do these things on our own. He empowers us to do it when we live by faith. So, it’s not about our ability, it’s simply about our trust.

Trusting Him is how we release His power in our lives.

II. Consider the Love of God

We can have absolute confidence and encouragement knowing that God is love.

This truth is…

A. Revealed in Scripture

Hebrews 12:5–6 “And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.”

This means that God chastens us, not because He is unloving, but because He is loving.

One of Satan’s lies is that God chastens us because He does not love us.

He will tell us that rebuke is unfair.

He will tell us that circumstances determine God’s blessing on our life.

He will tell us anything He can to get us to become discouraged and stop trusting in God, for he knows that trusting in God is where our power comes from.

God doesn’t want spoiled and pampered children, what He desires is that we be functioning and mature adults. He wants us to be wise, well-behaved, and able to teach, so that we can show others His love and be about His business.

B. Relatable to Our Lives

Hebrews 12:9–10 “Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.”

He asks, “What kind father allows his children to behave any way they please?”

I’ll tell you what kind, it’s a father that doesn’t care about his children.

We can confuse love with enablement. An enabler allows their children to behave with low character and low expectations and call it being nice.

A loving father takes the initiative to discipline and teach his children how to behave. He also teaches them how to appropriately have fun. He teaches them how to love themselves and to love others, and he does it through chastening.

A man who refuses to chasten is a man that is going to lose his son.

God doesn’t want to lose us, and He will not lose us, therefore He chastens us.

C. Results in Our Development

Hebrews 12:11–13 “Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.”

When the Lord chastens us, we learn to strive to do what is right. It domesticates us from a condition of rebellion to a lifestyle of surrender.

You cannot have peace in your home where rebellion exists. The only way that a home is ever at peace is when the children are in submission to the mother, who is in submission to the father, who is in submission to Christ.

When we disobey God’s established order, there is always chaos.

So, the Lord chastens us to allow us to have peaceful lives and not make a fool of ourselves or of Him.

But a child of God can deny His chastening. He can, like a child can, despise God for it or fail under the pressure of chastisement, and both are sinful.

If you’ll notice there in v. 12-13, there is a rebuke to those who say, “God is too hard on me.” He says, get up and get moving.

He’s a faithful Father that knows what we are capable of, and pushes us to become the adult children that we ought to be.

III. Consider the Liberality of His Grace

A. When We Ignore His Grace

Hebrews 12:15–17 “looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.”

We are powerless when we ignore God’s grace.

The Bible compares those who ignore the grace of God in their lives to Esau. To someone who lived according to the desires of the flesh and not the promises of God, and who sold his birthright for food.

This is symbolism at play. That when we ignore the grace of God, we are forgoing our birthright for the things of the earth.

We are children of God, and the book of Ephesians tells us that God has given us all the riches of Heaven, and yet we live life people of the world and forfeit His blessings.

B. When We See His Grace

v. 18-24 describes looking up towards heaven for our encouragement. That when we keep our minds on things above, and not on earthly things, we are encouraged by His grace.

Hebrews 11:27 NKJV

By faith [Moses} forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

This means that Moses was looking up toward God to be his supply.

This is the same way that we are encouraged, constantly looking to Heaven, knowing that our Lord has gone to prepare a place for us.

C. When We Activate His Grace

Hebrews 12:28–29 “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.”

Living by grace through faith, gives us encouragement in every season.

We are not to be distracted or frightened by everything that is changing, but we are to activate His grace in our daily lives by trusting Him in every season.

Conclusion

If you want to live encouraged.

Consider the Legacy of Jesus.

For He is

The One who produces winners.

The One who works in you.

The One who empowers you to adopt His walk and His truth.

Consider the Love of God.

It is told to us in Scripture

It is relevant to our lives on even the most elementary level.

It always results in our development as mature believers

Consider the Liberality of His Grace.

He gives it freely, and when we ignore it, we end up defeated.

He shows it to us and we can see it when we just look up.

He gives it freely, and we can activate it in our lives by simply trusting Him.