This past week Donna sent me
an email and in it she reminded me of a song by John Newton. He wrote, I ask the Lord that
I might grow in faith and love and every grace. Might more of
his salvation know and more earnestly seek his face. It was He who
taught me thus to pray, and He, I trust, has answered prayer.
But it has been in such a way as almost drove me to despair. I hope that in some favored hour
at once He'd answer my request, and by His love's constraining
power, subdue my sins and give me rest. and by his, oh, instead
of this he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart and let the
angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more with his own hand he
seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs
I schemed, blasted my gourds and laid me low. Lord, why is
this I tremble to cry? Wilt thou pursue thou worm to
die? "'Tis in this way the Lord replied,
"'I answer prayer for grace and faith. "'These inward trials
I employ from self and pride "'to set thee free and break
thy schemes of earthly joy "'that thou mayest seek thy all in me.'"
The subject tonight is joy after chastening. Joy after chastening. Hebrews 12 in verse 12 says,
Wherefore, lift up the hands which hang down and the feeble
knees. Now the word wherefore points
us back to everything that he said up to this point. The Hebrew
brethren were being chastened by the Lord. They were being
chastened, disciplined, corrected by our heavenly Father. Now God
mainly uses the preaching of the gospel to chasten His people,
but He also uses His hand in providence. He may use our brethren. He may use offenses. He may use
sickness. He may use persecution. He may
use our own sins. Our sovereign God has everything
at His disposal. He's the Lord of hosts. Now when
you suffer in your life and you're troubled, always consider the
chastening hand of our Father. Don't just suffer and not look
to God. Always look to Him. and seek
to learn what it is, why he's chasing it. He will get the lesson
across to you. But seek to find out what it
is he's doing. So the writer here is giving
reasons not to be discouraged when we're chastened. That's
why he begins, wherefore. He refers to what came before
this. He told us back up in verse 1,
He said, seeing that we're compassed about with so great a cloud of
witnesses. He said, seeing that the author
and finisher of our faith for the joy set before Him endured
the cross and is now set down at God's right hand. He said,
seeing that God the Father only chastens His children. He only chastens those He loves,
and He does that for our profit. And then He said, and seeing
that after the grief, and after the sorrow, God always produces
fruit. He always produces fruit in His
child. This is the joy set before us.
Christ endured His suffering for the joy set before Him. And
the writer is telling us we have a joy set before us too. Every
sinner is going to suffer trouble in the world. Everybody suffers
trouble in the world. But what makes it different between
the reprobate and the child of God? The reprobate suffers and
he just feels like he is unlucky. He just feels like something
was withheld from him that he really wanted. And He looks to
His flesh, He leans to His own wisdom, to His own strength to
try to get out from under it. But for the child of God, God
always makes His child profit through chastening. Look there
at the last part of verse 10. He chastens for our profit that
we might be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening for
the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward,
afterward, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them
which are exercised thereby. God always makes His child profit
spiritually. by our chastening. He always
does when he chastens his people. This fruit is certain because
our heavenly husbandman never fails to produce this fruit in
his child. If you suffer trouble, the joy
that is set before you, the joy that is to come, the joy that
God surely will bring to pass through the suffering is He will
bring you to Christ's feet. He will bring you to Christ your
holiness, to Christ your peace, to Christ your righteousness.
He will do that for His child. He will turn us and chasten us
and the God who sanctified me, the God who chose me by His grace,
who redeemed me by His grace, who regenerated me by His grace,
that same God is going to turn me and make me behold Christ
who is my sanctification. He who in the beginning made
Christ's sanctification unto me is going to turn me in the
trial and bring me to the feet and make me bow to Christ my
holiness. And because He chose us and because
He justified His people from all sin, God won't let us go. He's going to bring you and keep
you separated out of this world into Christ our holiness. He's
going to bring you to behold that Christ is really your peace.
You won't be able to find peace anywhere you look when you're
in trial. Nowhere you go can you find peace. Nobody can give
you peace. He's going to bring you to Christ
your peace and make you see He alone is our peace with God.
He alone, God was in Christ reconciling the world of His elect unto Himself,
not imputing our trespasses unto us. It's Christ alone that's
our peace. This is what God's going to bring
His child to see. And He's going to make you to
see Christ is your only righteousness. When He brings you in the trial
to Christ's feet, through the trial He makes you see your sinfulness.
He makes you see there's no way you can possibly please God by
your works. And He brings you once again
to behold the Lord Jesus Christ is my only righteousness. He
fulfilled the law for me. He justified me. He perfected
me so that God accepts me righteous in Christ Jesus my righteousness. So seeing all these encouraging
truths now, and knowing that we have all this reason for encouragement,
He gives His child three commands. And this is what I believe God
does during the chastening to bring us to the end of it. God
gives us these commands, right here. First of all, He commands
you to keep running the race, looking to Christ. Verse 12,
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees,
and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame
be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed. That's
the first thing God commands us. The second thing is, He commands
us not to be a distraction to others who are running this race.
And the way we're not going to do that is by looking diligently
to Christ. He says in verse 14, Follow peace
with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord,
looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God. And then thirdly, He commands
us to run to the throne of grace and obey Christ's voice. He tells us there in verses 18
through 22, you've not come to Mount Sinai. This is all part
of this exhortation. He says, for you've not come
to Mount Sinai. You've not come to that mountain
that trembled in quake. You've come to heavenly Mount
Zion. You've come to Christ Jesus the
mediator. And so he says now, verse 25,
See that you refuse not him that speaketh from heaven. These are
the three commands God gives His child in a trial. And what
I want you to see is, this is the peaceable fruit of righteousness
that God creates in His child through chastening. This is the
peaceable fruit of righteousness right here. First of all, God
commands His child to keep running this race looking to Christ. He says there in verse 12, lift
up the hands which hang down and the feeble knees. You know,
if my hands are hanging down, then I'm not running this race
with patience that's set before me. If my knees are wobbly and
my hands are hanging down, I've gotten to the point where I'm
just about to stop the race. I'm about to turn out of the
race course and give up. Troubles and weights and sins,
they make us weary and they make us tired when we're running this
race of faith. They weigh on you. and they make
your hands hang down, and they make your knees wobbly, and you
don't feel like you can continue running the race. And the truth
is, without God's preserving grace, we would fail. We would totally fail. So God
sends the trial to chasten His child. He sends the trial to
make us keep running this race with patience, looking to Christ. But the chastening, when it comes
to us, at first, it's just one more weight upon us. It's just
grievous to us. We were already grieved, and
then the chastening comes, and it's just that much more grievous
to us. And we're troubled, and our hands
hang down, and our knees are feeble. Job had strengthened
his brethren. He had strengthened his brethren.
But the trial came to Job. And when it came to Job, It troubled
him greatly. Listen to this. One of the so-called
friends came and he said, Behold, he's speaking to Job. He said,
Behold, thou hast instructed many. Thou hast strengthened
the weak hands. Thy words have uphold in him
that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.
But now it's come upon thee, and thou faintest. It toucheth
thee, and thou art troubled. Isn't it a whole lot easier to
speak the word to our brethren and try to strengthen their hands
than it is to remind ourselves of that word and strengthen our
own hands when we're in that trial? See, it's hard to practice
what you preach, isn't it? It's real hard. But, that's what
God does in the trial. He makes you behold your weakness. He makes you behold how weak
you are. when your hands are down and
your knees are feeble. He makes you see this. And this
is one way He makes you see that our strength in this race is
not of us. It's of Christ. It's of our Lord
Jesus Christ. It's of God's grace. He told
Paul, My grace is sufficient for thee. He said, My strength
is made perfect in weakness. I'll bring you to see your weakness
so you can see that much better that you're going to run this
race by my strength. And that made Paul said, I'll
rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. This is whose power by which
we're running this race. So Christ, when the trials come
now and our hands are hanging down, somewhere in this trial,
He's going to come to His child and He's going to give this command.
Lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees. And with
Christ's command comes the power to do what He said to do. That
man with the withered hand, he couldn't stretch forth his hand,
he couldn't do anything with his hand. And Christ came to
him and he said, stretch forth your hand. And with that command,
the power. And he reached forth his hand.
He came to Lazarus who had been dead four days and in the grave. Lazarus couldn't come out of
that grave. But when Christ said, Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus
came forth. With the command comes the power
to do what is commanded. And so then when he does this,
and He fills your heart with strength, and He fills you with
joy, and He makes you able to run the race, continue in the
race. He makes us now, not glory in ourselves, not glory in our
brethren, not glory in whatever else it was that was troubling
us. He makes you now glory in the Lord. Back at 3.19, He makes
you say, the Lord God is my strength. He will make my feet like hind's
feet. He will make me to walk upon
mine high places. Have you all seen this? video
that's, I think it's on YouTube, it's of those, those are some
kind of mountain goats and they're climbing up that, that dam. There's
a, there's a, there's a grass or something or salt or something
out of that water or something that comes through there and
they need that to live. And these little old goats are
not very big at all and they, they climb up almost a sheer
drop off. They climb that and go up there
to get that nutrient they need. God makes our feet like Heinz
feet. He lifts up the weak hands and
He strengthens the feeble knees. And when God does this to His
child and you've experienced this grace of God and the strength
of Christ, He'll use you then to speak to your brethren when
they're in trial. Look over at Isaiah 35 and look
at verse 3. I'm trying tonight, by God's
grace, to strengthen your hand and strengthen your feeble knees
from what I'm seeing God's teaching me. Look here in Isaiah 35, verse
3. He says, Strengthen ye the weak
hands, and confirm the feeble knees. How do I do that? Say to them that are of a fearful
heart, Be strong. Fear not. Behold, your God will
come with vengeance, even God with a recompense. He will come
and save you. That's what I'm saying to you.
That's what I've just been saying. And when He does that, when He
comes and He comes in power, look what happens. Verse 5, Then
the eyes of the blind shall be opened. and the ears of the deaf
shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap
as a heart and the tongue of the dumb sing. For in the wilderness,
right here in these bodies of death, shall waters break out
and streams in this desert. and the parched ground shall
become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water in the
habitation of dragons where each lay shall be grass with reeds
and rushes. This is not just when he comes
to you in the first hour. This is in every trial when he
comes and he is your strength. You're like a deaf man. You're
like a blind man. You're like a man that can't
speak. A lame man. And when he comes,
He makes you see. He makes you hear. He makes you
be able to leap as a heart all over again, like it's the first
time you ever met Him. And when He opens your eyes and
He does this, you know what you see? You see Christ the way. Look, verse 8, and a highway
shall be there. When He opens your eyes, a highway
is there. and a way, and it shall be called
the way of holiness." That's Christ Jesus the way. Didn't
He say it? He said, I am the way. Look,
and the unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for
those that Christ has made holy. He says, the wayfaring men, though
fools, they shall not err therein. You're not going to err in this
way. He's going to seek to it that you keep in the way. Watch.
No lion shall be there to hurt you. No ravenous beast shall
go up their own. It shall not be found there.
Who's going to be in this way? The redeemed shall walk there. Everybody Christ purchased with
His own blood, everybody He redeemed from all iniquity, redeemed from
the curse of the law being made a curse for us, He's going to
make us walk in Christ's way to the Father. The ransom of
the Lord shall return. And notice to which mount we're
going to return to. They'll come to Zion. They'll
come to that throne of grace where our Lord is with songs
and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy
and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. What did he
say? No chastening in the presence. Joyful is grievous, but when
He's worked this in our heart, and brought us, and commanded
us, lift up the hands that hang down, and He's given you strength,
and He's shown you Christ the way, then there's joy. Then there's joy. This is that
joy set before us. So brethren, when you come into
a trial next time, just know there's a joy set before you.
He's going to bring you to this joy. And here's something else
he commands us back in our text. He says, make straight paths
for your feet. Now how do you run a straight
path? How do you run a straight path? When I was in the 8th grade,
I was planting a garden. And I kept tilling up this garden,
and every time I would try to till a row, it was just crooked
as a dog's leg every time I'd do it. And my grandfather said,
come down here to the house, let me show you how to till a
straight row. And I went down there, and I got up behind his
tiller, and he said, now, pick out that pine tree straight down
there to the other end of that garden, and keep your eyes on
that tree. Don't take your eyes off that
tree. Don't look behind you, don't try to see how you do it.
Keep your eye on that tree. And so I took off looking at
that tree. When I got to that row, I had a perfectly straight
row. The way you make a straight path for your feet is you look
diligently to Christ and keep your eye on Christ and follow
Christ. Don't start looking at how you're
walking. Don't start looking at how your brother's walking.
Don't start checking everybody around you. Look to Christ and
you'll make a straight path for your feet. ponder the path of
thy feet, let all thy ways be established, turn not to the
right hand nor to the left, remove thy foot from evil, let thine
eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before
thee. And when he makes you look to Christ, that's when he mortifies
your flesh and makes you lay aside all hindrances. We can't mortify our flesh. We
can't. If we could, we wouldn't need
Christ. But when He makes you look to Christ, that's when He
makes you lay aside the hindrances. Look here, verse 1, He said,
Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience the race set before
us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. And
when He's brought you to do this, when He brought you to look to
Christ again, you had started looking elsewhere, and you turned
to the right and the left, and He's brought you to look to Christ
again. And when He's done that, now He makes you to be a witness
for your brethren. Just like you compassed about
with all these witnesses, He makes you then to be a witness
to your brethren. And so that the weak brother
follows you as you follow Christ. And so he says, do this, lest
that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather
be healed. Let me tell you what causes great
shame for a believer. If you find out that your sin
has caused a weak brother to be turned from Christ, that will
bring you shame. If it's caused them to look to
you and start seeing your offenses and focusing on your offenses
rather than focusing on Christ, that will bring you great shame. And there's a word to you, brethren,
in this too. Don't look to your brother for
his offenses. Don't look to your brother or
sister for their sins. Don't look at those things and
focus on those things. You will be turned out of the
way. Keep your eye on Christ. The Lord said in Isaiah 57, 14,
Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling
block out of the way of My people. What's He saying? Lay aside every
weight. And the sin that besets you,
that turns you to the side. And so, when He brings you to
behold Christ, chastens you and brings you to behold Christ,
Then he makes you somebody that your brother can actually follow
as you follow Christ. Remember Paul said that? He said,
follow me as I follow Christ. And because that brother is going
to say, don't look to me, look to Christ. Look to Christ. And when both of you come to
Christ, then that weak brother who was lame, you know what happens?
He says, he's healed. He comes to the great physician
and he's healed. And you come to the great physician
and you're healed. So that's the first command He
gives us in the midst of trial. This is the fruit He produces.
And then secondly, and this is a continuance of that, He tells
us to not distract others in the race. He says, verse 14,
Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man
shall see the Lord, looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace
of God. Now again, He commands that we
look diligently to Christ. Who's going to make us diligent?
Christ is. When He says, look diligently,
you're going to start looking diligently. We get lazy and we
get dull of hearing and we just sort of zone out. And when Christ
comes through the chastening, He says, diligently seek Me. And He makes you diligently look
to Christ. This is what this diligent looking
is all about. This whole passage is about looking
to Christ who is the author and finisher of our faith. Christ
is the one who gives you faith in the beginning. He is the author
of it. And Christ is the one who is
going to sustain your faith and keep you trusting Him to the
finish line. He is the author and the finisher
of our faith. When you look to Christ, you
behold Christ our peace. We diligently look to Christ.
We see Him who is our peace. Our peace with God. Our peace
with God. And when you're beholding Christ,
and I mean diligently beholding Christ your peace, and you see
that through His blood He's worked peace for you with God, and you
see that He's done this for your brethren, for His elect, He's
worked peace with God for them. They're reconciled to God. Then
I'll tell you what happened. In your heart, He makes you to
be a peacemaker. He makes you a peacemaker. You
stop wanting war, you start wanting peace. I'm talking about with
your brethren. Blessed are the peacemakers,
Christ said, for they shall be called the children of God. He brings you to behold Christ
is our holiness. He's our holiness. God forms
Christ in our new man. And that's how we're sanctified.
You know, in the old covenant, we're going to see this in our
study in Exodus. Whenever the Shekinah glory of
God, when He entered that tabernacle, that whole tabernacle was sanctified. His presence sanctified the whole
place. And when He enters your heart,
He sanctifies you. He makes you holy. And God makes
him to be your sanctification. You behold, I don't have holiness
by something I do. My holiness, my godliness is
all in Christ and from Christ. And it's in the new man where
Christ dwells and you dwell in Christ. And it totally separates
you from this world, separates you from looking to your hands,
from your works, from your will, from your understanding, from
your darkness, from your vain way, and it makes Christ all
to us. That's what it is to be sanctified,
is to be separated out from all of that into Christ. And when He does this, when He
makes you look diligently to Christ, and you behold Christ
as your holiness, the blood of Christ purges your conscience,
purges your inward man, just like He did at the beginning.
And you have a pure heart now, you can see Christ, you can see
things as they really are. And so you will start dealing
with your brethren in holiness and godliness as Christ commands. Loving what Christ says, love
and hating what Christ hates. Now I'm not saying it's going
to be this way forever, I'm saying until you need to be chastened
again, this is what he's going to accomplish through it. Oh,
you're going to go back to looking at your flesh and looking at
everything but Christ, and he's going to have to do this all
over again. But when he's done it, he makes us see him. And
when you see him, you have peace, you have holiness, and you'll
deal peaceably and godly with your fellow man, with your brethren.
He's writing this to brethren who were being persecuted. They
were being persecuted. And what he's telling them here
is to follow Christ so that they'll follow peace even with their
persecutors. You mean follow peace even with
those who are trying to kill me? Listen, we're to make war
with sin, not with men. We make war with sin, not with
our fellow worms. If we use the sin of our brethren
to justify doing something God forbids in His Word, if we use
the sin of our brethren to justify sinning against them, the devil
has won the day. The devil has won the day. So
God doesn't bring us to sin against our brethren, He brings us to
wait on Christ. That's what He brings us to do.
And be peaceable with our offending brother. And be dealing with
true godliness toward our offending brother. Be long-suffering with
them. Be loving with them. Be forgiving
with them. Show them grace and show them
mercy like God showed me. Even my enemy? Yes, your enemy. That way, you don't become the
distraction. You don't become the one they're
looking to and bickering with. This way, they can be turned
to Christ and have all their focus on Christ. That's the whole
point of this whole thing. But if I'm not looking diligently
to Christ, from whom all grace comes, I will fail of the grace
of God. If I'm not looking to Christ,
the fountain of all grace, I will fail of the grace of God. Now
listen. Don't misunderstand. The grace
of God never fails. The grace of God never fails.
He is going to make His child come to Christ, the fountain.
He is. He chose us by grace. Our sin
is not going to change it. He chose us not according to
our works. Our works are not going to change
it. Christ redeemed us, justified us, fulfilled the law for us,
so our sin is not going to make Him let us go. He will not fail. The grace of God will not fail. But if I don't come to the fountain
of all grace, I will fail of the grace of God. What do you
mean by that? Let me read you James 3. If you
want to turn there, James chapter 3. Here's what I mean. I mean my
sinful flesh will reign. That's what I'm talking about.
My flesh won't be subdued, it'll reign. And my inward man will
be so weak that it's practically non-existent. Look here, verse
13. Who's a wise man and endued with
knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good conduct
his works with meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envying
and strife in your hearts, glory not, lie not against the truth.
This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual,
devilish. That's somebody who has failed
of the grace of God. For where envying and strife
is, there's confusion in every evil work. But the wisdom that's
from above, It's first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy
to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality,
without hypocrisy, and the fruit of righteousness. You want to
see this fruit of righteousness produced in your erring brother
or sister? It's not going to come by you
striving and envying and warring against them. That's not how
it's going to come. How's it going to come? How's God going
to use you to give them this fruit? The fruit of righteousness
is sown in peace of them that make peace. What we say and how we say it
are vitally important. You could be saying the truth,
but say it in the wrong way. and be striving and beating and
battering in the way you say it. As Scott Richardson used
to say, you can take corn, chickens love corn, you can take corn
and just throw it at the chickens and they'll scatter. Or you can
take that corn and just drop it out right here and they'll
come right up around your feet and eat the corn. This fruit that God's going to
produce in His child, it's not going to be produced by you trying
to make them be obedient. It's going to be produced by
speaking the Word peaceably. And God will create the fruit
in the heart. All grace comes from Him. All grace comes from
the fountain of all grace. If we look to Christ for all
salvation, if we hear and behold Christ in the Gospel, if we hear
and are constantly at His feet in the Word, at His feet in prayer,
asking more grace. If He's the only one we're looking
to, Christ strengthens our inner man and He mortifies our sinful
flesh. But if we're looking to our flesh,
If the sins of our brethren is what we're looking to, and we're
looking to the offenders and their offenses, and we're dwelling
on offenses and making our flesh, our fleshly wants to be our focus,
then our sinful flesh reigns, making us fail of the grace and
of the graciousness God gives. Rather than peace, we make war.
Doing so, we distract our brethren from looking diligently to Christ.
Rather than holiness, we follow strife and envy and division,
distracting our brethren from looking to Christ. If we're His,
Christ will correct us. He'll correct us through painful
chastening. But if not, if we're not His,
we'll prove it by being totally overcome by our sinful flesh
and going backwards out of the way. Look at Esau, he's the illustration. It says verse 15, Lest any root
of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. Lest there be any fornicator
or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his
birthright. This comes straight from Moses,
the wording here. Let me read Deuteronomy 29.18.
Lest there should be among you man or woman or family or tribe
whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God. Turn
away from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these
nations. Lest there should be among you
a root that beareth gall and wormwood. What is this root of
bitterness? It's your flesh and it's my flesh.
That's all your flesh is and that's how my flesh is, is a
root of bitterness. That's all it is. And if I look
away from Christ to my brother's sins, and I start listening to
my deceitful, desperately wicked heart, and I start following
the fleshly wants of my flesh, this flesh is just going to spring
up more and more and more and trouble me. Esau came out of
the woods from hunting and he looks to his brother. And his
brother had something Esau wanted. And he was covetous of it. He
was covetous of it. He wanted that meat his brother
had. He was covetous for that. Esau
looked to himself. He looked to his belly. He looked
to his lust, his feelings, his wants, his desires, rather than
Christ. You know what he did? For one
moment of gratification, for one moment of gratification,
he traded Christ for one little bowl of beans. That's what he
did. I want that career. I want it
so badly. You hear Christ say, it's going
to cost you me. It's going to cost you your brethren.
It's going to cost you your family. It costs too much. I want that
house. I want that car. I want that
stuff. It's going to take you from the
gospel. It's going to take you from Christ. It's going to take
you from your brethren. It costs too much. I want those
drugs and I want that alcohol. It's going to take you from Christ.
It's going to take you from family. It's going to take you from your
brethren. It's going to cost you too much. Brethren, weeds
grow very slow. They don't just all at once come
up. They grow slow. I cleaned off
a bunch of ivy off the back of my grandmother's house one time.
I mean it had covered the trees, it had covered the walls, it
had covered everything. I cleaned it just to where there
wasn't anything there anymore. And it seemed like overnight
I looked at that and those weeds were back. But it had been years. I just failed to see how, I failed
to notice and I failed to know how many years went by. But it
covered the tree. It covered one wall, then another
wall, then the windows, and began to go over the house. Brethren,
that's how Satan beguiles. Little by little by little by
little. And you'll be beguiled before
you even realize you're beguiled. So He tells us here, brethren,
flee to Christ. Flee to Christ. Hear Christ speak. Be always looking to Christ.
And that way you won't be tempted to trade Christ for some little
trinket of this world. Now lastly, He commands us to
lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees and make
straight paths looking to Christ. He commands us to follow peace
and holiness with all men looking diligently to Christ. And then
He commands us where to run and who to obey. He says in verse
18, this is the first time I ever really connected this with this
word that went before it. But when He says for, that's
because. He's saying to you and me, brethren,
look to Christ and come to Christ because you're not come to the
mount that might be touched and burned with fire. You're not
come to the law, brethren. If we were under the law and
we were trying to come to God by the law, all of this would
have turned us out a long time ago. We'd have been rejected
by God a long time ago. But we've been brought to Mount
Zion. Look back at Hebrews 10 real quick. Hebrews 10 verse
19. Here's what he's saying. Having therefore, brethren, boldness,
liberty, Welcome to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us through
the veil, that is to say His flesh, and having a high priest
over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and
full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience and our bodies washed from pure water. But that's
not all He tells us. You go through a trial and you're
suffering and things are going on and you pray and you pray.
You come to the mount. You come to the throne room of
God. You come to the throne of grace.
You come to Mount Sinai and you pray and you ask God, help me
Lord, help me. And then, go right on and whatever
it is, right on in the trial, right on in the trouble, James
said, you ask and ask amiss because you ask to consume it on your
lust. How many times do we ask when
we really don't want the answer? It just feels good to ask. He
says, now come to the mount and ask. And he says, verse 25, he
says, see, see that you refuse, not him, that speaketh. For if they escape not who refused
Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we
turn away from Him that speaks from outside. See, come to Him. But then coming to Him now, hear
what He says and obey His voice. And if we're His, He'll make
us do that. When He says lift up the hands,
you'll lift them up. When He says, look to Christ,
you'll look to Christ. When He says, follow peace and
holiness with your brethren, diligently seek Christ, you'll
diligently seek Christ. When He says, come to the mountain,
you'll come to the mountain. When He says, hear me, you'll
hear Him. This is what He works in His people. This is the peaceable
fruit of righteousness. When we turn away, we're off
over here, we're doing something else, looking at our brethren,
whatever. We're in our flesh. That bitter root sprung up. And
if He left us there, the lame would be turned out of the way.
We would perish. We'd trade Christ for a morsel of meat. But He
speaks and strengthens us. He speaks and turns us to Christ.
He speaks and draws us to His throne of grace. In doing so,
He saves us in Christ and by Christ. I pray God will work
that now. That's the joy after chastening. Amen.