Welcome to our program. Now,
today I'm going to be preaching from Hebrews chapter 12, if you'd
like to follow along in your Bibles. And the title of the
message today is, Looking Unto Jesus. The life of faith, we
might say it this way, the life of faith, the walk of faith,
and the triumph of faith, the victory, always has to do with
looking unto Christ. keeping our focus, keeping our
view upon Him, never taking our eyes off of Him. In fact, if
we could walk all the time just looking unto Christ and never
taking our eyes off of Him, we'd be fine. Whenever we get in trouble,
we who know Christ, we who believe the gospel, is when we get our
eyes away from Him and onto ourselves, our circumstances, our friends
and family, even our enemies. But let's look unto Christ. Now,
in the first three verses here of chapter 12, there are three
commands given. Twice in verse 1, we see, let
us, let us. Now, who is the us there? The
us is referring to sinners saved by the grace of God. Those who,
like the Old Testament believers listed in Hebrews 11, who were
looking unto Christ. Let us, we who have been saved
by the grace of God, we who have been washed in His blood, free
and clean from all our sins, we who have been clothed in His
righteousness, we who have been born again by the Spirit and
given life and grace, a new nature to look unto Christ, all of those
things, you know, we who are going through the warfare of
the flesh and the Spirit, who have this inner warfare, the
flesh is not dead yet, it's dying but it's not dead. And we who
have that problem, that warfare, let us, let us, justified sinners. The second command is given in
verse 2 and has to do with looking unto Christ. That's the title
of the message, the theme of the message. You might say it's
the theme of Hebrew, the whole Bible, look unto Christ. The
Bible says in Isaiah 45, God, a just God and a Savior. He says,
look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for
I am God and there is none else. no God beside me. Look unto the
God who justifies and saves sinners through Christ, based on his
blood and righteousness." And then the third verse, another
command is given, and that is, consider him. Now, I want to
go back up to the first verse. Verse 1 of Hebrews 12, it starts
off wherefore. Now, when you see that word wherefore,
it can be taken in several different ways. Sometimes it just can be
translated why. Why is this so? Other times,
like here, it means for this reason. For this reason. Wherefore, and it refers back
to all that the apostle had written before in Hebrews chapter 11. So he says, for this reason,
or wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about, surrounded
with so great a cloud of witnesses, Now, the great cloud of witnesses
has to do with the Old Testament believers that he had used as
examples in Hebrews 11, when he spoke of Abel, who brought
the sacrifice of the Lamb, shed blood, who was saved by the grace
of God and not rejected like Cain, who brought the works of
his hands. Salvation is in the blood of the Lamb, not in the
works of our hands. And then he mentioned Enoch,
who was translated. Enoch walked with God. He pleased
God. But he said, without faith, it's
impossible to please God. Without looking unto Christ.
He mentions Noah. Noah moved with fear, respect,
and worship unto God. He believed God. And he built
an ark to the saving of his house. And by that he obtained testimony
that he was an heir of the righteousness which is of faith. Noah was a
sinner saved by the grace of God. First thing you read about
Noah in Genesis chapter 6 and verse 8 is Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. Noah built an ark to the saving
of his house. That ark typified Christ. When
Noah and his family were inside the ark, the rains of God's wrath
came down on the outside of the ark, but it didn't touch Noah
and his family inside the ark. What a great picture of Christ.
What a witness. What a cloud of witnesses, you
see. As long as we're in Christ, the reign of God's wrath came
down upon Him, and it will not touch us. There's therefore now
no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. And then he
went on to mention Abraham. He meant Abraham who walked by
faith, who looked for a city whose builder and maker was not
man but God. He mentioned Sarah, he mentioned
Isaac, he mentioned Jacob, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph, he
mentioned Moses, all of these. He mentioned Joshua going into
Jericho with the children of Israel. He mentioned Rahab the
harlot, then some of the judges, Samson, Jeff, Gideon, all of
those, David, all of these people. These are great clouds of witnesses. that bolster up the testimony
of the Lord and give credence to it, not because they were
so faithful, but because God was faithful to do what He promised
to do. When you think about all these.
So, here's what He's saying. Now, seeing that we are surrounded
with that great cloud of witnesses, here's the command. Let us lay
aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."
Now, there are several things here. First of all, he mentions
a race. Several times in the scriptures,
the walk of a believer in this life is compared to a race that
he's running. And listen to me now. It's a
race that God sets us upon. It's a race that we would not
run of our own free will. We wouldn't enter this race.
God has put us in this race. And it's a race of grace. Remember
that term. This race. You know, most people,
when they talk about running the Christian race, what they
really delve into is legalism and bondage. In other words,
running, running, running. Oh, if I don't make it to the
end, you know. Well, it's true that only those
who finish the race win the prize. Paul said that in 1 Corinthians
9. But you see, that's not to teach that salvation, our final
glory in heaven, is conditioned on our running the race or how
we run the race. You see, our running the race
is evidence of the grace of God. who puts us in the race, keeps
us in the race, and will bring us to the finish, where our forerunner,
Christ, has already entered into glory. So he says, run this race
that is set before us. God set it before us. That word
set means it's planned out and purposed by God. In other words,
this race is not a shot in the dark. It's not that we start
out and we don't know where we're going, and it's not planned and
purposed. God has planned and purposed this race. And we're
to run this race and run it with grace. Now, what does he say
here? How are we to run the race? He
says, well, lay aside every weight. You've seen races in the Olympics,
or maybe you've run track in school. Could you picture somebody
getting ready to run a race, a marathon race, for example?
Could you picture somebody coming out there with a backpack full
of cinder block on their back, getting ready to run that race?
How far do you think they would get? And do you think they would
win the race? Well, obviously not. They'd be
weighted down. Well, what is it that weighs
believers down in this race? Well, there's a lot of things.
There's fears, doubts, circumstances, all of this thing. And he says,
lay aside that weight. What he's talking about is this.
In this race, we are to consciously and determinatively lay aside,
set aside, put off anything that would hinder us in our run. It could be the riches of the
world. It could be legalism, false religion. It could be the accusations and
criticism of our enemies. But anything that would hint,
it could be self-doubt and self-pity. Lay aside that weight. And then
he says the sin that does so easily beset us. Lay that aside.
What is that sin that he's talking about? I'll tell you exactly
what it is. It's unbelief, doubts, misgivings
and fears that cause us to doubt God, And somebody says, well,
I don't doubt God, I doubt myself. Well, listen, the gospel message
is salvation in Christ, not in yourself. So don't cover it up
by saying, well, I don't doubt him, I doubt myself. Salvation
is not conditioned on yourself, it's conditioned on Christ. So
run the race of grace and put aside anything that would hinder
you in that race. If there's any obstacles in the
way, clear them out. and lay aside that sin of unbelief. You see, in Hebrews 11, this
was the hall of faith, looking unto Christ, believing in Him,
resting in Him. And that's how you'd run the
race, not in unbelief and doubt, but in assurance and peace, not
because you're so good, not because you're running so fast, not because
you're running so well. So many times in this race I
don't do well at all. But I know that Christ is my
hope. He's my victory. He's finished
already. He finished the work on the cross
of Calvary. He's entered into glory. He's
my forerunner. He's raised from the dead. I'll
be raised from the dead. I'm looking unto Him. And that
leads me to the next point here. He says run with patience. What
is that patience? Now a lot of people think of
patience as waiting. And the Bible does say wait on
the Lord. We are to wait on the Lord. But patience and waiting
on the Lord is not like waiting on an appointment in a dentist's
office or a doctor's office or in a line to get your driver's
license where you have to wait and wait and wait and wait and
you get frustrated. Patience here and waiting on
the Lord means submitting to the will of God. Just meekly
obeying Him and submitting to His will, saying, Lord, whatever
you bring our way, I know you're going to get me through. I'll
accept it and I'll run this race." Just a resignation to God's providence
and God's will in all things. So run this race. Let us lay
aside that weight, lay aside that sin, and run the race. There's the command. Now, verse
2, how are we to run the race? And listen to me now. This is
the key to the whole thing. There are a lot of people who
are running, but they're running in the wrong direction. A lot
of people who are working hard, running hard, they're either
running too fast, they haven't paced themselves, they're looking
to the side or this side, they're looking up, they're looking down,
they're looking within. But there's only one way to run
the race of grace, and here it is in verse 2. Looking unto Jesus. Jesus Christ. Now, that name
Jesus is the name of His humanity, but what does it mean? Well,
I told you last week, we went back and we talked about Joshua.
The Old Testament version of the name Jesus in the New Testament,
or the Aramaic, is Joshua, or Yeshua, and it's a derivative
or a form of Jehovah who saves. You remember when the angel came
to Joseph and revealed to him not to put away Mary, she's with
child, but don't put her away, for that child in her womb is
of the Holy Ghost, the Messiah. And he told Joseph this, he said,
and you shall call his name Jesus. For, now here's what that means,
for he shall save his people from their sins. His name tells
us of who he is. It's not just a label. His name
tells us of his character, his power, his majesty and glory. His name tells us of his great
work. He shall save his people from
their sins. Not he might make a stab at it,
or not that he's going to try to save them, but he shall save
them from their sins. And then he went on to tell Joseph,
he said, his name shall be called Immanuel. That's from the Old
Testament, Isaiah. And he says, for it's which being
interpreted is God with us. Jesus Christ is God with us. You see, if you have Christ,
you're in fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Spirit. In Him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily, and you're complete in Him. He told Philip,
Philip said, Show us the Father. He said, Philip, if I've been
so long with you and you've not seen the Father, I am the Father
I want. If you've seen me, you've seen
the Father, he said. He's the revelation of the Father. He's
the revelation of the Spirit. Christ, crucified, is the revelation
of the glory and majesty of the whole triune Godhead, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. He said, this is life eternal,
that they might know thee, Jesus Christ, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Oh, my friend, looking unto Jesus,
looking unto the God-man, the Messiah, who shall save his people
from their sins. And he goes on to explain that.
He says, run this race, keeping your eyes, and that means your
heart. That doesn't mean your physical
eyes. We know we can't see Him with the physical eyes. We walk
by faith, not by sight. That's what this whole book is
talking about here, Hebrews 11. We walk by faith. We look unto
Him by faith. We believe in Him. We rest in
Him. We trust Him. We have our assurance
and our hope and our peace in Him. He's our motivation, for
the love of Christ constrains us to avoid sin and obey God.
Not in order to be saved, but because we already are. But keep
your heart and your mind and your affections, your will, upon
Him. upon things above where Christ
sitteth at the right hand of the Father, making intercession
for us. And if I keep my eyes on Him,
I don't have to worry about sin. I should fight sin with every
fiber of my being, but I don't have to be worried about it so
as to be condemned. There is no condemnation in Him.
I'm looking to Him. Looking unto Him, I have all
wisdom, all righteousness, all holiness, and all redemption.
Looking unto him I have all the promises of God, for in him all
the promises of God are yea, and in him amen. In him I have
the whole inheritance of grace and glory, for all that God has
for his people, all that God requires from his people, is
given freely in Christ. He that spared not his own son,
how shall he not freely give us all things? You see that?
Run the race, not looking at your works. Somebody says, well,
I haven't done enough. Don't look at that. No, I guarantee
you haven't done enough. I haven't either. None of us
have. And listen to me. If we ever
think we've done enough, then that's self-righteousness. That's
not looking unto Christ. That's looking to self. Somebody
said, oh, I'm such a great sinner. Well, you don't know the half
of it. I don't know the half of it. And we need to see our
sins. We need a good dose of reality
of what we really are in the sight of God. But we don't stay
there. If we've been born again by the
Spirit, if we have that new principle of life and nature of grace,
we look unto Christ for relief. Are you looking unto Christ?
Well, ask yourself this question. When you get in trouble, when
you get down and convicted by your sins, when you feel like
you haven't done enough, Where do you find relief? And the Bible
says, looking unto Jesus. Now, how? How are we to look
unto Him? It says, looking unto Jesus,
the author and the finisher of our faith. That means He's the
beginner of it. He's the author of it. Salvation
is by His blood and His righteousness, not ours. He's the author of
it, and He's the finisher of it, the completer of it. Oh,
that word, finish. It's a good word in the scriptures
when it applies to Christ. He finished the work. He said
in his high priestly prayer in John 17, Father, the hour has
come. Glorify thou me with the glory
which I had with thee before the world began. He said, Father, I have finished
the work which thou gavest me to do. On the cross of Calvary,
when he completed the work of payment of the debt of God's
people to God's law and justice, he said this, he says, it is
finished. He completed it. He drank damnation dry. He paid
the debt in full. He satisfied law and justice.
He brought in everlasting righteousness. It's finished. You don't have
to finish it. Rest in Christ and His finished work. Look unto
Him as the author. and finisher. John 13 says he
loved his people unto the end. That word end means the finishing
of the work. Romans 10 verse 4 says that Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe it.
He's the finishing of the law, the fulfillment of the law, the
completion of the law for righteousness to everyone that looks to him
by faith. Looking on him as the author and finisher of our faith.
Rest in him. Find your assurance in him. And
it says, Christ, who for the joy that was set before him,
endured the cross. There was a joy in his cross
work. There was a burden. There was
a grief. There was a sorrow. We don't
even know how to describe the pain and the agony and the sorrow
that our Lord went through when the sins of God's sheep were
laid upon Him, when they were imputed to Him, made to meet
on Him, when He was made sin. Oh, what a reality. We can't
describe that. But we know there was agony and
pain and suffering. In the Garden of Gethsemane,
He sweat great drops of blood. On the cross of Calvary, it came
to the point where he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? We can't explain that. We can't
even enter into that. We just know it so. And yet he
himself in all of that was without sin. He suffered for our sins. He died for our sins. But in
all of that pain and agony and separation, there was a joy.
And the joy was this, the completion of his work, which would glorify
the Father, and by which he himself would be exalted, raised from
the dead, and seated at the right hand of the Father, and the salvation
of his people, his church. That was the joy that was set
before him, and he endured the cross. He became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross, for that joy. It says
he despised the shame, and he sat down at the right hand of
the throne of God. In other words, the shame that
he went through In his cross experience, in his suffering
unto death, he didn't think any of it, anything of that, compared
to the joy. And now it says he sat down at
the right hand of the throne of God. That means he finished
the work. The reason he's seated, the work's done. Back in the
old covenant, the priest in the tabernacle, in the temple, they
never had a chair to sit on because their work was never done. There
was no atonement. There was no satisfaction. There
was no righteousness established there. But when Christ, the great
high priest, did his work, it's done. He doesn't have to do it
over again, continually, year after year. It's done. He went
into the holiest of all, not for himself, but for us. And
he finished the work and now he's seated at the right hand
of God. Now look at verse 3. Now here's
the last command. And this is a good, I'll tell
you, this is rest and peace like you've never known before. False
religion won't give this to you folks. Self-righteous works religion
won't do this. Only the grace of God in Christ. I'm pleading with people, with
sinners to come to Christ. And he says here in verse 3,
Here's the third command, for consider him. Consider Christ. Back over in chapter 3, he spoke
to the believers, and he said, holy brethren, consider the apostle
and high priest of our calling, Jesus Christ, the Lord our righteousness. Consider who he is. Consider
him. Consider who he is. Now, why
am I so sure and certain that all that he came to do he accomplished? Why do I know that he did it?
Because of who he is. He is God and man in one person. The Bible says that he was made
of the seed of David according to the flesh. That's his sinless
humanity. He wasn't made of Adam now. He
wasn't born of Adam. He was born in the Virgin Mary
by the Holy Spirit, that holy thing, that God-man. Nothing
ever like Him before then and nothing ever like Him since then.
So who is He? He's God-man. He's the Son of
God incarnate, the Word made flesh, the Word that was with
God, that was God, the Word that created this world, the Word
of power, the Word incarnate. That's who He is. Consider who
He is. Secondly, consider what He did. what he accomplished. He accomplished redemption by
the sacrifice of himself, by the shedding of his innocent,
precious blood, the just for the unjust, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot. He brought in righteousness.
He was buried and rose from the dead because righteousness demands
life. He finished the work. Consider
why he did it. for the glory of the Father,
the glory of God. And where is he now? Consider
where he is now. He's seated at the right hand
of the Father. Consider what he's doing now.
He's saving his people from their sins. Consider him. Consider
him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. Now,
what does that mean, that contradiction of sinners against himself? Well,
the Bible, in Isaiah 53, says, we esteemed him not. He had no
comeliness that we should look upon Him. We looked upon Him
as being cursed. You know that's a great contradiction
because He was and is the only perfect man that ever lived.
We took Him to that cross and hanged Him on that cross as a
malefactor, a criminal. And yet we were the malefactors,
we're the criminals, we're the sinners. What a contradiction.
Now listen to me. When He went to the cross, He
did. He was made sin. He did become
cursed and guilty by imputation. The Father looked upon Him as
cursed and brought His wrath down upon Him. But it's a contradiction
of sinners against Him. We hated Him without a cause. We deserved to die. He didn't. But sin was imputed to Him, and
He deserved it under the Father's justice. And then it says, lest
you be wearied and faint in your minds. Consider Christ. You're
running this race. It's a race of grace. Lay aside
that weight, anything that would hinder you in this race. Lay
aside that sin that so easily besets us, unbelief and doubt. Run with patience. Submit to
the will, the providence, the work of God, that race that God
has planned out, set before us. and do it looking unto Jesus
as the author and finisher of our faith, looking unto Christ
as our all in all, our hope, and consider Him, consider who
He is, what He did, why He did it, where He is now, lest you
become weary and faint in your minds, lest you get tired and
lest you quit. Now, my friend, we know that
all whom God saves will never quit. If God saved you, you will
endure to the end. If you don't endure to the end,
you know what that means? The Bible says this, it means
God didn't save you. It means you were never saved
to begin with. You had a profession, but you
had no power. You had an appearance, but you
didn't have any grace in the heart. The outside may have been
cleaned up, but the inside was still full of dead men's bones.
The Bible says if those who went out from us, if they had been
of us, they would have no doubt remained with us. But they went
out that it might be made manifest if they were not of us. If you
go out and leave this race, that means you never had that unction,
the power of the Spirit in the new birth to give us life. But
those whom God sets on this race, He keeps them. And they endure
to the end. But God uses means. And here's
the means. Look unto Christ. Consider him. Look unto Jesus, the author and
finisher of our faith.