Run with Endurance – Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus

Run with Endurance – Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus

Hebrews 12:1-2  "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,  ² looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

I still remember when I saw the movie Chariots of Fire in 1981. It is a movie about a Scottish runner named Eric Liddell, who was first and foremost a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. It inspired me. For weeks after seeing the movie, I would go out and try to run like Eric and I would imagine I was him – trying to lift my legs like him and timing my runs.

Eric Liddell’s story is compelling. He was born in China, where his parents were serving as missionaries. He spent his formative years in Scotland at a boarding school and was the best athlete in his school. By the time of the 1924 Olympics, he was favored to win the 100 meter race and had spent most of his running career up to then practicing for the shorter races.

He wasn’t expected to win gold in the 400 meter race at the 1924 Olympics. He ran a very fast qualifying run for the 100 meter but since the final heat was on a Sunday, he switched to compete in the 400 meter race, one which he had never been fast in before, because he was convicted that he needed to show honor to God by reserving the day for worship.

In the movie, the scene shows one of the trainers going out to him just before he was about to run and handing him a piece of paper that read, “It says in the old book – he that honors me, I will honor.” As he clutched the paper he took off like a shot and sprinted all the way to victory, setting a new world record time for the 400 meter race and blowing away the runners who were favored to win.

As you watched him in the midst of his run, you could hear Eric’s voice in the background saying, “I believe God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” Stories of people like Eric Liddell are motivating. They inspire us to run faster, run harder; to train and persevere. I didn’t even like running as a sport but it made me want to run and his story stuck with me.

Stories like his are meant to spur us on. And they are meant to encourage us that we too can do it – we can run, we can overcome the odds and we can make it. The brief mention of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews chapter 11, is meant to function in a similar way for us. In the chapter just before our text, the author has mentioned the faith of Abel and Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. Their lives serve as a testimony to living by faith in God.

The author has recalled the parting of the Red Sea and how the Israelites crossed on dry land by faith. We’ve been reminded of Jericho’s walls and the faith of Rahab the harlot, seeing that it isn’t the merit of the person of faith that matters – but that one has faith in God and that God accepts all who come to Him in dependant, humble faith.

In the passage from last week, the Holy Spirit brought to mind the stories of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthah, David, Samuel and the prophets. We’ve been reminded of people who by faith did all sorts of amazing things – including suffering, being destitute, mistreated and dying by faith.

In verse 39 of chapter 11 it tells us that all of these - this great cloud of witnesses - were commended not through their merit, their ability or their circumstances but through their faith, even though they didn’t receive what was promised in their lifetime. And verse 40 tells us that God has provided something better for us.

We know what the something better that has been provided for us is from the whole first part of the letter to the Hebrews. God has provided Jesus Christ, His only Son to remove our sins, to suffer in our place and identify with us in every way.

Jesus is better than the angels, greater than the prophets and better than the law. He is our Great High Priest. Jesus has removed our sins from us by taking our sins on Himself. He is the ultimate faithful one. He is the One who has perfectly obeyed and He is completely trustworthy in every way. Jesus provides all who trust in Him by faith, unhindered, unlimited access to the throne of God’s grace.

Even more than the Christians that first received the letter to the Hebrews, we don’t stand alone. We stand in a long line of people who have overcome and endured by faith in Jesus Christ and who have been sustained and upheld, sometimes enduring through great trials and suffering, sometimes even dying by faith.

Now, with all this in mind, the author of Hebrews is telling us to do something. For many chapters, we’ve been receiving great truth and now we are meant to do something with the truth we have.  Our doing doesn’t earn us anything – it’s all by faith. But our faith compels us to do something. And the thing that the author wants to tell us is to run and he tells us the motivation for running and how we are to run.

The main idea of this passage isn’t complex but it is crucial to living a Christian life by faith. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the author is telling the reader to do something. The main idea that I believe the Lord has for us this morning is to Run with Endurance, Fixing our eyes on Jesus.

Main Idea: Run With Endurance, Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus

When I was in English class, I remember my teacher telling me to look for the main clause of a sentence to get the idea of what the author was trying to say. And in the first verse, the main clause isn’t at the beginning. It is found in the action that the “therefore” is pointing us to and the therefore is pointing us ahead to the clause that says run with endurance. That is the first point of this passage and it is simple - it is that we are to Run with Endurance

1.      Run with Endurance
·         And the first part of verse one tells us the motivation for this running. It says,
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

·         We are surrounded by a dense multitude of witnesses

·         We are surrounded by a great host of those who have gone before us, living and dying by faith in God and His promises.
·         We are surrounded by those who testify to us that normal, flawed, weak, inadequate, dirty, humans can be saved by the grace of God and transformed into people who live for Him.
·         We are surrounded by the eye-witness accounts of not only those saints in the Bible but those saints in history like John Foxe, David Brainerd, William Carey, Adoniram Judson, John Bunyan and those who we know today that have gone before us like grandmothers, parents, aunts and uncles and friends who have all died clinging to the promises of God in Christ and running faithfully to the end.
·         We are surrounded by the testimony – the witness of all of these saints. And we are meant to remember them. We are meant to recall the stories of how God saved them, how God redeemed them and how God enabled them to run faithfully and endure all that life held by their faith in Him. Their stories are meant to motivate us and inspire us. They are meant to remind us that we too can run.
·         They are meant for us to identify with them and see that God can work in any kind of person, with any kind of background, facing any kind of obstacle. God is the one who enabled them to endure through every kind of hardship and deprivation and difficulty that you can imagine. And we are meant to see that we have this great cloud of witnesses surrounding us.
·         As we run the race of life – as we go down the avenue – it is as if the sides of the street are lined with a cloud of people who are serving as witnesses that tells us about how our suffering has meaning. Their lives testify to the certainty of our success too. And their accounts remind us that God is the one who will give the crown at the end of the race to all who trust in Him.
·         Because God has rewarded each and every one of them as they endured through any and every kind of circumstance, we can be sure that He will reward us too.

“let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely”

·         When I was younger, I was in the boy scouts for a few years. Our scout master loved to go hiking. So almost every outing we took was a hike in the woods and at least a couple times a year, we would go on long, overnight hikes.
·         The first time I took a hike, I took a very large backpack and a huge cloth sleeping bag and an old tent with a bulky aluminum frame. I took clothes and basically anything I thought I might want for a couple of days.  I thought I was smart bringing all of that stuff.
·         When I got to the meeting place, the scout master asked all of us to show him our packs. He then proceeded to pick up each pack and ask us to take everything out of our packs and put it on the ground in front of us.
·         Then, he went through weeding out things he thought we didn’t need as each of us went through a negotiation of sorts. Some kids really wanted to bring that Coleco Head-to-Head Football game with them. If you’re older than 30, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It was a little game with dots and dashes that were supposed to be football that two people could play. If you’re under 30, just think of it as the old-school version of the Nintendo 3DS.
·         Well, after our leader went through our packs we went for a long hike. For a bunch of 12 year old boys it seemed like a never-ending hike too. On the hike, something predictable happened. We began to feel the weight of the packs.
·         Everything we had negotiated to keep, we were now wishing we left behind. Because after several miles of up and down on the Appalachian trial, you begin to feel the weight and it slows you down.
·         There were times when we had to stop because one of us would be too tired to keep going because the weight was too much – it kept us from enduring. Not only was it too much to hike, it would have been impossible to run.
·         In our passage, the author of Hebrews is saying that in our lives, we need to make sure that we are not getting weighed down by things in life that keep us from running effectively.
·         Imagine an Olympic runner carrying a hundred pound pack. It wouldn’t be possible. In the Christian life, we are called to an endurance race not just a long hike. And in the endurance race that we are called to, we need to be careful that we don’t get weighed down by things that we want to take with us – they may be things that aren’t sinful or bad in themselves, but they are things that are weighing us down.
·         Maybe you are weighed down with a lot of surfing on Pinterest or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or blogs or just wasting time on the internet endlessly. These things aren’t bad in themselves. I have Facebook and Twitter and I’m not against the internet – it is a great blessing and is very helpful to me every day. But we can get weighed down with so much that keeps us from running.
·         I am so prone to this myself. I can get distracted with pretty much anything. And I need to guard against just wasting my time with things that don’t help me run.
·         Teens, ask yourselves if what you are doing helps you run your race with endurance or if it distracts you from running for God. You aren’t too young to run the race and your running matters now when you are young. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you have the rest of your life ahead of you, so it doesn’t matter how you live now. Don’t cut yourself slack. Run with endurance now and throw off whatever weight is keeping you from following hard after Jesus. Adults, we are not immune either from idle pursuits that keep us from being effective for Jesus.
·         John Piper commenting on these verses said,

“This was revolutionary. What it did (and I hope it does the same for you) was show me that the fight of faith - the race of the Christian life - is not fought well or run well by asking, "what's wrong with this or that?" but by asking, "is it in the way of greater faith and greater love and greater purity and greater courage and greater humility and greater patience and greater self-control? Not ; Is it a sin? But: Does it help me run! Is it in the way?

As a boy I was mightily helped by having my very categories changed in the way I lived my life. I commend it to you young people especially. Don't ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits: What's wrong with it? Ask: Does it help me RUN the race!? Does it help me RUN - for Jesus?

Hebrews 12:1 is a command to look at your life, think hard about what you are doing, and get ruthless about what stays and what goes.”

·         The scripture is telling us to throw off sin that clings so closely as well. The verse here isn’t referring to some specific sin but it is referring to the fact that sin clings so closely to us. Sin clings to us. It wraps its ugly self around our legs and keeps us from running effectively.

·         I had a friend who was in the US Special Forces and he was the communications guy for the team and as the commo guy, he carried a lot of gear and he was usually in the back. He once told me the story of how one time he was going through the jungle with his team in front of him and it was so thick that the guys in front had to cut a path through the jungle, so it was slow going. And all of a sudden up ahead, one by one, each of the guys in front of him screamed and leaped off the trail and ran into the jungle and my friend was confused and wasn’t sure what was attacking them. Until he heard someone yell snake.
·         But it was too late and just as the guy in front of him leapt out of the way, a very long, very fast and very aggressive Black Mamba headed towards him. Now, you need to know that Black Mambas can get up to 14 feet long and go up to 12 miles an hour.
·         My friend turned and ran but the snake overtook him and wrapped itself around his legs and took him down and kept striking at his thighs. Fortunately, the snake gators he was wearing protected him long enough for his buddy to lop off the snakes head with a machete.
·         Sin is kind of like that Black Mamba. It is deadly and it often comes when we don’t expect it. Sin clings closely to us, looking to take us down. But we need to throw it off.
·         The author of Hebrews is telling us to throw off sin that clings so closely.
·         Jesus has defeated the power of sin but it still attacks us; it still clings closely and keeps us from running effectively.
·         At times though, we can toy with sin and forget that it is a venomous viper out to kill us and keep us from running.
·         Now, I don’t know what kind of sin you need to through off but I do know that all of us must throw off sin that clings so closely. This implies that we are meant to be aware of sin – be aware that it is clinging closely and make effort to throw it off by God’s grace.
·         Maybe we need to throw off laziness. Or maybe we need to throw off drunkenness or the idol of entertainment. Maybe we need to throw off lust or anger or bitterness or resentment. Maybe we need to throw off gossip and slander. Maybe we need to throw off the fear of man or self-righteousness. Maybe we need to throw off something else. Whatever sin it is that is entangling you, you need to throw it off.
·         But this kind of running – running with endurance, throwing off every weight and the sin which clings so closely, it doesn’t just happen. It takes planning. It takes being purposeful.
·         When Eric Liddell won the 1924 Olympics, it was God enabling him but he had trained and planned and done all that he could. He was purposeful and he had the goal in mind. He had the finish line in his mind and he ran towards it with purpose, aware of every step and diligently pursuing it.
·         We need to run the Christian life with purpose. We aren’t meant to run an accidental race.
·         I would encourage all of us to purpose to take some time in the next few weeks and set aside a few hours of undistracted time with God. Take your pen and paper and your Bible or take your tablet or phone and turn off the Wi-Fi and turn off the phone and spend some time with God. If you are a follower of Jesus, taking some time periodically to think about how you are following God is important.
·         So, I would encourage you to take some time. No matter how old or young you are, take some time to think about how you are running. And as you do, there are some things to watch out for. Don’t navel gaze and get discouraged about what you’re not doing. But if the Lord convicts you, then respond. The other trap to avoid is thinking that your performance either good or bad in the race is a measure of God’s pleasure in you – it isn’t. Your work or your failure to work doesn’t add to or take away from the merit that you have in Christ Jesus because of His perfect work.
·         Don’t get caught up in the trap of comparing yourself to other runners either. You are running your race and they are running their race. You aren’t called to run their race and they aren’t called to run your race.
·         Your Creator and loving Father knows exactly the best course for you to run and He has designed and equipped you for your race perfectly. You couldn’t run someone else’s race and they couldn’t run yours. Just be grateful that the master hand-picked you to run in your race.
·         And let me encourage you as you run, not to unwisely try to change a hundred things in your life. Just ask the Lord what are some things you can throw off now that are hindering you from running effectively and trust that you’ll see more in the future and God can take care of that.
·         Perhaps ask yourself what is one habit or one indulgence that is keeping you from spending time with Jesus and living your whole life for Him? Maybe it’s reducing your TV watching or internet time significantly. Maybe it’s what you’re reading or your hobby or whatever it is that the Holy Spirit is probably making you aware of right now.
·         Then, let me encourage you – don’t be discouraged. See that there is a whole cloud of witnesses whom God enabled to run with endurance and then have faith in God to run. And remember that it is an endurance race.

“and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,”

·         We have a race set before us.  We need endurance to run it. It isn’t a sprint – it is a long-distance endurance race that last until we die. The Christian life is an endurance race. It isn’t a short sprint. It is a long, endurance race that is set before us.

·         The imagery is of a race course that goes off into the distance – far beyond what we can see.
·         My wife and I drove across the country when we moved to Canada many years ago. And if you’ve ever driven across the country, when you get to the Great Plains, the road seems to go on forever. Mid-way through the drive, it gets very monotonous and the scenery doesn’t change very much and it is just one corn-field or wheat-field or canola field after another.
·         And if you’ve been driving for a while, it can get tiring and the only thing that kept me awake through the boring drive that is the first 2/3 of South Dakota was these Wall Drug billboards on the side of the road. There are billboards for over 300 miles before you get to Wall Drug. And as you pass through all of that grass and the seemingly endless road – you begin to look forward to seeing Wall Drug.
·         Now, the problem is that it is just a monstrous tourist trap in a town of about 800 people that gets 20,000 visitors a day in the summer time. Wall drug is big and it has every cowboy, native or western art or trinket you could ever want. So if you’re looking for those shirts with a picture of a wolf on it – it’s the place for you. It is disappointing but the road signs kept my interest in the road ahead – I endured all the way there.
·         In the Christian life, we aren’t left alone and we have a destination that will not disappoint but will blow our minds and explode even our wildest imaginations. We are headed to a heavenly kingdom and to be with the King of all existence.
·         We are going where there are never-ending wonders because the all-wonderful One is there. And as we run this race, that can be monotonous at times, we are meant to look somewhere
·         Verse two tells us the second point that the author wants us to get. That we can only run with endurance as we look to Jesus. We must fix our eyes on Jesus.

2.      Fix our Eyes on Jesus

“ looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith”

·         First, we are to run with endurance.  And in our running, we are to be encouraged by this great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, testifying of what God has done, so that we can take heart and run too.
·         In our running we are to throw off every weight and sin that clings so closely. But we can only run this way as we look to Jesus.
·         We must fix our eyes on Jesus and He is the One who will sustain us and enable us. We can only run because Jesus is the founder of our faith.
·         He is the One who has gone ahead of us. He has pioneered the way to the Father through the Cross and now, we can follow after Him and run because He has already earned all the merit that the Father demands.
·         We can run with endurance because Jesus is the founder. He is the very foundation of our faith. He was the crowning example of trusting in God and we are to look to Him.
·         But this isn’t just living life asking “what would Jesus do?”. It is following Jesus’ example because of what Jesus has done.
·         Jesus has removed all of your sin from you. He has opened the way to the Father where before you could never have gone. And now, He enables us to follow in His footsteps, dependently looking to Him, trusting in Him all the way.
·         This verse tells us that Jesus is not just the founder or author or our faith, He is the perfecter of our faith.
·         In life often someone will originate or invent something and then others will come along and perfect it. But in the case of our faith, Jesus is the One who originated it and He is the One who perfected it.
·         Hebrews tells us that by the single offering of Himself to God the Father, Jesus was perfected. Through his perfect suffering and perfect obedience He secured perfection for all who trust in and obey Him.
·         In God’s eyes, He already sees you as perfect in His sight because of Christ and through Jesus Christ, He is making you to be more and more like Him every day, as you trust in Him
·         The law and the whole sacrificial system couldn’t make perfect but Jesus is the One who is able to make us complete. Jesus’ own faith was shown in His endurance as He endured the Cross for us, thinking little of the shame. And it tells us that He did this for the joy that was set before Him.

“who for the joy that was set before him”

·         Jesus endured the Cross for the delight of saving you and I and all who hope in Him and then sitting at the right hand of the throne of God.
·         Jesus kept the joy of being with the Father and ruling with Him in mind and it was through this that He endured the Cross even while despising the shame.

“endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

·         Jesus endured the Cross and despised the shame. He endured the Cross and sacrificed Himself to the point of death.
·         He shed His own blood when he could have just spoken one word and rightly freed Himself from suffering and pain. He could have wiped out all of creation to forego suffering and the agony of the Cross but He endured it for us, looking forward to the joy of being with God.
·         He endured all manner of hostility and suffered shame in being publicly exposed, dying as a common criminal, naked on a cross. He persevered unto death for our sake.
·         He made nothing of the shame. He despised the shame and overturned the opinions of the world by suffering.   He conquered death itself and then sat down having finished His work on earth and now, He is seated at the right hand of the throne of all majesty and dominion and power and might.
·         He has done all of this so that we may follow Him.
·         He had the greatest faith and fulfilled all of God’s promises for all who believe and Jesus has given faith a perfect foundation by His work as our High-priest. And we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, knowing that He will enable us to share in His joy when we finish this race.
·         After the Olympics, Eric Liddell finished his degree and then instead of settling down to a comfortable life that his fame would have afforded him, he left Great Britain and went to China to serve as a missionary for Jesus for the next 21 years.
·         He could have decided to seek comfort and ease or fame but instead, he died in obscurity in a Japanese internment camp in China, after sending his wife and children to safety in Canada.
·         He died in China at the still young age of 43, because he realized that the gospel of Jesus Christ and being a witness to the power of the good news of Jesus was more important than any worldly pursuit.
·         Now, Eric Liddell serves as a testimony to living the life of faith trusting in God. He serves as one of the many cloud of witnesses calling us to look to Jesus – telling us to fix our eyes on what matters most – to look to Jesus every moment because He sis what matters – Jesus is worth living for and Jesus is worth dying for.
·         Eric is just one of the many witnesses that point to the fact that the call to the Christian life is a call to radically trust Jesus no matter where we find ourselves.  And if we endure, unlimited joy is set before us  too
·         If we run this way, fixing our eyes on Him, looking to Him, knowing that he reigns on High and that He is sitting at the right hand of the throne of God, we too will share the ultimate joy of being crowned by Him at the end of the race.
·         What more could you want than to hear the precious words of the Great King of all commending us and saying well-done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master?
·         Amen.

Potential Application Questions:

1. Thinking about the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, is there any life that particularly stands out to you that is helpful to you in your own walk personally?

2. We are called to run with endurance. Are you currently running or have you gotten tired, given up or are you possibly struggling to stand? If so, share your struggle with the group and ask them to help you.

3.  Are there any “weights” in your life that you’ve been carrying with you that are hindering you from running?

4. Is there any habit you are hanging onto that you are having a hard time giving up?  How would God have you respond to Him?

5. How can you practically respond and take action without being legalistic? How can you guard against legalism while still taking faith-filled action?

6. Is there any sin in your life that is clinging closely to you that you need to cut the head off of?

7.  Where are you prone to compare your race to other runners and want to run their race? How can you combat this temptation?

8.  Where have your eyes been lately- on circumstances, yourself, sin, etc.? What do you need to stop looking at so that you can look at Jesus?

9. What does fixing your eyes on Jesus look like? How is God calling you to do this personally?