Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – REFORMATION COVENANT CHURCH
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Did everybody have a good poppy week this last seven days? No. Nobody had a good poppy week. How about a good poppy day? No. Probably don’t remember those things, some of us. But poppy day and poppy week used to be observed in this country on a regular basis. You might remember your child or not too many years ago when the veterans would sell little artificial poppies in the week. Someday they would pick in the week right around on Memorial Day and the proceeds from those poppies would go rather for disabled veterans.

Memorial Day was initiated after the Civil War actually first by some southern ladies and memorial to the soldiers that died on each side of the conflict and then later it became a national holiday under the prompting and urging of a northern general and became really somewhat disunited because of that. And southerners—I don’t know if they still do to this day—but in the past have celebrated different days for Memorial Day than the North celebrated.

Those poppies, by the way, the reason they would sell poppies—there was a battlefield in France and that battlefield where so many men had died and given their lives and shed their blood then became a field where poppies grew in great abundance. And so the red poppies were sold as a reminder of death to life and red of course because of the bloodshed pointing back to the one who shed his blood that we all might move from death to life.

I remember when I was a boy growing up in Michigan, Memorial Day was very impressive to me. It’s one of the few memories I have of my early childhood. But I remember well that day the marches that would go on sometimes to veterans, the laying of wreaths in the river by the city that I grew up in, the firing of guns and salute to the veterans who had died in wars past. Of course, by that time they were celebrating the veterans of World War I, World War II, and the Korean police action or war. And it made quite an impression upon me. By that time as well, Memorial Day was now characterized by visitation of graves of all relatives of people that had died in the past, not just veterans, though the emphasis was still upon veterans.

Now, there still may and will be some services tomorrow in the greater Portland area similar to these Memorial Day services that I remember as a boy. But I’d wager that precious few will stop tomorrow to think about and to thank God for the men who died in years past that we might enjoy the liberties that we take so much for granted today.

Memorial Day weekend instead has become basically the official start of the summer season, replete with boating, camping, hot rod races, lots of beer, hot dogs, and increasingly loud, loud music played over the entire scenery of the outdoors as people seem committed to taking the celebration of their particularly liberated lifestyles into the remotest regions of our park areas, seemingly to try to awaken the creation itself to the joys of some death leopard or some other such strange group.

Memorial Day is for most just another three-day weekend accompanied by Memorial Day sales of course in the markets and the malls, sporting events, Cokes and hot dogs. I suppose Memorial Day in its old-fashioned observance is pretty much an embarrassment to our country today. If you think about it, this country seems to have lost its understanding of what liberty is, nonetheless that it would actually need dying for.

Additionally, a society that at least publicly and governmentally—although I don’t think in terms of its citizenry, but publicly and governmentally—a society that moves closer and closer to an overt pacifism, I suppose it’s embarrassing to that sort of society to think that things like timeout and positive alternatives simply wouldn’t work for Adolf and Joseph Stalin. Hitler and Stalin needed something more than a good talking to or positive reinforcement.

But if you’re observant this morning, you’ll notice I’ve made a mistake already because we didn’t ever fight Stalin, Joseph Stalin on the in terms of war. We actually made pacts and agreements with that famous butcher of history of so many innocent people. It’s probably somewhat fitting then that our country today, at least some of our Memorial Day observances will be occupied with think of the travels of an enigmatic president to the Soviet Union that he once called the evil empire and where he now travels to make deals with the government that has reneged and never lived up to a single agreement that they’ve made.

This reminds me anyway of the last time we had this sort of correlation which was Christmas time. If you remember the Christmas season saw a mockery of the biblical text of peace on earth. It was used to describe the supposed peace of our world based not upon Jesus Christ and his order but upon the westernized Gorbachev and his glasnost and perestroika. I say westernized—some people think Gorbachev is westernized simply because he has the first wife in recent memory of a Russian leader who doesn’t weigh more than 200 lbs.

It’s not original to me, but memories are short I suppose in our country today. Okay. And that’s a lot of the problem that we have—short memories about countries such as the Soviet Union—more and that’s an appropriate thing to remind ourselves today because Memorial Day is a day of remembering. A memorial is given that you might remember something and it’s to prod our memory and then of course to move us toward conformance to whatever truths are taught in a particular thing that we’re memorializing or remembering.

And so today it’s appropriate to consider what maybe we could call a text from the scripture that is God’s memorial text to heroes of the faith, both those who conquered and those who died for the faith and then the memorial of our Savior himself. So we’ll move to our outline now and we’ll consider God’s memorial text, Hebrews 11, beginning, we began with verse 32. You could go back to the first of Hebrews 11, but that would be too long.

And I want us to just have a brief overview of this text first and sort of set the stage for the exhortations that the text brings us to in the second part of our talk. We’ll go first for a brief overview of the text. And you have an outline there in front of you that gives that overview. The text we have chosen begins with the list of motivational examples one could say for the life of faith. The life starts with men of faith and begins with three pairs of men: Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah, and then David and Samuel.

And it’s interesting here that the order of these pairs is reversed. In other words, Samuel really came before David, Jephthah before Samson and Barak before Gideon. And yet the scriptures, the inspired text of God versus the order chronologically of each of those pairs. Maybe there’s something there about the last shall be first. I don’t know. But it is an interesting thing to note as we’re going through the text.

After giving us the faithful man and then of course the prophets as well in that first verse, verse 32, the text then goes on to give the memorial of faithful deeds. First starting with deeds of victory in verses 33-35A. Text goes on to list motivational examples of deeds of men and women of faith. First, as I said, deeds of victory and conquest.

John Brown in his commentary on this verse and summing up this section says that it’s quote illustrative of the power of faith to enable man to accomplish successfully the most difficult of enterprises. That’s the first set of motivational deeds we’re given by God.

And then secondly of motivational deeds of suffering verses 35b—the second half of 35 through verse 38. Text goes on to tell of deeds of suffering and martyrdom.

John Brown summarizing this section calling it quote illustrative of faith power to enable men to sustain patiently the most severe of trials and those trials are quite severe.

The next thing in our text is verse 39 which is a transition to the charge that will occupy our set of exhortations in a couple of minutes. It moves to a transitional section in which we are said to have received some better things than these ones that he has just told us about from the old covenant. We’re more blessed then. We have better things given to us. But as this church should know so well that better things and better opportunities bring with them more and increased accountability as well to persevere.

This acknowledgment of our betterness in relationship to the old covenant saints sets us up prepares us for the important exhortation which will shortly follow. In verse 12:1 rather we have the charge itself.

The text moves to the central exhortation of the section, which is found in the second half of verse one of chapter 12. The first half of this verse again pointing us back to the man and deeds of faith in chapters 11 which is here stated to be given to us as an encouragement to faith. We’re encouraged by these men then by the cloud of witnesses to faithfulness to the charge given in the second half of the verse.

Now the idea there of a cloud of witnesses is an important one to just pause a minute and talk about briefly. The cloud aspect there is not a well fine small cloud. It’s a large cloud. The Greek word is *nephos*. And you’ve probably heard about the word *ethos*—is a current term we use to describe the environment in which we grow. And so the environment that we walk in terms of God’s revelation is this cloud, this *nephos*, this cloud as it were of witnesses.

Now the Greek word for witness is the root word for our word martyr. And there’s a connection then between these men given in chapter 11 and martyrdom. The term martyr originally in its Greek sense meant a legal witness to any covenant or contract. Somebody who had witnessed to that covenant. The early church used this term to talk about those men who had witnessed to the truth of God’s covenant of grace. And that witness entailing their death for that faith.

A man will die for what he witnesses his life as an example of. He witnesses to the faithfulness of God’s covenant of grace. He will persevere in that covenant of grace even if it means his very death. And so the idea of martyrdom has within it the context of witness. Witness to something greater than the man himself for which he is willing and indeed eager to die for should he be so called. In that sense martyr testifies to what he dies for then, and the men that we commemorate tomorrow on Memorial Day testified to certain things that they died for and it’s important to keep that in mind.

The charge in Hebrews 12 is to actually the central part of the text here—the charge is to run the race to be faithful in all of our lives to have lives marked by obedience to our creator to run this race. We are encouraged to set aside whatever will bind or restrict our ability to run and then to run that race with patience and perseverance.

After that brief charge, then we have the premier model of faithfulness to this charge in verses 2 and three. Following the charge, we move to another motivational example, our Lord Jesus Christ himself. Whereas the section started with the great cloud of witnesses as motivation, it now moves to the cloud, as it were, the appearance of God, the son of God, through which he spoken of the old covenant. It now moves to the cloud that led Israel in its race to the promised land and to the one who is the preeminent faithful and true witness.

Whereas those listed in chapter 11 in the list there conquered and subdued temporal kingdoms, we now are appointed to the example of the one who is the preeminent overcomer, having subdued Satan himself, binding the strong man that he might plunder his goods and release his captives.

All the pictures of the overcomers offered up in chapter 11 pertain first and foremost to Jesus Christ. They’re types of that. They point to it. They point to Jesus’s finished work. All the works of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, Samuel, David, the prophets, all these works simply point forward to the greater work of the one who was the greater David and the mightier Samson.

In like fashion, all the sufferings of chapter 11, those deeds of man and suffering are but types of the great suffering of the suffering Messiah who after having suffered so much at the hands of men then took upon himself the full wrath of the Father to make atonement for the sins of the elect and to propitiate the Father’s anger, righteous anger against sinners.

John Calvin in commenting on this verse says that though it was free to Christ to exempt himself from all trouble and to lead a happy life abounding in all things, he yet underwent a death that was bitter and in every way ignominious. So the writer of Hebrews saves the best for the last as it were then in terms of motivational examples. And after the charge to run the race, he then points us to the ultimate encouragement for the faithful runner of the Lord Jesus Christ in both his suffering and in his victory.

The failing runner is urged to turn his eyes upon Jesus. Now there’s an old song that talks about turning our eyes upon Jesus—look full in his wonderful face. Things of earth shall go strangely dim in the light of his wonder and grace. This is a little bit different than that. The purpose of this looking upon Jesus is not to escape or to pretend that what we’re in the midst of isn’t real or to somehow have a flight away from the reality of the world that God has created.

The point of looking upon Jesus in Hebrews the 12th chapter is that we might persevere in the world that God has created. That we might persevere in faithfulness in the task that he has given us to do. It’s not escapism. It’s not a flight into an upper story. It’s enablement for the running of the race that God has given us here and now. It’s to not seek an end to that race is to persevere in the task God has given to us.

We then have the final section of this text some further encouragements to the charge beside the motivational examples. First, our relative ease is spoken of in verse four. I’ve chosen to end this text with these last couple of verses that speak of our relative ease in relationship both to the martyrs of chapter 11 and of course of the suffering Messiah. You’ve not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.

And finally, a verse we ending we end with the last two verses that speak to the faithfulness of the Hebrews relative to God’s purpose for tribulation. That purpose being chastisement and a final encouragement there is a call to remember why we have tribulations. We have tribulations that we might be chastened by God. We might be built up by God and matured in the faith.

So these verses then move from a recitation of faithful men, faithful deeds of conquest and victory, faithful acts of suffering and martyrdom to a charge and exhortation to run the race to keep the faith and then to the premier example we are to keep ever before us as we run the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are to learn from his example first that we’ve not suffered so much and second that whatever we do suffer is for our good the way that Christ suffering also is followed by his exaltation.

The memorial of faithful men, faithful deeds, and a faithful Savior is given to the Hebrews and given to us as motivation to participation in the race. Motivation to a life of faith, constancy in the race that God has given us to run and courage for whatever we may face in that race in the days to come.

This Memorial Day then we should focus on these four elements of the life of faith. Participation, constancy, courage, in that race. And finally, the summing up of all this, which is to lead a life of faith.

So we move to our four exhortations from the text we’ve just reviewed. The first exhortation that the text makes that we want to focus on today is an exhortation to participation in the race. Now, that seems quite obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s important that we recognize that the heroes of chapter 11 and the greater hero, the ultimate hero, the ultimate conqueror and the ultimate sufferer as well, Jesus Christ, both those groups participated in the race. You don’t win, you don’t die if you’re not participating. And so participation in the race is implied by the example both of the heroes and of the ultimate hero himself.

Additionally, we might say that the brave men and women whose deaths we’ll be honoring tomorrow at various Memorial Day services also are there because they participated in the battle. If you don’t participate in the battle, then you’re not memorialized on Memorial Day. In that sense, there’s also an implication of the text before us though that participation is necessary.

I think it’s important that we look at this for just a moment. We are told when we’re told to run the race in 12:1, it says that we are to lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us. Now, the idea there of the weight and the sin that besets us is the idea some people use the illustration of a cloak or a long coat that gets in your way when you’re running a race. The term also had reference to the weight that a runner would have to lose before participating in the games. And so these things were things that were not bad in and of themselves necessarily, but they were bad for running the race. They’d hinder us in running the race.

Now, an implication of this is that if you’re not going to run the race, you don’t need to shed any weight. You don’t need to take your long cloak off. If you don’t run the race, those things are not a hindrance to you. And so when he tells us to lay aside the hindrances to us, he tells us we’re going to be participating in that race. It’s a call to participation and in fact you often do not know what’s going to hinder you in the race until you start running.

Pink in his commentary on this verse said the following. So many professing Christians never seem to have any weights or to leave them off. We never see them drop anything. Ah the fact is they have never entered into the race. You see point is that if we’re going to drop weights it means we’re going to participate in the race. This is important that we understand this truth today.

We also have the direct commandment from God of course to run. Let us run the race. It’s a direct command from God and we are going to be obedient to God that we must be obedient to that command to run the race.

Now you know if you go through these verses and read them about people being saw a half facing the mouths of lions being delivered out of the fire etc. All these verses of suffering particularly sound so alien to us today. You know, I mean, it has some sort of reality to it, I suppose, but it’s really hard to relate. You know, it says in the text that we have not resisted to the point of shedding blood and are striving against sin.

Well, the unfortunate thing is that so many people in the churches today and people in this country haven’t even resisted to the point of getting involved in the race. The central point of participation is really one that should not even have to be mentioned. But I have to stop and mention it because it’s important to recognize that this is probably the primary failing of the church today. It’s not running and then losing heart. It’s never entering the race at all.

He says, you know, we haven’t resisted to the point of shedding blood. We have to say that the churches today by and large haven’t even resisted to the point of voting to try to do something about, for instance, the elected officials that are doing such unrighteous deeds in our land. We mentioned that lots of Christians didn’t participate in this last primary election. On the other hand, of course, those ones that didn’t participate, it might be a little scary if they did participate. The point is they’re not even getting involved in understanding civil government from a biblical perspective. They’re not running that part of the race.

They’re not running the race and that they don’t discuss the implications of the gospel to education or to finances or to the civil government or the care of the poor. The church today is embarrassed to talk about Jesus Christ. Our forefathers in the faith suffered cruel mockings but persevered in participation in the race.

I saw a article talking about the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Leader being asked about candidate polls that would ask what a person’s relationship to Jesus Christ was. And he was embarrassed by those sorts of questions in an election campaign. We’re embarrassed to try to find out whether a person is going to walk in obedience to the King of Kings, the King of all government. They’re going to walk in obedience to his law as dictated for civil governments. We’re embarrassed to even ask about it.

We’re embarrassed to raise the subject with our neighbors frequently. We’re not even involving ourselves in the race through embarrassment of the Lord who gave his very life and suffered more than any man will ever suffer to win us eternal life. When we do have somebody who’s not embarrassed and then brings Christ into the political arena for instance and commentary like John Loftus has done, he then becomes embarrassment to the rest of the church as well.

I said that my talk, my topic this morning is encouragement for the present battle and the fact is that there is a battle going on. There is a race to be waged and we must if we’re going to be successful in waging it, we must run. We’re losing the battle today not because people are winning or rather and fading because they’re not running at all. Kingdoms are now conquering the church because the church institutionally and most of the members of the church refuse to take place in the battle itself. They don’t even go out under the field.

We’ve talked thought about Psalm 78, how the tribe was armed with the covenant and with the law of God and yet turned back in the day of battle. The church today isn’t on the field. The church today hasn’t even suited up. The church today doesn’t even own a pair of track shoes to suit up.

Unfortunately, all too often, one of the largest churches in our city was quoted a couple weeks ago in the press as saying that they would not discuss political issues or candidates with people because that might drive away certain people from this church and the church after all wants to have lots of people in attendance so they can hear the gospel of Jesus Christ but that’s a truncated gospel and to reduce the gospel and not show its relevance to education to economics to political action to the raising of our families to our businesses etc is no gospel at all and it’s a denial of the obligation we have to walk onto the field no matter where we’re at and do battle for Jesus Christ.

Now this is the first exhortation then to participation. Now evaluation is necessary as we go through these exhortations. We have evaluation every week in this church. When we come to the table you should be evaluating yourselves as you affirm covenant with God. And you should evaluate yourselves in light of the exhortations that we received this morning.

And tomorrow Memorial Day if you do attend a memorial service you should remember this first call that these men answered the call to do which was to participate in the battle. What about you? Are you suited up? Have you even checked out your uniform yet? Have you studied the word of God to figure out how you’re supposed to run that battle? Are you ready to get onto the track or are you suited up at all?

If you aren’t suited up, then this church probably is not the right place for you to be. There are many churches today that will allow you to sit on the sidelines. This church is not one of those. You’ll not be able to sit by and merely be a bystander, an onlooker, a spectator in this church. That doesn’t mean you have to have necessarily a overt job in the institutional church. That’s not what I’m talking about this morning.

What I’m talking about, though, is that you must be persevering in your family to bring it into godliness. You must be persevering in your place of employment to try to affect God’s reign in your business. You must be persevering in whatever task you set your mind and your heart and your feet and your hands to do as well. You must be on the track working running the race in this church.

If you’re not, believe me, you don’t want to be here and eventually you won’t be here. You’ll either leave of your own volition or you leave not of your own volition in some other fashion. Men have left that way before from this church. This church calls you definitely to participate in the race. That’s bottom line exhortation. You have to do that or else the rest of this means absolutely nothing to you.

But it’s not enough just to go into the battlefield and then leave when the times get tough. No. We’re called in the second exhortation to constancy in the race that we run. We’re to run with patience. That is patient endurance is the meaning of that word patience in the context of Hebrews 12.

We’re to run in good times and we’re running bad. There’s indications of the need for constancy in the text. We have the exhortation to run the race. The word for race there is the root word for our word today, agony. It’s a struggle. The race is a difficult thing to do. It has exertion and endurance that are required to run it. And that’s implied in the text before us. The very term for the race itself also implied the need for constancy is implied in the preeminence of the task of running the race.

We’re to take everything that would hinder us in the running of that race and throw it off. As I said, these things may be well and good in and of themselves, but when they start to hold us back from running the race wholeheartedly for God, we’re to toss them off. We’re to set them aside. So the race becomes preeminent in our thought and life. It becomes all-encompassing in what we’re doing. And so, if that’s true, certainly we’re going to need to have constancy, perseverance, and endurance for running that race.

Anything that would detract us from that life of faith is to be shed. We have not resisted anybody in this room to the point of shedding blood for the faith. That’s the kind of endurance and persistency and constancy we’re called to do. We’ve not resisted to the shedding the blood of the veterans of the past American wars. They resisted to that end.

We’ve not resisted and shed blood of the martyrs of the faith in Hebrews 11. And certainly then we’ve not resisted to the shedding of blood of Jesus Christ—did sweating drops like blood at Gethsemane and giving the actual blood of his own body shed on the cross for us taking upon himself God’s full wrath. That’s the model before us and we should strive in constancy to running that race to that end.

We have to become obedient to the point of death. Now the three lads that quench the fire talked about in Hebrews 11, we always think about that. We always realize that God saved them out of the fire. But sometimes we forget what they told the king who told them to get into that fire because they wouldn’t worship him, his image. They said our God is able to rescue us out of this fire.

And normally God will rescue us out of fires. But they said, even if that doesn’t happen, we’re not going to worship your image. Now, not many are called upon to be martyrs for the faith. It’s interesting that if you go through the scriptures looking for examples of martyrs, you can find some, but you won’t find a lot. God calls us to victory and to prosper. But he calls us to recognize that if our lives are required, our constancy, our commitment to running the race must be sure.

We must be committed to the point of death if it’s required of us. And those men were given to us in terms of quenching the fire as an example in Hebrews 11 to remind us of that fact. And the sufferers would remind us of the fact that we’re to be consistent and persist in the race even if it requires our death. Obedience to God comes before all else.

Now, the text gives us that exhortation, but it also gives us indications of our ability to do that. First, it gives us the example of weakness to strength. That’s a summary statement in Hebrews 11 that we read through that list. They were made strong from weakness. And weakness to strength is the way we go. We’re weak in ourselves. But if we focus upon Jesus Christ, we become strong.

If we understand first of all, as we said in the first point, that there’s a battle to be waged, that there’s a race to be participated in that’s proper training for the battle itself and to give us constancy and endurance in it. And that’s why we teach our children what these men of faith listed in Hebrews 11 do did because it was a reminder to them and to us that there are real battles to be waged and that there are real deaths to go through and there’s real suffering to happen in the midst of that battlefield and there are also real victories to be won.

We’re equipped then if we understand that we move from weakness to strength as we recognize the reality of the battles that we have to face. Well, also though, the scriptures tell us in the text we just read that we’re better equipped than the saints of old. They looked forward to Jesus Christ and they looked forward but did not receive the promise. We’ve received the promise. We’ve received the example of Jesus Christ. We can look back at his finished work and be enlivened to endurance to the task.

Because of that, John Calvin in his talking of this verse says, “If those on whom the great life of grace had not yet shown showed such patience in bearing their ills, what efforts ought the full light of the gospel to have on us. A tiny spark of light led them to heaven. But now that the son of righteousness shines on us, what excuse will we offer if we still hold to earth?”

You see, we’re in the full light of the gospel age now. And we have as a result of that been better equipped by God to endure in the battle that we have to wage and the race we have to run. That’s the only kind of strength that will sustain us in times of trouble. Looking to Jesus looking to the light that God has given unto us and looking at his life and his example and with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the quickening that we have now to obey him. It’s only by looking upon Jesus Christ that we’ll have the kind of strength necessary to run the race in endurance.

There’s an interesting story about this second charge to constancy and endurance in the battle. In the 18th century, George Whitfield was one evening talking with some other pastors that had assembled together. Whitfield was talking about the strenuous labors he had been going through and preaching the gospel and sometimes with minimal amounts of success and how difficult and hard it was and how he was looking forward so much to the time when he would go home to be with his master with Jesus Christ and how he sometimes just wanted to kind of you know hasten that coming as it were and he looked around and everybody pretty much agreed except for one pastor that was there named William Tennent.

And Tennent didn’t say anything and Whitfield then turned to him and said well come on now, Brother Tennent, you’re the oldest man and longest among us. Do you not rejoice to think that your time is so near at hand when you’ll be called home and freed from all the difficulties attending this checkered scene?

Now, you’re the oldest one here. Don’t you really look forward to this fact? Be able to quit pretty quick and go home to be with your master. Tennent bluntly replied, I have no wish about it.

Well, Whitfield continued to press him. What do you mean you have no wish about it? The point is, shouldn’t you want that very much? He continued to press Tennent and Tennent replied in this fashion. He said, “No, sir. It is no pleasure to me at all to think of my death, and if you knew your duty, it would be none to you. I have nothing to do with death. My business is to live as long as I can, and to serve my Lord and Master as faithfully as I can until he shall think it proper to call me home.”

Whitfield again asked him again, “What do you really mean that, and what are you saying by that exactly?” And Tennent then said, “I have no choice about my own death. I am God’s servant and engaged to do his business as long as he pleases to continue me therein. But no, brother, let me ask you a question. What do you think would I would say if I was to send my man Tom into the field to plow? And if at noon I should go to the field and find him lounging under a tree and complaining, ‘Master, the sun’s very hot and the plowing is hard and difficult. I’m tired and weary of the work you have appointed me to do, and I’m not and I’m overdone rather with the heat and burden of the day. Do master please let me return home and be discharged from this hard service.’

What would you say? Tennent said why that he was an idle lazy fellow that it was his business to do the work that I appointed to him until I the proper judge should think it fit to call him home. Or suppose you had hired a man to serve you faithfully for a given time in a particular service and he should without any reason on your part and before you performed half the service become weary of it and on every occasion be expressing a wish to be discharged or placed in other circumstances.

Would you not call him a wicked and slothful servant and unworthy of the privileges of your employee? You see, that was the attitude that the church faithfully had at one point in time, that we’re here to work. We’re here to run the race with endurance, not to desire a quick rapture out of this checkered scene, as it were, that Whitfield called it, but rather to persevere in the task that God has given to us.

Murray reinforced the same thing when he said the opportunity of honoring Christ by fulfilling our present duties is a priceless privilege and those who thus serve him will not be found waiting at his coming. Blessed is that servant whom the Lord when he cometh shall find him so doing not waiting for Christ to turn absently but fulfilled with the task and the job that God had given him to do. That’s the kind of endurance for the race that we’re talking about this morning.

That’s the kind of endurance and constancy in running the race that Hebrews 12 charges us with as members of Christ’s elect body. He tells us that the reason for our persecution in verses 5 and 6 of Hebrews 12, the reason why troubles come upon us is not to drive us into a hope for escape. The reason persecutions come upon us is not to cause us to think about when the rapture will come, when our Lord will return.

The reason for the persecutions that come upon us is to mature us in the faith, to equip us to better run the race the rest the days of our lives to be more constant in that race and to be prosperous and victorious for him. The church today needs to hear first that it needs to run the race, participate in the race and then it needs secondly to hear that the reason for persecutions to be reminded because they’ve forgotten to be reminded the reason for persecutions is not escape is not a flight into unreality but is rather endurance and is rather the chastisement which involves the disciplining of the servant for maturity’s sake, for bringing him into fuller compliance to the law of the king.

Again, as we leave the second charge, I would encourage you to evaluate yourselves. Are you like that lazy slave, that lazy servant that Tennent talked about, or are you the good and faithful servant that our Lord commands us to be? Are you clinging to the things that bog you down in your work for God? Or are you moving away from them, moving them out of the way, and shedding them, as it were?

What about the television for instance, perfectly nothing wrong with television, but if it becomes a hindrance to your race in the faith, to your constancy in doing what God has called us to do, shed it. Get rid of it. Do away with it in your life. What about debt? Occasionally, debt is necessary, emergency loans, but all too often we take that debt upon ourselves and so become hindered by that debt from running the race with perseverance.

We begin to develop slave mentality instead of the free man mentality that God has called us to be—to be servants only of him and of no other master. Sports certainly it’s fine to exercise to enjoy the life that God has given to us. But when sports become a hindrance to our life in that they begin to take up our time and turn us away from the task that God has called us to do, we must leave them behind.

This fact that we must leave behind things that are not bad in and of themselves when they become hindrances to us are so important for us to consider today this morning because you know we’re not in a normal time. We’re not in a time of blessing in this country anymore. It may look like that to you, but if you look back to when Memorial Day was started, even then the decline was starting to occur.

There was division in the first Memorial Day observance, north and south, because the country had become divided. There was no longer the faith of the nation that held us together. Today, that faith has waned even more and we’ve become a secular society. What that means is we have much work ahead of us to build the country back up, to build a godly generation.

If ever we were called to shed aside the things that are normally good and proper and all right in their place, now is the time because we have to run the race. There are precious few of us that understand the importance of the battle today. And we’ve been equipped by God for a reason. And that reason is to press that faith to press the advantage that God has given us in knowing that we’re called to combat to combat and to participate in that life of faith.

We must shed then pride, slothfulness, lust, greed, all these things that hinder our war for the faith. We must put them to death. We must set them behind, leave them behind us, and run the race with perseverance. I would encourage you, each of us have individual things that hinder us in our running. If you’re not running, pledge yourself this morning to run. And if you are running, think about right now the things that are hindering you from that race, that are slowing you down, as it were, in your obedience to God’s command.

Reconsider it this morning and pray to God this day and ask him to help you to leave those things behind, to shed those off that you might run stronger and quicker for him and into victory. As you visit the grave tomorrow, if you go to the funeral homes, if you go to the funeral places and participate in Memorial Day services, remember that these men were constant in their devotion to in commitment to whatever it was that prompted them to get on that field. They were constant to that to the point of death. And we need to be constant to our God to the point of death if necessary.

Third, though, the passage before us gives an exhortation to courage. We’ve had the command word of our Lord who calls us to participate. We have the command word of our Lord who has told us to participate even unto our death if necessary. But now God in his grace and mercy gives us examples of the cloud of witnesses and the great witness Jesus Christ also by way of encouragement to encourage us to give us courage as it were encouragement for the battle and courage as we face the days ahead of us.

Well, martyrdom as I said earlier is known in the Bible yet the great thrust of the scriptures is that martyrdom is not normally the case. Victory is the case. And you’ll see this time and time again. I was watching a fellow the other day talking about how in South Africa you have 3 million whites, you have 14 million blacks. And the implications of that remark was that we’re going to have another Custer situation in South Africa.

Well, I don’t know about South Africa. I don’t know if there’s much faith left in that country. But I knew do know that the secularist that’s all he has to evaluate by are the numbers involved. If it’s three against 14, the three are going to lose. But the examples that God gives us in the scriptures are just the reverse.

Look at the example of Gideon. God reduced his army down to 300 for what purpose? To convince him and show to him and demonstrate to him that victory lies with God and not with ourselves to encourage Gideon. You know, it’s interesting that we think of Gideon as a great conquering hero and he was in the power of God. But he was a frightened man. When God first told him to tear down the idols altar of his father, he did it at night. He obeyed, but he was afraid of his father’s servant. So he did it at night, you know, under the cover of darkness. Not exactly the sort of brave hero you’d expect from God.

But God recognizes that we’re weak in ourselves. We move from weakness to strength as we’ve been obedient to him. And as Gideon obeyed him, he became strengthened. But still, even after that, God told him to go down and do battle with these men and said, “If you’re afraid to go down and do battle and watch what’s going to happen here, take your servant with you.” And sure enough, the next verse, we find Gideon take his servant with him because he’s frightened again.

You see, he’s a man like us. It’s interesting that the list of men we have here, Joshua, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, all these men had problems. Gideon, as we said, was fearful. Barak, you know, he was fearful. He didn’t want to enter into the fray unless Deborah would accompany him, and as a result, he didn’t get the full glory of winning the battle. He wanted a woman to go with him and lead him by the hand, as it were. But God strengthened him for the battle and then gave him victory.

Samson, of course, had lots of problems falling into temptation involving temptation to do things that he shouldn’t have done. Jephthah made a bad oath, ended up consecrating his only his daughter, first thing that came out of his household when he came back from the victory, consecrating her to perpetual virginity for God and her service. It was really a rash oath that he made.

David of course involved himself in polygamy and had tremendous problems with his kingdom as a result of his polygamous relationships and then of course the murder of Uriah the Hittite and as a result his not being able to establish God’s house for himself because he was a man of bloodshed. He’d killed a man. So all these men are given to us as examples of courage, but they’re given to us in terms of showing that they have a we have a commonality with them.

We’re afraid. We’re tempted. We do stupid things. We rush into rash oaths and vows. And yet God says, “Don’t let that bog you down. Repent of those things. Move on. Persevere in the race. Turn from those things. Go from weakness to strength. And God will strengthen our hand for the victory that lies ahead of us.”

It should be an encouragement to us to read through the list of these men if we know them. And if we don’t know them, just go back in your Bibles, read those stories and their encouragements to us. They obtained promises. The scriptures say, you see, Joshua didn’t conquer Canaan in his own power. He was given the promise by God that he would conquer Canaan. And as a result, he was given the result of that promise when he moved in obedience to it.

Gideon was promised that he would defeat the Midianites. And he moved in obedience and God blessed him and gave him the promise as well, actualized in his life. David was promised that he would be king of Israel. And indeed, he became king of Israel. We all receive promises and through faith and obedience obtain the results of those promises. And God gives us that same encouragement today.

They stop the mouths of lions. They quench the violence of fire. They escape the edge of the sword time and time again., escaping the edge of the scourge, escaping death. Samson certainly escaped death more than once. Many people out throughout the scriptures did. They moved from weakness to strength. Samson as we said moved from his weakness to his strength particularly in his latter days after his sin and then being weakened by God and then made strong in him for his last final act of martyrdom for the faith.

Hezekiah moved from physical illness to physical strength and victory as he became obedient to God and to God’s counsel. We move from weakness to strength in God and in Jesus Christ.

I think though that the example of Samson must be just pause for a minute here and consider what he did in his final days. He was called upon by God to martyr himself as it were to give his life for the call. And the kind of commitment and the kind of courage we must have will be the courage that calls us to that same sort of commitment to give our lives if necessary for the truth of the gospel for a witness for a martyrdom as it were of what motivates us to the fight.

They waxed valiant in fight turn to flight the armies of the aliens. Joshua of course the judges David Gideon all these men turned armies to flight. And of course, after the motivational examples of the heroes, as we said before, were given Jesus Christ, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. So, we must also keep focused on the blessings to which we’re called by God in order to endure the hardships of the present.

We’re called to participate. We’re called to constancy. We’re called to obedience. But God also tells us by giving us the example of Jesus Christ—well, by giving us example first, the men in Hebrews 11 that had promises, were obedient, received the promises, and then Jesus Christ, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. God wants us to recognize that what he puts in front of us is victory. And that victory should be an encouragement to us as we run the life of faith.

We have the encouragement of the faithful saints of the past who fought and won. We have encouragement of the faithful Lord of the past, present, and future who fought and won and continues to win as his gospel is preached throughout the created order and brings men to submission to him. All this is based upon the fact that we have a faithful Father who corrects and chastens us and brings us into victory in Jesus Christ.

Finally, we should say that another encouragement we receive from the text here in Hebrews is the release from fear of death. We’ve said several times this morning, you have to be obedient to death. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in this, but I want to just mention that in Hebrews 2 and 3, we’re told that Jesus Christ took upon him the form of physical body that he might in dying in that body release those who through fear of death have been held bondage all their lives.

You see, if we’re going to encouraged by God, if we’re going to have courage, we have to be released from fear of death. And Jesus Christ and came and accomplished that.

Last week, we talked about the transition throughout the scriptures from glory to glory. And certainly that is talked about in 1 Corinthians 15 relative to our death and to our bodies. You know, it’s interesting how you talk to old people and as we get older, you out to yourself more and more, but you realize how you don’t feel any older. You know, you feel about the way you did 10, 20 years ago, yet your body continues to age and look older. And you I remember talking to my wife’s mother and she was 60, 65 or so. She said she felt like a teenager inside. It was just her body had gotten old, you know.

And that’s the way it is with Christians. You see, because what’s happening is that we’re not dying. We’re not growing old. The flesh that we’ve been given by God to walk in on this earth is growing old. It’s dying. It’s wearing out. But as we move in history, we move closer and closer to the new robe that God puts on us. The mortal puts on the immortal. That doesn’t mean the flesh is bad and the spiritual. It’s not a fleshly spiritual distinction. We’ve talked before about what’s happening there is a flesh to something invigorate as it were, a stronger form of what the body we already have.

It’s still a body in other words, but it’s an immortal body, a glorified body. There’s a glory to glory that is indicated in the scriptures would have happened with or without the fall of Adam if we can speak in those terms. The point is that death should not hold fear for us—the death of our bodies because we have been saved in eternal life in Jesus Christ. And if you recognize that what’s happening is that body you’ve been given by God the first body must put on the immortal.

And part of that process of putting on the immortal is the wearing out the physical death and decline of that body of flesh. Now that makes us very hopefully should make us quite joyous in God. And we should recognize that because Christ has accomplished that he has accomplished the winning as it were of our spiritual immortal bodies we will receive our glorified bodies from him. So we no longer have to fear the death of our bodies.