I was listening to our brothers
preach last night, and I think this is true of every preacher.
And when they hear a man like Bruce or Don stand up and preach,
they think, What am I doing? Why am I here? I can't preach
like these fellows preach. But I do have one of Don's handkerchiefs. I carry it with me everywhere
I go. Either that or I'm a Detroit
Tigers fan. Turn with me in your Bibles to
Hebrews chapter 12. I want to read two very familiar
verses of Scripture. and endeavor, by God's grace,
to tell you and myself, once again, exactly where it's at. Wherefore, seeing we also are
accomplished 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, the pioneer, the finisher, the perfecter of our
faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising, or better, disregarding the shame, and is set down at
the right hand of the throne of God. Now, the first three
words of verse two, looking unto Jesus, are words that the believer
understands to be a kind of all-encompassing principle of life. That does not mean we practice
it, but every believer knows that to be the fact. Some would
say, well, that's so simple. I say to those, well, go ahead
and give it a shot if you think it's simple. Give it a shot.
One time after I preached, a lady came up to me and said, you know,
I can believe those flowers are God. I said, go ahead. See if you can. Go ahead and
believe. Go ahead. These three words, looking unto
Jesus, is the whole ball of wax. It's the whole shooting match.
As my father-in-law says, it's the whole confound push. This
is it. Looking unto Jesus is the all-encompassing
principle of the life of the child of God. And there is not
a single area in the life of the believer where this principle
is not applicable and beneficial. Every part of it. In Colossians chapter 3, Paul
says, set your affections on things, or rather your affection
on things above and not on things of the earth. Where Christ, who
is our life, sits at the right hand of the Father. And then
in that chapter, chapter 3, he goes on to talk about a great
deal of things that can only be done by setting your affection
on things that are above. He said, mortify the deeds of
the flesh. How are you going to do that?
Are you going to look at the deeds? I'm doing this wrong, so I'm
looking at this. No, that ain't how you do it. You look to Christ. You look to Christ. He goes on
to say, husbands love your wives. How are you going to do that?
Looking at your wife? You know better. You do it looking to Christ.
And there you'll see how a husband's supposed to love his wife. He
says, why submit yourselves to your husbands? Women, can you do that looking
at your husbands? You can't do it. You've got to look to Christ. And while I'm at it, The Lord
says something to somebody, don't go butting yourself in that thing.
The Lord says, wives, submit yourselves to your husbands.
He doesn't say, husbands, see to it that she does that. That's
between her and Christ. When he says, husbands, love
your wives, as Christ loved the church, he doesn't say to the
wife, see to it that he does that. That's between the husband. and His Lord, all looking to
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's all summed up in these three
words, looking unto Jesus. What we're doing here this morning,
or what we came here to do, what we were brought here to do by
God's direction cannot be done looking at me, or looking at
Don, or looking at each other. We can only worship God looking
unto the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if I'm honest, something
I rarely am ever sure that I am, and a thing I think is generally
rated much too high, honesty, I much prefer someone being genuine
than honest, because if you tell me what I really look like, you're
going to hurt my feelings. Honesty is going to Port Huron
and riding the boat and get your picture took, and there's Nancy
and Debbie in their beauty, and Jim looking sharp in his golf
shirt, and I looked at that other guy and I said, where'd they
pick up that homeless man? Poor devil. I can truly say that every problem
I find myself in can be traced to the want of living within
the concept of this principle. And every moment of peace and
triumph that I experience is found when following the admonition
of these three simple, singular, glorious words, looking unto
Jesus. Paul declares these words as
the answer or remedy to a malady that has affected the Hebrew
believers and is the bane of everyone who has been saved by
God's grace. These words are not a general
statement, though they would certainly fit that scheme. They
are, however, declared to be the antidote for a specific spiritual
disorder or dis-ease. And since this is so, it stands
to reason that these words, applied as a remedy, also illustrate
or define the disease that it treats. I say treats because
there's no cure for it this side of glory. But it is a treatment,
the only treatment. Obviously, if we were told that
looking unto Jesus would cure our distemper, our distemper
must be that we are not looking unto Jesus. Is that too hard
to understand? If this is the cure or the treatment
for the malady, it is also a revelation of the malady itself. If we are told to run, it is
obvious that we are immobile, inert. or static. If we are told
to consider, then it stands to reason that we are inconsiderate. The fact that we are told to
do these things patiently suggests impatience. The subject that
Paul is addressing in chapters 11 and 12 is introduced in chapter
10 in verses 38 and 39. Paul says this, The justified, the just, shall
live by faith. By faith. But if any man draw
back, my soul hath no pleasure in him. But we are not of them
who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the
saving of the soul. Now in our text, he uses as examples
these great heroes and heroines of the faith to show that believing
is difficult, even impossible, if it is any way governed by
circumstance. These all died in faith, is the
report, having not received the promises. Their circumstances
were such that some were sawn asunder, killed for the cause
of Christ. And if they looked at circumstance,
they'd be in trouble. If they looked at what's going
on around them, they'd be in trouble. These all died in faith. They died in faith. These believers
that Paul is now addressing here in the book of Hebrews are said
to have it better than those folks did. In verses 39 and 40
of chapter 11, it says, And these, all having obtained a good report
through faith, received not the promise, God having provided
some better thing for us, some better thing for us, that they
without us should not be made perfect. Some better thing for
us. Those saints in the Old Testament
were justified, sanctified, and saved in the same manner, in
the same way, and at the same time we were. They were saved
by grace, through the blood of Jesus Christ, and were given
faith to believe it. We, however, are privileged to
be a part of a fully realized church. We are not under the
law, which could not save them, even though they were compelled
to operate under its constraints. We have not come to the mountain
that none might be touched, that burneth with fire, but rather
have come to Mount Zion. to the assembly of the saints,
and to be among just men made perfect, and to hear the voice
of Jesus Christ, Him who speaks from heaven. God has given us
better things, yet in spite of this gracious benefaction, we
often find ourselves stymied, stuck, spinning our wheels. We see what God has done. We
see the price that Christ has paid. We see what price others
have paid for believing God. Yet we often find ourselves encumbered
with weights that seemingly stall us in our tracks. Why? The answer is simple. We're not
looking unto Jesus. Everything Paul addresses in
this chapter is about believing. Believing God concerning the
Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done. In this chapter we
find chastisement. Chastisement. And that's often
used by religion as synonymous with punishment. It has nothing
to do with punishment. That punishment, as our brother
said last night, is taken care of. God is not going to punish
you. When you come before your Father,
you'll always find a smile on His face. Always. He'll always welcome you with
open arms. Well, what if I've done thus and so? What if? Get
real. You have done thus and so. You
do thus and so. Was your salvation based on what
you did or didn't do? No. Is your acceptance based
on what you did or didn't do? No. your access isn't either. Christ suffered all our punishment
fully and completely on Calvary Street, and then did that wondrous thing
that only he could do. He died of his own free will. And in his When he died, that
was the last thing left to do. That's what the law required.
Somebody's got to die. He voluntarily, victoriously,
vicariously died in the room instead of his people. And we
rejoice in his life, but we celebrate his death. We are baptized unto his death.
We take the Lord's table to recall and memorialize his death until
he comes again. This book is about death. If
you were to enter into the old Holy of Holies, you wouldn't
find an ornate little chapel with stained glass windows and
a cross hung somewhere and little people running around in white
robes. What you would find would be blood and gore and the coppery
smell of death everywhere. You say, what has happened here?
God has been satisfied here. Blood has been shed here. Death
has satisfied the Lord. Chastisement is understood by
the result it produces. And that's the way it is with
everything. Really think about this. Now, we believe in God's
sovereignty. We believe in the sovereign God.
We believe He does all things according to His own will, that
none can stay His hand or say unto Him, What doest thou? We
know that He is God and there is none else. We know that He
created the universe in a span. Span. The universe is endless. That's
what the scientists say. No, it's there in God's hand. All of it. He weighs the mountains in a
balance. The nations before Him are a
drop of the bucket and sands of the balance. He raises up
princes and sets them down. He's not a Democrat or a Republican.
He just puts people in office and then takes them out. Don't get mad at who's in office.
You get mad at God if you do. You say, well, what if Hillary
gets elected? God put her there and she did. So will you like it? Not necessarily.
But nonetheless, God put her there if she gets there. We believe in the sovereignty
of God. But how do you figure out anything? We can't know what
God is doing in any particular time. He's made sure of that
by putting this thing in our brain that we think we've got
it and it just floats away. We can't know what he's doing,
but you know what you can understand? You can understand what he's
done by the results it produces. And you can understand the intent
of what he did by the result it produces. So look at the result,
you say, oh, that's what God meant to do. Spurgeon said, sometimes
the only reason we can give for doing anything is that it turned
out all right. And that's the truth. If you
want to know what God did, look at the result. If you want to
know what God intended, look at the result. So what is the
result of chastisement? What is the result of chastisement?
It always, every time, brings us to the feet of Jesus Christ.
So that was the intent of the whole thing. Loving correction. obviously
must be applied because we are not at the feet of Christ, where
we belong. We're not looking to Him. We're
not trusting Him. Our Lord is going to shake this
earth one more time. He said that in this very chapter,
chapter 12. That must be seen in the result
it produces. Everything's going to pass away
except the kingdom received by faith. You know what's of value? You know what's of true value? What you can take with you when
you go. That's got something to it, ain't it? Everything else
ain't no value to it. None whatsoever. The only thing
that will remain after the Lord shakes this universe one more
time is the kingdom that was received by faith, through faith.
To not believe is to turn away him who speaks from heaven. What is turning away from him
but to cease looking at him, to have our eyes elsewhere, to
look for evidence of salvation anywhere other than Christ. The
word looking here means to turn our eyes from one thing and fix
them upon another. That's the whole thing. It's
not just look. It's looking. Turning our eyes from one thing
to look at another. Well, then we must be looking
at something else then other than Christ. If looking suggests
turning from one thing to another, from turning whatever we're looking
at to turn to Christ, then we must not be looking at Christ.
We must not be. Paul directs our eyes to Christ,
having seen that we've been encompassed by a great multitude of those
who believed in the past, and even to our Lord in verse 2,
who looked past His suffering to the glory that awaited Him.
Because if we do not look to Him and continue looking to Him,
we will be unable to run the race that is set before us. We
run the race looking to Him. Now, these witnesses are not
witnesses in the legal sense or in the historical sense, but
are rather witnesses in the ethical sense. The declaration of which
is to bring us, having seen them, to consider why we who have better
things than they often find ourselves body-checked in unbelief. On the one side of our unbelief
we have a great crowd of believers. On the other side of our unbelief
we have Him who obeyed perfectly. We are to consider Him in contrast
to ourselves. He ran the race set before Him,
finished His course, endured the shame and was obedient to
the giving of His death, the giving of His life. And we who
are saved by that blood are such contradictions to him. We are
rendered catatonic by unbelief, crushed under the weight of unbelief
and constantly turned from the course by unbelief. And that's
the sin that easily besets us. Don't try to go figure out, well,
is it my drinking? Is it my chewing? Is it my smoking
cigarettes? What is it? It's unbelief. Because
this whole chapter, beginning with chapter 10 and verse 38-39,
all the way through chapter 12, is about faith. It's about believing
God. The sin that besets us is not
something that you can name except this. It's the mother of all
sins. The first thing that the Holy
Spirit convicts you about is not your drinking or your chewing.
It's about the fact that you don't believe Jesus Christ. That's the first thing. And that's
what he continues to convict you about. Everything prior to
belief is unbelief. And the sad fact is, I'm a believer. And I believe Christ. But I often get stalled. Why? Because I'm so full of unbelief. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Help my unbelief. We have not resisted unto blood,
striving against sin. What sin? Unbelief. Don't need
to go anywhere else. There's where it's at. The malady,
our malady, our sad estate is always unbelief, and particularly
the way unbelief is always manifested. You see, unbelief will always
be about turning back to the beggarly elements of the world.
It will always be turning back to our innate religion, the one
we were born with, the religion of things seen and not the religion
of things unseen. Unbelief will seek evidence other
than believing Christ. What is evidence of salvation? There's only one given in Scripture,
in all of Scripture, in all this book, from kibber to kibber. One evidence of salvation. And what it is? Faith. Belief. Wait a minute, you've got to
be this and you've got to be that, just shut up and stop saying it, that
ain't right. Faith. And you know what the
miracle of that is? Nobody can even tell you have
it. You say, well, he goes to church. I know he's got faith.
Uh-uh. He prays. I know he's got faith.
I was driving up SoCo Mountain one time and a fellow got out
of his car and laid a little mat down, faced the east and
started doing this. Right side of the road and turned
up in the gravel. And he had faith. Let me tell
you something. When those two planes went into
those twin towers, that was faith-based initiative. Wasn't it? And their faith is all about
revealing their works. What's our faith about? Looking. Can't be that simple. It's that
simple and that impossible. Look into Christ. Look into Christ. Faith is the internal struggle
of the soul. The internal struggle of the
soul. Look over at 2 Corinthians chapter 10. You're familiar with
this. Verses 3-7, For though we walk
in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. What? That means nothing
you can physically do or think or act can make anything go away. For the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
We're out there. In here. In here. These are where the strongholds
are. Casting down imagination. Whose? Ours! And every high thing that exalts
itself against the knowledge of God. Where? In our heads and
hearts. Well, how do you do that? Look
to Christ. His obedience. That's what this
is talking about. And bringing unto captivity every
high imagination, every thought against God, every stronghold,
everything that besets us to Christ's obedience, to His obedience. This obedience is manifest in
imaginations and high things that exalt themselves against
the knowledge of God. or what we know to be true of
God as salvation, our salvation, all of it is the obedience of
Christ and Him alone. The revenge against disobedience
is obedience. And the first thing commanded
is obedience to the gospel. This is the commandment I give
unto you. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The remedy for not looking is
Looking. Isn't that right? That's simple. Faith brings all
things that have to do with acceptance before God to stand in Christ's
obedience alone. That's what faith does. That's
how strongholds are cast down. And imaginations are cast away
in every high thought that exalts itself against God. What is a
high thought that exalts itself against God? Reading this Bible and thinking, boy, I know some
people that don't. Just praying and believing you
actually got through. That's a high thought. What about your praying? What
about your Bible reading? What about your church attendance?
What about your giving? You better bring those to Christ's
obedience, because that's the only obedience that God recognizes. Unbelief is the sin that so easily
besets us because it is so natural to us. Those who died in faith
in chapter 11 did not die because they were lawless felons. They
did not die because they were not good citizens. They died
because they refused to acknowledge anything other than the person
and work of Christ as the entirety, the totality, the sum and substance
of their righteousness before God. Nothing else. He is our righteousness. He is our righteousness. What does that mean? I ain't
got nothing to compete with that. I ain't got nothing to rival
it. And I can't do nothing to make
it different. Philip Henry wrote that little
book, Christ is All. He said there's three times that
news will really help you, that Christ is our righteousness.
When you do something bad, everybody knows that. It's good to know
when I fell up that Christ is my righteousness. Then he said,
and when you do something good, it's better then to know that
Christ is our righteousness. And when you come down to death's
door, when you ain't got nothing left,
When you're about to be stripped of everything and slip out into
the next world, I'll tell you what'll float your boat. Christ is our righteousness. Marvin Stoniker, whose wife Linda
died when she was very close to death, told me that he went
into her hospital room and sat there and looked at his sweet
bride whom he had loved since his youth. He said, you know,
folks kind of believe that dying people have something important. They've seen something. He said,
honey, have you seen something? Have you seen anything? She said, I have no righteousness. Righteousness is my righteousness. That'll do you when you die.
That'll do when the world's on fire. Paul calls this weight, this
unbelievable weight, a burden that inhibits us from movement.
The word beset means to skillfully surround or to enwrap as if curving
an arm around the neck or put a chokehold on. Unbelief is very
skillful. It's a good wrestler. It's good
in the martial arts. It knows how to perform a chokehold.
It's subtle. And to the natural mind, unfortunately,
unbelief to the natural mind is the pinnacle of logical human
reason. There's a race to run, a course to finish. Note that Paul simply states
that this is a fact. Don't get caught up in the snare
of trying to figure out what the course of your race is. You'll
be looking at the track. You'll be looking at the track.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. All
this other stuff be taken care of. That's what God said. Don't
worry about anything. What's He saying? Look to Christ. What
if there's a stumbling block in the way? There He is and you'll
fall. But you're not to be utterly cast down. What do you do when
you fall? Lift your eye and look to Christ.
Keep running. That's what He's saying. Don't try to figure out
what this is. Paul does not map out the course.
Now, religion plays fast and loose with men's imaginations,
telling them that they have to find out what their talent is,
or to find out the will of God for their lives so they can plot
the appropriate course, maybe purchase a book on how to get
started for a small donation of $25. Paul simply said, there's a race
to be run that cannot be run in unbelief. What is my race,
preacher? I have no earthly idea. What is my course? I wish you'd
quit asking me stuff like that. You and I have a race to run,
but we are not to try to figure out what it is. You and I are to look to the
prize. of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus. If we are beset by stopping and
looking at the course or measuring our presumed progress or how
far we've come or seek to invent better ways to run, we will be
shut down by the sin and the weight that doth so easily beset
us. will be as Simon Peter walking
to Christ on the water, walking on the water, walking on water. Ever tried that? I sink every
time. Walking on water. And then suddenly he was beset
by the magnitude of where he was and what he was doing. And his words were, Lord, save
me. I'm going to drown if you don't
save me. Look to the prize. Look to Christ. He's the beginner and the perfecter
of faith. As a man, he was the true and
faithful witness far exceeding even those who died in faith.
He endured the cross, his race, his course. He did so with his
eyes on the glory that awaited him. He despised, disregarded,
counted as nothing the suffering that attended the course and
did so for the joy set before him and is now seated at the
right hand of the throne of God on high. He suffered loneliness,
betrayal, the weakness of the human body, the anguish of dealing
with the intractable human obstinacy, disregarding them all for the
joy set before him. He made religion mad, religionists
sad, and sinners glad, all the while disregarding even these
things for the joy set before him. Paul states that there is
a race, but what is important is the prize, not how it is run. Look to Jesus, the one who raised
faith to perfection and so set before us the highest example
of it. Don't concern yourself with the
course. It's hard, I know. Circumstance
just sort of butts into our lives, interferes in our careers. Don't worry about the course.
Light out. Light out toward Jesus Christ.
Run the race with patience, looking to Him, our forerunner, who's
already finished the race and holding the door open for us
to get there. He's finished the race for us. Remember this, if
you're stalled, as we so often are, the remedy for unbelief
is belief. The remedy for not looking is
looking. God bless you.