We leave the 11th chapter and
go into the 12th chapter of Hebrews, but it is necessary that we read
the last two verses of chapter 39 before we read chapter 12
to get the context of this because this is, of course, men added
the chapter breaks in this. in the original manuscripts. There are no chapters and verses,
but for the ease of our reading pleasure, these things were put
in to help us in some ways, I suppose. But beginning there in verse
39 of chapter 11, we read this, And these all, having obtained
a good report through faith, received not the promise. God
having provided some better thing for us, that they without us
should not be made perfect. Wherefore, seeing we also are
compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, 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.
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 is sat down at the right hand of the throne
of God. For consider him that endured
such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied
and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto
blood striving against sin, And he hath forgotten the exaltation
which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son, despise not
thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked
of him. For whom the Lord loveth, he
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye
endure chastening, God dealeth with you as sons. For what son
is he whom the Father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement,
whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we have had fathers
of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in
subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they barely
for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure. But he 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 it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them
which are exercised thereby. 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. Follow peace with all men, and
holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Look indeligently,
lest any man fail of the grace of God, 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, For ye know how that afterward, when he would have
inherited the blessing, he was rejected. For he found no place
of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. For
ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched. and that
burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and
the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they
that heard entreated, that the words should not be spoken to
them any more. For they could not endure that
which was commanded. And if so much as a beast touched
the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with the dark.
And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly
fear and quake. But here come unto Mount Zion,
and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly
and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, and to
God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made
perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant. and to the
blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped
not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not
we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven,
whose voice then shook the earth. But now he hath promised, saying,
Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also the heaven. And this word yet once more signifies
the removing of those things that are shaken as those things
that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom
which cannot be moved, let us have grace wherein we may serve
God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is
a consuming fire. Now coming right on the heels
of what Brother Al has been teaching us and given that parable there
about the tares and the wheat, this last verse of that chapter
that we just read is quite a commentary upon that. For our God is a consuming
fire. And as we have tried to do from
the beginning, setting forth the purpose of this book as being
that which is written to encourage and exhort those Hebrew Christians
who were turning back to Judaism to remain faithful. So this thought
continues on. And of course the whole book,
the whole chapter, the 11th chapter of Hebrews is written as giving
the examples of men in the faith who endured. And these men, he
says, endured not having received the promises, but looking forward
to the promises and confessing as he closes that 11th chapter
out, He said, God having provided some better thing for us that
they without us should not be made perfect. Now, the whole
purpose of God is the same from the beginning throughout the
book. The Bible indicates to us that
God has one purpose. And that purpose is manifested
in the beginning and carried right on through to the end.
Many people often look at the unfolding of history as though
God is doing all these different things. He's got this in mind
for this period of time and then He says, well, we're going to
change up and we're going to start doing it this way over
here or that. But that's not the case at all.
The Lord promised from the very beginning that He would send
a Redeemer into the world to redeem his people, and he manifested
that throughout the Old Testament in the types and foreshadows,
and he showed it to be true in the sending of his Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, to redeem his people. And then he has manifested that
daily in the work that he is doing among his people until
the final day when he said that he would come to receive that
back unto himself, which was his. Now, a man misses the whole
heart and message of the purpose of the preaching of the gospel
if he cannot understand or does not choose to understand or will
not understand or cannot understand, however you want to put it, that
God does have this purpose, that the purpose of redemption is
not a secondary purpose. God didn't create Adam hoping
that Adam would do right and that the world would just go
on in some perfect paradise. That's not what God created the
world to do. He was not surprised when Adam
fell. into disobedience because that
was his purpose from the beginning. And so he set these things in
order for this purpose, that Jesus Christ might be magnified
in the redemption of his people. Now, the natural man cannot receive
that. He will not receive that because
he places too high of an esteem upon men, just like Abraham did
when he was interceding in the behalf of those whom he loved
before the Lord and thinking to himself, well, surely the
Lord won't destroy these people that I know there in that city
who are not the same as all these wicked men. But not seeing the
fact that as we look at this, how the Lord sees men and what
we are as sinners. And that's why David
said, What is man that thou art mindful of him? Now, modern thought
would never come up with a question like that. Because, you see,
modern thought says, Well, God should take notice of us because
we're such fine people. I mean, we've all got, you know,
a little spark of good in us and we're going about doing good
and you've got all these people over here that love the Lord
and they're doing great things, see all these charitable works
and all of that stuff. And they say, well, surely God
won't just cast all of that off. But you see, the fact of the
matter is that none of the things that men do carry any weight
with God insofar as judging righteous judgment because He knows what
we are and He knows what we're worthy of. And we know by the
grace of God when the Spirit of God opens our eyes to see
that very thing about our own self and to know that we have
no righteousness of our own. And so it is that this is, I
believe, is at the very basis of the understanding of the unfolding
of God's purpose in the earth and showing us redemption in
Jesus Christ. For how else could it come? What
other basis could a man have to stand before a holy God than
the perfect righteousness of Christ? Because partial righteousness
won't do it. I mean, how righteous could a
man be? What would a man stand before
God in if not the perfect righteousness of Christ? There's not any place
he could stand. And so that's the only place,
as we sang that song a moment ago, in the cross. In the cross,
be my glory ever. Oh, that that might be true,
that that might be how we see those things, because if we're
not covered in the blood of Christ, then we have no righteousness
at all if we don't stand in His righteousness. Now, he says here
at the end of this chapter that they without us should not be
made perfect. There is an understanding that
the Lord has given to His people through the ages that His purpose
would be fulfilled. And they haven't seen what those
Old Testament saints died not having received the promise.
They didn't see what it was, but they knew God was going to
fulfill the promises that He gave. And so they knew that without
us they couldn't be This thing could not be fulfilled. They
could not be made perfect. That is, they could not be...
They would not... See, the promise of God would
not be fulfilled unto them if it's not been fulfilled unto
us. See, Abraham looked forward in faith, not having received
the promise. Now, he received many carnal
blessings and he received many spiritual blessings. But the
one thing that he looked forward to obtaining he didn't see. because he confessed that he
looked for a city which has foundations and is builder and maker of God.
And the Lord Jesus Christ said, I go to prepare a place for you.
Where I am there ye may be also. And so he died without having
received that promise. But the people of God in the
present time, we've received the promise, seen it demonstrated. Now the only thing that we've
not yet received is the actual manifestation of seeing Him face
to face. But we have seen Him and seen
the promises of God. We're not waiting for some new
revelation to come along. Well, I wonder what God's going
to do to redeem us. See, we're not wondering that.
Now, Abraham, he didn't know exactly how God was going to
accomplish this. He couldn't see it. John the
Baptist, Even though he was the forerunner of Christ, he couldn't
see it. It wasn't revealed unto him what
Christ would do. But dear brethren, he that is
least in the kingdom of heaven who has seen the unfolding of
the promise of Christ's redemption, that's as far as we need to go. We are not looking for something
else. We've received the promise of
God. Christ is the promise of God. And we have seen His redemption
fulfilled. And so he says here that they
without us should not be made perfect, not that we're adding
anything to them, but that that which God would do is made perfect
in us, that is, it has been revealed and manifested unto those whom
God has been pleased to show the salvation of Christ. So here's his argument. Now,
I remember one time hearing a fellow say, that you need to find out
what the wherefores and the therefores are there for in Scripture, because
they're very important. Now, he says here, wherefore. That is, based on all that I
have said to you prior to this. Wherefore. Here it is. It's like
being in a court of law or reading a legal document. And when you come to the wherefore,
then that has reference to that that went before it. He says,
wherefore, since all of this is true, seeing that we are compassed
about, that is, these witnesses, that we're compassed about. They're
around us on every hand. All you've got to do is go back
through the Old Testament and read these things and see these
witnesses compassed about us. We're surrounded with them. And
this is not talking about some spiritual beings that are floating
around us. That's not what it's talking
about. He's talking about the witnesses that he spoke about
in chapter 11. Now it's interesting that this
word that is translated here from the Greek as witness is
martus in the Greek. I'm not a Greek scholar, but
you can look that up. And it's the word that we get
our English word martyr from. And that's what it says here.
We're compassed about and so great a cloud of martyrs. That is people who died in the
faith, for the faith, because of the faith, we're surrounded
by them. I mean, you can look at men who
have suffered for the cause of Christ. You can read about them.
You can find the testimony that they had. And since we're seeing
that we are compassed about with these great cloud of witnesses,
these are people who confess that they were strangers and
pilgrims in the earth, and they wouldn't accept the riches of
Egypt. They wouldn't bow down to a king
who said to worship him. They would choose the suffering
of the sons of God before they would take these things. Now,
seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
then why are we going to turn back? I mean, if we have these
people stood the test. What are we doing coming up here
to the brink, having received the promise and seeing the unfolding
of the riches of Christ's glory, which He set that forth in the
chapters before when He said, Christ hath obtained eternal
redemption. Not by the blood of bulls and
goats, but by his own blood. He entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption. That's the basis
upon which we stand, is that one who came with a priesthood
after the order of Melchizedek. Not that which was of Aaron,
because the order of Melchizedek is a greater priesthood than
that of Aaron. So he says to these Hebrews,
don't go back to Moses. I've already showed you that
that's not of any use. Because the sacrifices that were
done in the temple never took away any sin, but he said that
which Christ has done has taken away our sin as far as east is
from the west. Now why do we want to go back
to that? Why are we turning back? And he said, well, so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, that is,
every hindrance. Don't let things hinder you.
You know, it's easy to be hindered, isn't it? You ever made an excuse
for not doing something you know you should do? That's a hindrance. You see, there's a thousand hindrances,
isn't there? I mean, there's always a good
reason not to do the right thing, isn't there? I mean, your flesh,
you can come up with a million different things, reasons, and
they're all good. I mean, you know, in the flesh
we'd say, well, he's right. But he said, let's lay aside
the hindrances. Don't use the hindrances as a
reason that you can't go forward, that you can't continue in the
faith. He said, let us lay aside every weight, every hindrance,
and the sin which doth so easily beset us. Now, what is it? Is he saying here, let's quit
sinning? I don't think so. I don't think
that's what he's getting at, okay? I mean, that would be a
thing. Surely, as John said, my little
children, I write these things unto you that ye sin not. I mean,
we desired that we would not sin, but if we could just, by
exhortation, I could say to Brother Al, Brother Al, don't sin, and
that that would somehow carry some weight and he would no longer
be a man of the flesh and he wouldn't sin, that'd be a great
thing, wouldn't it? But that's not reality. Because the fact
is, as long as we're in this life, sin is going to be a present
reality. Now, that doesn't mean we condone
it or that we say, well, boys will be boys or whatever. It's
just a fact that we're sinners. We're born that way and we're
going to continue that way till the end. That doesn't mean at the same
time that we say it's a good thing because it's not a good
thing. It's the very thing that put the Lord Jesus Christ on
the cross. It's the very thing that caused
Him to suffer. It's the very thing that caused
Him to bleed and to die in our behalf. And so sin itself is
a terrible thing. But that's not what he's getting
at here. Because he said, let us lay aside the sin, speaking
about a specific sin, which doth so easily beset us. And who's
he speaking to? He's speaking to these Hebrews
who were starving to think, well, maybe we need to go back to the
law of Moses and go back to our old religion and go back that
way. What is the sin that doth so
easily beset us? It's the sin of unbelief. He said, lay aside that. What did he say? Looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Now how is a man
going to leave the sin of unbelief except that that be the place
that he lives? I mean, if you get to looking
at your ability to hold out to the end, you're going to get
discouraged pretty quick. If you're going to look at your
ability to quit committing the same sins over and over again,
being unthankful, being a pain in somebody's side, being all
the things that the Scripture and the Spirit teaches us not
to be, if you're going to look at those things and say, well,
I'm just a failure, then you're right. You are a failure. I mean,
everybody in here is a failure. But, dear brethren, that's just
the reality of the facts. But that's not the place to which
we are called to look by faith, are we? I mean, if I had to stand
in my own righteousness before God, I'd be despairing tomorrow. But that's not the place we stand.
Where do we stand? Looking unto Jesus, the author
and the finisher of our faith. We're foreseeing we are compassed
about. Let's run with patience. Let
us lay aside the sin which doth so easily beset us and run the
race with patience, the race which is set before us, looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He is that one
to whom we look. We don't look any further. We
don't look any less. We're not stopping short. We're
not going beyond it. Now, the way of man stops short
of Christ. The way of religion goes beyond
it. And we're not either stopping short, nor are we going beyond
it. But we're looking at Him. But
why? Because it says here, He is the author and the finisher. He's the architect and the builder. He's the one who designed it,
who laid it out, and He's the one who nailed every nail in
it. He's the completer. That's what
it means to be the finisher of our faith. And it says, "...who
for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross." Now this
is the thing that As we look at what God has done, it is to see that He did these things
on purpose. The Scripture says He shall see
of the travail of His soul and be satisfied because it is His
purpose to finish the work. And He was happy. That word for
the joy that was set before Him as He endured the cross, despising
the shame, and sat down at the right hand of God is cheerfulness. He was glad to do it. And so
it is that God's people are exhorted to serve Him with our whole heart,
our whole mind, looking unto Him, not expecting that in ourselves
we're going to find perfection, or we are going to leave behind
our sin, but believing that He has taken away our sin and that
it is in Him, in Him alone that we find a place of rest, looking
unto Him. May the Lord give us grace.