Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Amen. And amen. Praise God. Ready to march? Ready to go ahead. You know, Isaac can hear me. Let’s remember these same songs for an anti-abortion day of the Lord in January. Today is celebrated, commemorated by many churches throughout the world as International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. So the songs we’ve selected have a martial quality to them asking for God’s judgment against the ungodly in the context of the world particularly those that are striking out against the church of Jesus Christ.

Probably one of the most wicked places in the world right now is North Korea. I was listening to a kind of a silly article on tape this last week about feeling entitled and how people are granting all kinds of honorary titles to themselves. The leader of North Korea has assigned some 3,000 titles to himself including protector of the planet, son to the planet, etc. He is a pagan idolater who exalts himself against the Lord God Yahweh.

And he has in his wrath of this particular manifestation of the serpent struck out at thousands of people in North Korea, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, including Christians. And we do pray today that the Lord God would strike him with temporal judgments and remove him.

We turn today for the sermon text to Hebrews chapter 12. And this is a text that is appropriate for those who are called to suffer for the faith. It’s a text that talks about the necessity of our faith having a result in endurance through many trials and tribulations. So we pray today that those persecuted Christians around the world, including in North Korea particularly, might be strengthened with the spirit of God that they can be like those early saints of Christendom and have that courage and strength to meet their own death, suffering and torture if necessary for the faith of Jesus Christ.

We pray for that. We pray for God’s judgment against evil, wicked men like the leader of North Korea who exalt themselves against God and because of that satanic pride strike out at the seat of Jesus Christ by striking out at the church. But we also pray today that the Lord God would make us steadfast to be finishers of the task we’re called to do and have endurance. Us who are called not to strive against sin to the point of death or bloodshed as the text will say.

So this is a text very germane to this day of prayer for the persecuted church and also may God grant us strength through his word to be those who are finishers who have endurance in the faith of Jesus Christ.

Please stand. The sermon text is found in chapter 12 of Hebrews, beginning at verse 1, moving through verse 12.

“Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance 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 has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives.

If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them.

But he for our profit that we may be partakers of his holiness. Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, make us those that run the race with endurance, with strength. Give us, Lord God, the grace from on high to turn away from our sins that beset us, to make straight our legs to run this race, Lord God, with endurance. Turn our eyes upon Jesus today, the author and finisher of our faith. And may we, Lord God, be transformed by your spirit who teaches us and trains us to be those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ through his cross to the crown.

And may we Lord God be strengthened in our knowledge of the Father’s love by your spirit today and make us, Father, finishers running the race with endurance. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

What is it that you need to finish? What is it that you’re having trouble enduring, continuing to race as a solid Christian? Is it a difficult job situation? It’s just so hard to keep going in with a good attitude, keep going as a Christian.

Is it a vision of vocation maybe that you once had where you wanted to understand vocation, management, business, from a distinctively Christian perspective and you wanted to make some contribution to the business world, you know, not just by putting out the product, but by doing it in an explicitly Christian way and developing and growing in your understanding of the relationship of the word of God to your vocation, to your calling.

Maybe it’s your marriage. You know, for some people, it just gets tougher and tougher not to coexist with the other person, but to live as Christian husbands and wives, finishing the race of marriage to the end, meaning fulfilling our obligations to our spouses. More than that, delighting in the provision God has made. You know, the Lord God gave you your spouse. It’s the best possible spouse for you. I think that is absolutely true.

God is most wise. He’s most powerful. He’s most loving. And in that wisdom, power and love he provided your spouse. Maybe you’re struggling though. Maybe you’re not finishing the race. Maybe you sort of dropped out of that race for a while and are just sort of coasting. But as you coast, we know from this book where that coasting goes, where that drifting goes, it drifts toward the waterfall of destruction.

God would have us redouble our efforts in vocation. Redouble our efforts to be finishers of that task of vocation, to be finishers of the marriage, to be finishers of our children. You know, you raise kids and you get old and you get tired and you want to sort of, you know, you start to slough off. You just get tired of the same thing. I’ve told 15 kids, it seems like only five keep their rooms clean, keep encouraging them to do it, and you get tired of it and you want to just sort of quit.

Now, we’re not going to abandon our children. Some people do. We’re not going to abandon our wives or husbands. Some people do at this stage in their life, but there’s—they get along in life. They actually literally stop the race. But we’re—we’re very tempted to not carry through as Christians to endure to have endurance to run the race as we should for Jesus Christ. And the same thing with our children.

Maybe it’s, you know, that’s the issue for you. Maybe it’s friendships. You’ve just given up on having friends or community. You’re just tired of the whole darn thing. You’re tired of disappointments and you just want to stop doing that. Maybe it’s Christian service. Well, I tried to, you know, work in the context of the church or some Christian ministry and I’m just tired of the whole thing for various reasons.

I don’t know what it is for you or maybe it’s several things for you. But today’s text, God says he wants us to be finishers. There’s a couple of illustrations here. It begins and ends with a race illustration that we’re supposed to be finishers of the race. And in the middle, it goes from a race to a boxing match and striving and struggling against sin and you know against our sin and that striving is a reference to a boxing match.

So, it’s athletic imagery here. And God wants us to be finishers of tasks. You know, the big tasks, vocation and marriage and child rearing and Christian friendships, they’re marked by little tiny marker posts, right? The way you get to long-term success is just by doing short-term things, right? So, maybe some of our children have trouble finishing a task, doing the dishes all the way, doing the last dish, wiping up the last little mess on the table, cleaning that last element of the room.

You might begin well. Well begun is half done. It’s important to begin to get out of the blocks, but the word of God says we’re supposed to be finishers of the small task that we have to do. We’re supposed to finish well. And that’s the other half of the task. And this text is talking about our Christian life. And it’s not a sprint. It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon. It’s a long-haul kind of deal. It’s a whole lifelong thing of caring for your kids.

Job, you know, endured sufferings, but he prayed for those children all of his life. Even when they’re adult kids, he’s still offering sacrifices and praying for them. It’s a long-term task that God calls us to do. And there are short-term things as well. And we’re liable just to sort of give up and just coast. But remember, as I said, this book warns us against coasting. This book tells us to redouble our efforts.

This sermon to the Hebrews, I want to talk about this text today and say, “The Lord God has given us here a text that’ll help us to be finishers of small tasks and large ones, the short-term things we’re trying to do and finish through on as well as the long-term goals as well.”

This is a—we’re being moved now. We’ve come through the middle of this sermon. Now, we’re moving toward the end of it. And this is the section that matches the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Jesus is a high priest. And as a high priest, he has faithfulness and compassion for us. And now matching that—you see, we’re moving now to what we’re supposed to be like based on Jesus’s faithfulness. We’re supposed to be faithful people.

And we just in Hebrews 11 had that whole cloud of witnesses referred to here again. That whole cloud of witnesses of faithfulness. Faith is this. And he gives us all these illustrations. And faith moves us toward endurance. Endurance is the actualization of faith. It’s continuing on correctly that is the proof and the kind of the long-term effects of our faith.

So the faithfulness of Jesus he gives to us. You know, we had—I didn’t pick the reading Isaac did, but that wonderful reading of the beginning of the book of Revelation and the image of Jesus Christ, right? Revelation begins this picture of the beauty of Christ, the shining brilliance of his countenance. And how does it end? It ends with the new Jerusalem. It ends with us. We’re the church of Jesus Christ. We’re the city of God. And we’re brilliant and shiny and gleaming and we’re cool, too. That’s what Revelation is. It moves us to become as the bride of Christ to have the characteristics of Jesus.

Okay. So, Hebrews is the same thing. It painted this wonderful picture of Jesus at the beginning of the book and at the middle of the book his priestly work for us. And now, as we back to the end of the book, we’re getting beautiful. We’re having his faithfulness. And because of his compassion for us, we can have endurance in our race. And we’ll talk about that more in a little bit.

So, this is a text that’s moving us now to having the characteristics of Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes to transform us to make us more and more Christians in the way we’re exhibiting that Christianness in faithfulness and endurance specifically in this text.

You know, there’s faith, hope, and love. And the faith of Jesus Christ has been focused on in chapter 11. And then the hope of the future we’ll see here is critical for having our faith being an enduring faith. And then in chapter 13, we’ll talk about brotherly love and the implications of love in the community life.

We live a life here on earth as it is in heaven. We actualize heaven so to speak by the way we act here on earth and that’s the way this sermon sort of moves to an end and then at the very end of the sermon we have the benediction placed upon us that we might be perfect in every good work.

So this is what the text is doing and today’s—as we move toward this—the character of Jesus’s faithfulness is placed before us as what we’re supposed to do.

The text begins with a putting off a putting on. That’s Christian sanctification. Put off bad things, put on good things. Put off our Adamic sinfulness. Put on the brilliance and the righteousness of Jesus Christ to and it’ll conclude with that way too in verse 12. We have the same kind of put off kind of put on thing sort of going on and the same command to run with endurance is referred to at the end.

So the race—the analogy of the race beginning and end—is this putting off putting on putting off discouragement sins that beset us etc. putting on endurance and faithfulness but God doesn’t just command us don’t do this do this he then at the middle of this text focuses our eyes upon Jesus Christ so we endure by focusing on our savior. Secondly we endure by focusing on our sonship—middle of the text is a like a little sermonette based on Proverbs 3 and the sermon is all about discouragements and chastisements and punishments and then son.

So in the middle we endure by focusing on our sonship and at the end we endure by focusing on our Father. So in between the put offs and put ons—being faithful godly strong Christians like the ones we just sang about—is this focus upon our savior our sonship and then our Father in heaven. And so this is how the Holy Spirit equips us in endurance. And that’ll be the structure of how we look at this text.

A little more detail than that, but that’s what we’re going to be talking about here. So, look at the either the handout or your own Bibles and we’ll just work our way through this in that manner.

We have first of all the commands to put off and put on. So, in verse one, we have this reference back to chapter 11. We were just told about a cloud of witnesses these witnesses around us and this beginning of this next section relates back to that. The “therefore” is not the normal kind of connective it’s like this is the summation this is the inference of the argument I’ve just given you with all these men is what he’s saying—these men and women—these witnesses we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses so the idea here is that we’re in a stadium we’ve got a cloud of witnesses around us watching us.

That’s kind of the first impression you get here. And there’s truthfulness to that. And we’re supposed to be running this race. And we do it by laying aside sinfulness in every way. So, we’re surrounded by these witnesses. Get rid of the stuff that encumbers our running. You know, like big heavy long winter cloaks to run a race. You wouldn’t do that. So, get rid of the stuff that gets in our way of running and then run with endurance.

So, it’s put off and put on and it’s in the context of these cloud of witnesses. So there’s this put off put on given to us. Now I’ve got the word—if you’re look if you’re wondering you know why I’ve formatted the way I have the word “run” (trecō) is related to a word at the end of the text if you look down in verse 12—”make straight paths” (trochia)—it’s the same basic word. So that’s kind of the bookends of this text is running and then the race, the raceway, the path itself at the end.

So the whole thing is held together that way. The text is moving us to endurance and running a race. That’s what it’s all about. And so that’s why I have it listed there. That particular Greek word in its translation. Endurance is underlined in bold because that’s the theme of the whole text. This whole text is about giving us this endurance, putting on this endurance.

You know, one thing we want to recognize and we’re not—let’s see, he has just given us a whole list of men, some named, many unnamed, men and women who have exercised faith. And so, we’re sort of looking at these witnesses, right? We’re looking at these men and women who ran lives of faith. He’s called us to do that. Earlier in this book, he called us to emulate the patience of Abraham. Those of you that were here when we preached on that. So, you know, we do look at these Old Testament illustrations of faithful men and women and we emulate them. That’s proper. You know, in 1 Peter women are to emulate the faith of Sarah.

So it’s proper to do that but it’s not the focal point here and really the focal point is not their faith rather it’s going to be the faith of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one we’re to focus on.

Another thing about this connection to chapter 11 is that they’re witnessing the race but that’s not really the main thing that’s being said in verse one. What’s being said is that remember these guys were attested witnesses. That’s I put it a couple weeks ago when we talked about these heroes of faith in chapter 11. They’re attested witnesses. What they are really in the first and first and most primary purpose of giving them to us is an example of faithfulness being rewarded by God. So they are witnesses of the faithfulness of God to men who run with faith. That’s what they are. They’re examples of men that live their lives in faith.

And we’re going to look here in just a moment at really the same thing they were looking at. They were looking at the redeemer to come, Jesus. So, we’re not called ultimately to look to them. We’re called to look to Jesus. They’re important. They’re good examples for us. They’re evidences of God’s working in their lives through faith. But in order to fulfill the put off and put on, the first thing we’re supposed to do as the text moves ahead is to focus on Jesus Christ.

Verse two, look, “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Now, we’ve talked about the fact that we get continuity and discontinuity wrong in this in this book frequently, right? So, you know, we think, well, old covenant, new covenant, new covenant is saved by grace. Old covenant is saved by works. No, that’s wrong. We said that there’s continuity with these men and women in Hebrews 11.

They’re saved the same way we were. They had the law written on their hearts. Those were lives of faith as well. They’re like us. But there is a difference, right? And the difference is what they were looking toward the perfection, the goal of all that they were doing was the coming of Jesus Christ. And Jesus is the one who finishes us off and in a way finishes humanity, perfects humanity.

So we shouldn’t think of the Old Testament saints as different in terms of how they were saved or their basic way they went about their lives. One useful way to think about them is that they were immature saints. You know, some people talk about the church fathers. Some people say they ought to be called the church babies because the church fathers did not have all the knowledge that we have of the faith. The Lord God saw fit in the first century to take out 90% of the church and the church fathers represent kind of a weird view of Christianity in some cases mingled with Greek philosophy.

So there are fathers in terms of we look to them but in a way they were babies because it was the immature stage of the Christian church and we’re now mature. Okay, we’re maturing, I should say. Well, the same thing’s true of thinking about these Old Testament saints. They were immature young believers in Yahweh just like us saved, just like us, the law written in their hearts, you know, just like us, you know, God was working with them.

But God saw fit to bring us to maturity by the coming of Jesus Christ. So Jesus perfects humanity. He brings it to its ultimate conclusion or goal. And this is why our attention is not to be primarily on the cloud of witnesses. Rather, our attention in order to achieve endurance, our attention is to be focused upon Jesus Christ. So we’re to look to Jesus and it tells us several things about Jesus in the context of these few verses.

First of all, we’re to look to our savior and specifically we’re to look to his sovereign grace, the author and finisher of our faith. So The first thing we’re to consider or meditate about Jesus here is that he is both the beginning, the author and the finisher of our faith. So it’s the sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that is essential according to this text to have the kind of endurance for the race that the text is exhorting us to put on and to put off sluggishness.

So the sovereign grace of Jesus who both begins our faith and ends it. At the end of the day, we didn’t we don’t deserve any credits for perseverance. Perseverance is not somehow ginned up by our efforts. It’s the gift of God to us. Jesus is the finisher of our faith. Now Jesus is also the author. And you know one implications of this phrase is that he is the beginner, the initiator. But this particular word is found one this text is replete again with verses or words rather that are only found here and very few other places in the Bible.

And this is one of them. This particular word “author” of our faith is used only one other place in Hebrews and that’s in Hebrews chapter 5. Turn if you will to Hebrews chapter 5. And in the structure of the book, what we’re going to look at here in Hebrews 5, the first half of Hebrews 5 is the end of that section, section three of the seven sections of the book where Jesus is described as a high priest to his faithful and compassionate.

So, it’s connected that way, too. This connects back to that section. And then there was this large exposition in the middle of the book on Jesus’s work. Well, chapter 5 says, “Every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men and things pertaining to God that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin.” And here, remember we said that Jesus is faithful. This has been said earlier in chapter 3.

Here in chapter 5, as a high priest, he has compassion. Verse two, he can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray since he himself is also subject to weakness. So the suffering of Jesus is related to this compassion of the high priest and is related now in terms of a motivation for our endurance. How we’re going to get have endurance because of this—he is required as for the people so also for himself to offer sacrifices for sins. That is other high priests. No man takes this honor to himself but he was called by God just as Aaron was.

So also Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest. Notice he who said to him, “You are my son. Today I have begotten you.” This is going to, you know, this will be the next line of reasoning in our text today is our own sonship. But Jesus is the son. We’re sons. As he also says in another place, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

And that’s the beginning of the discussion that’ll go on in the middle of the book. “Who in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears appears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear. Though he was a son, yet he learned obedience for the things which he suffered. Having been perfected, he became the author.”

There’s the word that’s in our text. This is the only other occurrence in Hebrews. “He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Called by God as high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have much to say and hard to explain.” And then he’s going to say then he’s going to explain and he’s going to tell him first listen up. But it’s hard to explain.

So this use of this term here in God equipping us with endurance is supposed to—if we know our Bibles—take us back to what he already said about the author, the beginner of our salvation. And what it is talking about in chapter 5 is again the suffering of Jesus Christ. How he suffered in the flesh. His compassion is related to the sufferings he went through not just at the cross but all through his life he suffered the chastisements of evil men against him. Okay. And so the suffering of Jesus Christ is related to this idea that he is the author and perfector of our faith.

So the text wants us to think about Jesus as a way to equip ourselves so that we can put on endurance. We’re to think about our savior and specifically we’re to think about his sovereign grace. And that sovereign grace is placed for us here in relationship to his suffering which we will return to in just a minute.

Now look at the next on the—if you have the handout—the next line of this text is “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

And then it’s going to say “consider him again.” So look at Jesus author and perfector and then at the middle “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despised the shame sat down at the right hand of God.” It’s a chiasm. It’s the simple sort of structure that we’ve seen over and over again. And it draws our attention to something. If we’re to have endurance and we’re to look to Jesus as his sovereign grace, but secondly, we’re to look at Jesus that his cross was the means whereby he attained his throne.

You see, they’re placed in parallel fashion. He endured the cross that he might sit down at the right hand of the throne of God. So the joy for which he endured the cross and despised the shame is the sitting down of the throne of God. That’s the joy. So Jesus didn’t run, you know, abstractly with no goal, with no vision of the future. Jesus that we’re supposed to be looking to that we might have endurance ran with his eyes on the prize.

He for the joy that was set before him of ruling and reigning endured the cross.

Now, that’s our model. No cross, no crown. You get to rule by suffering. Last couple weeks, been teaching the Sunday school class of kids 12 to 14. Job, you know, Job is the king of Edom probably. He’s certainly the greatest man in that region. He’s a strong man. He’s probably the king and this sect. He’s an Edomite king.

And God tears him apart, decreates him, makes him void. His skin is all weird and he makes or I’m sorry he’s formless. His skin is weird. He’s void. His animals and his blessings and his children are taken away from him and his eye goes dark. He becomes decreated so that the spirit of God can move over him formless void and dark and bring new form, new filling, more filling than what he had before. Twice as many animals, right?

And new light. So the Lord God takes us through trials. As strange as it may seem, but he takes us through them to make us a better creation, to bring us to rule and authority. Okay? So, we’re to consider the sovereign grace of Jesus Christ, but we’re also to consider his cross and his throne. And this means that our sufferings are for a purpose. It’s for the joy that’s set before us. It’s for ruling and reigning with Jesus, right?

It’s to be him. It’s to be like him. That is his people ruling and reigning on the earth. Now, somebody that means death. But death, you know, the blood of the martyrs is frequently, you know, the way that the church becomes more prosperous and grows. It’s the potting soil as it were for the fruit, the tree that bears its fruit in due season. And so and so the purpose of our sufferings has to be kept in mind.

You know, the small things that we have to endure and finish, we accomplish them because we know that through our difficulties, the Lord God is bringing us to the joy of ruling and reigning. And then the third aspect of our savior we’re supposed to meditate upon is his suffering. We meditate upon his sovereign grace. He’s in control of all things. He’s maturing us. We meditate upon his cross and his throne.

We consider and look upon Jesus in his suffering. “Consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.”

Now, and then he says, you haven’t resisted to the point of shedding blood. Now, we’re tempted to always think his suffering on the cross and we must do that. The great suffering of Jesus is the cross and the text has already told us that he endured the cross.

But again here as in chapter 5 the suffering of Jesus is lifelong man of sorrows right that’s what he was he endured such hostility from sinners not just on the cross but throughout his ministry he endured this hostility so we can identify with him right you know we’re not allowed to you know sing Uh we’re not allowed to say, “Well, nobody knows what I’m going through. My troubles are unlike it. They don’t know.

Pastor gets up there and talks about, you know, marriage or job or vocation, health.” He doesn’t know how I’ve suffered. And that’s right. Nobody knows but Jesus. And Jesus does know. And this text is given, I think, to cause us to meditate on the sufferings of Jesus. That we quit whining. That we not whine. That we not be self-pitying. That we don’t collapse into this discouragement of saying, Oh, it’s just tough on me and nobody understands.

Jesus understands every bit of it. And the point of the comparison is that you will never be called to suffer all that he did. Now, some will be called to shed blood and they’re striving against sin. There are martyrs that we’re praying for today that, you know, are being called to shed their blood. You’re not right. I mean, by way of comparison, you haven’t even gotten that far. Forget the eternal torments that our savior took upon us for our sinfulness, the curses of God upon himself.

Forget that you haven’t even gone to the cross literally. You haven’t shed your blood. You haven’t been beaten. You haven’t been scourged. Right? So, so we’re to look at the suffering of Jesus and we’re to say, well, you know, really compared to him, what we’re going through is not that bad. Now, the text will say at the end, no chastening seems pleasant. It’s painful. We’re not supposed to whistle past the graveyard and not experience the pain.

You know, chastisement is painful. I’m not trying to say it isn’t. Jesus is compassionate with our pain. I’m compassionate with the difficulties that you go through and trying to be a finisher, but I’m not so compassionate that I’m going to say, “Yeah, it sure is tough, and I guess you don’t have to love your wife that much.” Uh-uh. You see, self-pity is out with this verse. It attacks it. It says, “Get rid of that.

Consider the sufferings of our savior.” So, part of the way that God equips us with endurance that we might be finishers of the various task that God gives us is to cast our gaze upon Jesus. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. That’s what the text says.

Secondly, we’re to turn our eyes. We’re to consider our sonship. And that’s the very next part of the text. “You have not yet resisted uh to bloodshed, striving against sin.”

By the way, I don’t want to dwell on this—is the hinge verse in the next section, your own suffering. And then it’s going to bring that up specifically and we often think about this us about martyrdom. But you know, the striving against sin isn’t just the striving against sinful men that Jesus had to endure. In our case, it’s our own striving against our own sin, right? So, you know, how much effort have we put into our own sinfulness?

And specifically in the context of what the text is going to say here, how hard do we work against self-pity, against discouragement, and against losing heart? These are sins. The text tells us, “Don’t be discouraged. And so we’re supposed to put that off, you see, and we’re supposed to strive hard against that sin. Okay? So that’s the hinge verse. And I think it’s important to recognize, you know, I talked to the kids this morning about remember when Brian Godava was here and he taught us that the way guys make good movies is I saw Chicken Little, good movie.

So begins and ends happy, right? Things start off good, fairly good, but immediately there’s a problem. Chicken Little sees the sky fall. Here you got a difficulty. He’s got to deal with his own problems as well as external problems. He’s got to come to the place where he’s going to try hard to succeed and he’s got to deal with the discouragement that his father doesn’t love him or trust him or believe in whatever it is.

And the text will have him work through those difficulties and then he’ll resolve them and then everything will be great. You know, Job had to deal with he starts off great, ends up greater and he has to get there through striving against sinful people. The Sabeans come and kill him or whoever they were. He, you know, there’s external problems, but he’s got to strive against his own sin. And this is when God finally blesses Job.

It’s after Job repents of his own sinfulness. So, our striving against sin is always in good movies. And it’s true because and they’re popular because it reflects life is always against external difficulties in solving our problem. But it also involves character, our internal problems. And that’s what’s going to move, that’s what he’s going to talk about here. Is our internal striving against sin. How do we do it?

Well, with any kind of suffering, we think about Jesus. But in terms of now striving against our own sin, okay? So, they come and beat us. They you lose your job because you’re a Christian. You can identify with the sufferings of Jesus. But now, the text is going to say how to deal with our own sins. And it’s going to do this by focusing on our sonship. And it’s real simple. Throughout this section of your outline, if you’ve got it there in front of you, B1 Now, what’s the word that’s bolded?

Son, son, son, son. One reference to father chastening, chastening, discipline, chastise, chastening. You see, it’s pretty easy to see what this text is about. This part of the text, it’s about chastening as a demonstration of our sonship, right? That’s what it’s about. And so, when we need endurance to finish the task, one thing we really need is to remember that we are sons and that the chastisements to come upon us is an evidence of the love of God the Father.

“You’ve forgotten the exhortation. We’re supposed to remember something. We’re supposed to remember Proverbs 3:11 and 12. My son, do not despise the chasting of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him for whom the Lord loves. He chasens and scourges every son whom he receives.”

Let’s remember this verse for next week. Next week, I’m going to talk about again giving and receiving of rebukes, stimulating one another by exhortation, and it’s going to be a Thanksgiving Day sermon. And you’re going to think it’s about you. It won’t be about you. It’ll be about the text. And the text is that we’re supposed to give thanks to God when people rebuke us. So that’s what we’re going to do.

And we should remember this text that it’s those who love us who bring chastisements, corrections, make us feel uncomfortable in the context of the church. And you know, there’s another proverb that says it’s the son it’s the father who hates his son who doesn’t discipline him.

So, you know, I’m kind of getting ahead of myself here, but next week you know, I’m going to say that when somebody brings to you something they think you maybe could have done better in the context of the church, it’s because they love you. And it’s the people that you like most who never bring a complaint about you to you. They’re the ones that you might have to worry, are they really being hateful toward me?

See, it’s the it’s the friend. It’s the father who ignores us, who’s always telling us good things, never brings us any correction. Well, you know, the proverb says that’s the dad that actually hates his son. So, chastisements and difficulties. We have to understand the things that tempt us to give up the things for which we need endurance to persevere through the trials and tribulations. The spouse, the bad job, the bad employer, the bad civil government, whatever it might be.

You see, there’s another one we want to give up on this last week. A lot of people are changing their party registrations. Republican, independent. A lot of people are dropping out. They’re just tired of the whole thing. We need to endure to see righteousness exalted in the nation. And to do that, we have to recognize that the difficulties we have in each of these areas are evidences of the Father’s love for us.

We got to get our minds straight. And so the text tells us this. “If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. What sin is there that a father doesn’t chasten. If you’re without chastening, of which all become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.”

So, you know, there’s a word that we could say instead of illegitimate. Bastards. God says, “If you don’t get chasened and you don’t endure through those chastings and see the love of God, you’re an illegitimate son.” Okay?

So, the text wants us to remember the love of God for us and our own sonship here. And so, we’re supposed to meditate upon that. And then the next section in addition to the sonship, we’re supposed to remember that we’re sons. We’re not to sin by means of discouragement. Right? “My son, do not despise the chasing of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him.”

That’s a command. The command is not to allow discouragement to sit in our souls. We’re to put that off again and to put on endurance. We’re to be encouraged. The spirit of God is not a spirit of fear. And nor is he a spirit of discouragement. The spirit is a spirit of encouragement. He’s a strengthener, an encourager. And so when you get discouraged about the things you’re tending to want to quit on. You got to remember this. That’s sin against the Holy Spirit, the spirit of courage and encouragement.

And you got to confess it as such and move ahead. So we do that by focusing on Jesus. We do it secondly by focusing upon our own sonship. And we do it thirdly by focusing upon the Father. The Father and we talked about the Jesus our savior. Now we want to focus the next part of the section of the text beginning in verse 9 deals with fathers. And it compares comparison and contrast human fathers and earthly or human fathers and the divine Father.

Verse 9, “Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us. We paid them respect.”

Now, I’ve got the word there because this is the same word that is at the bottom of the text. Which I can’t seem to find. Oh, it’s right there on the screen. Okay. At the bottom of the uh text in verse 12, “what is lame may not be dislocated.” (ectrepō) in this respect is (entrepeō). So there’s a little you know relationship here.

In order not to be discouraged and our limbs put out of joints so that we can’t keep running. We’re to take this entrepeō—this proper reverence and turning in upon submission to our earthly fathers and emulate that with our heavenly Father. Okay? So that’s the idea. So in order to have endurance, we’re to focus now not just upon our savior, not just upon our sonship, but now upon our Father, our heavenly Father.

“We have had human fathers and we respected them. How much more should we be in subjection to the Father in spirit?”

So, first of all, we’re to think about our Father, our heavenly Father, and say, well, you know, if we respected to some degree our earthly fathers, man, we ought to have full reverence for our heavenly Father, right? And then secondly, he says they did these things. “They even the human fathers indeed for a few days chasened us as seemed best to them, but he for our profit that we may be partakers of his holiness.”

So, You know, it’s contrasting the earthly fathers. They discipline us as seems best for them and there’s almost a nuance that they’re doing it for their own well-being, you know, or another nuance to this best for them is that as best they could figure out, you know, kids know that you’ve gotten spankings for something that was not your fault, right? So, your dad is disciplining you as it seems best to him, but he’s fallible.

He gets things wrong. He gets his sinfulness involved sometimes, and he’s disciplining you for his own sake. Not so the heavenly Father. He always disciplines us for his purposes which is to make us partakers of his holiness. He is always working through trials and difficulties to reflect his holiness in our lives. Okay? So we’re respecting our heavenly Fathers. We’re even more respecting are respecting our earthly fathers even more heavenly Father.

Our earthly dads are doing their best. They’re going to make mistakes but heavenly Father never does. And this is a great assurance for earthly fathers because it means that even when we get it wrong, God is getting it right. Right? You got a spanking for something that God, you know, is not your fault. You know, dad did it wrong. But you also know that heavenly dad is doing it right. He’s having you suffer for something unfairly, but through that he’s making you a partaker of his holiness, his character attributes.

And then third, it says that “no chastening seems to be joyful for the present but painful. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

So heavenly Father is making you partakers of his holiness, but he’s also producing fruit in you of peace and righteousness. All right, couple of things here.

One, the text comes to its focal point here before repeating the command to run the race and finish the race with endurance which is the very next verse, the concluding verse of the section. It reaches a focal point in this relationship of who we are to our Father. Jesus is the model and exemplar to us. But then the bulk of the stuff that prepares us to have endurance has to do with sonship and our heavenly Father.

Why? Because that’s our tendency to sin. Where we are prone to sin, God brings correction. Our Adamic nature is to doubt the love of God. That’s what Satan brought to Adam and Eve was doubt about whether God had their best interests in mind. He didn’t cause them to doubt the sovereignty of God. That was a later innovation of satanic thought. He didn’t get them to doubt, you know, God’s wisdom necessarily, but what he focused the temptation on was to doubt God’s love.

He doesn’t want you to have that fruit. Not because he loves you and he has a plan that’s in place. No, it’s because he doesn’t love you. and he doesn’t want to make you like him. And in reality, of course, God’s very plan is to bring us—not to make us creator, but—to bring us into the Father’s holiness. So, it’s a lie from Satan, but the lie is specifically geared at having us doubt the love of God.

And see, children, you know, this is so important for you. Satan will tempt you to doubt the love of your earthly father. And Satan has an easy time there because some times your earthly father really isn’t loving you. Okay? But he wants you to doubt the love of the earthly father because the earthly father is the demonstration to you of the heavenly Father. And Satan’s whole gig is getting you to doubt the love of the Father.

That’s why so many of these movies, Chicken Little is the latest one. I mean, I could go on and on and on. 75% of the movies I watch at some point, and usually quite a big part of the movie, is a relationship to a parent. It’s a generational problem. It’s a child not trusting dad. It’s that there’s a Russian movie. Dad comes back from prison. He’s got two boys. He takes them on a trip and the boys don’t know what’s going on.

What’s he going to do? Is he going to kill us? Is he going to hurt us? We don’t know where we’re going. What’s this guy going to do? He hasn’t been around for years. He’s been in prison. What’s he going to do? A very interesting movie because it’s what our lives are like. We’re alienated from our Father in heaven because of our sin. And Father comes alongside of us, gets active in our lives through the Christian church.

He brings us to repentance. But now we’re with dad and can we trust him? Gee, he gave me this wife. He gave me this husband. He gave me this lousy job. He gave me this lousy boss. He gave me Bush’s inconsistency of applying biblical principles. He’s given us lying people in government. He’s given us, you know, liberals who just seem to want to have the whole thing ripped to shreds. He’s given us all these things.

Can we trust him or not? This car is a bumpy ride for us. And the Bible says over and over again, yeah, you can. This is the focal point because this is what we need to hear most is that our heavenly Father loves us. Now he doesn’t love us with a kind of you know cheap sentimental love that doesn’t discipline us. He loves us so much that he brings all these difficulties along. They’re all demonstrations of that love and they’re not just demonstrations to us.

They are ways that in his love he makes us better that he brings us to holiness, peace and righteousness—the text says holiness. You know the middle of the Pentateuch is Leviticus and the middle of Leviticus is a chapter having 70 commands. It’s a sermon on the Ten Commandments. In the very middle of that is love of your neighbor but the way it starts is holiness. Chapter 19 Leviticus says “be holy for I am holy. Honor your parents.

Keep my Sabbaths.” See? So we’re to reverence God the Father. Be holy in relationship to him. Totally committed consecrated to him. And that’s one of the gifts that difficulties brings us is increasing commitment to holiness to reverence our heavenly Father to honor his worship day what he’s told us to do. But the very middle of Leviticus 19 is loving your neighbor, not hating him. That’s righteousness. Righteousness is living in community correctly, justice, equity in our dealings with one another, not hating them, not talking to everybody else about their problems, but talking to them about them as an example.

That’s what we’ll talk about next week in Leviticus 19. That’s what love your neighbor is. Is rebuking him. You’re commanded to rebuke him, not to hate him and not to talk about other people. So righteousness, living in community correctly, holiness, a consecration to the purposes of the Father. And that’s the key to the peace in the middle of that. Peace is the right ordering of our relationships. Peace is what we all want.

But we want to apart from the heavenly Father. We want to depart from community. God says, “Accept the disciplines and chastisements. The way I’m going to make you endure, the way I’ll enable you to fulfill the commandment is to look at my son. Look at what I did for you as your heavenly Father. Look at each one of these difficulties that you go through as gifts from me to bring you to increased holiness, righteousness, and peace.

I did it with my own son.” He says he learned obedience by what he suffered. And what did he get? Well, he got ruler of the whole world, the entire created order. Is what he got. Do you want that kind of thing? Do you want rule and authority? Do you want peace? Do you want to love God? Do you want to have good relationship with him and your neighbor? Then run the race with endurance. Be a finisher of those little tiny mile posts along the way and then the big things as well.

God says that’s the key to the whole thing.

He concludes by saying then therefore “strengthen the hands which hang down, the feeble knees. Make straight paths for your feet so that what is laying may not be dislocated but rather healed.”

Another reference to the Proverbs. Another reference to the Proverbs. I want to look at the context for just a minute here. Oh, sorry, I’m running long. But look, let’s look quickly at the context and wrap this up.

Look at Proverbs chapter 3 and then we’ll look at Proverbs chapter 4 and then we’ll talk once more about the cross of Jesus.

Proverbs chapter 3. This is the section where you know you’re supposed to receive chastisements. It’s what happens to a kid. It’s the love of God. Verse 11. “Don’t despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest his correction. Whom the Lord loves, he corrects.”

But look at what—look at the context. Look at verse 7. “Don’t be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord. Depart from evil. It will be health for your flesh, strength to your bones. Honor Lord with your possessions with the first fruits of all your increase. So your barns may be filled with plenty. Your vats will overflow with new wine.”

That’s the context. We always rip these proverbs out of their context. The context for not despising the chastity of the Lord is that he’s going to fill your barns, you know, to overflowing. That’s the whole context of this verse 13. “Happy is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding. And her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, her gain more than gold.”

It goes on and on. God says, “Believe that you’re my son. Believe that the difficulties that you’re liable to whine and complain and grumble and dispute about are actually the very things that’s going to make your barns fill and your gold increase.” That’s what he says. Don’t despise the chastenings. It’s how you’re going to inherit rule and authority and the blessings of God.

Now look at Proverbs chapter 4. This is where the quote from, you know, make straight paths for your feet. And it’s a, you know, he’s humming a little bit of bar. He’s humming a little the last little lyric of the song found in Proverbs 4, but he expects that we know the thing and we don’t, but he expects us to fill in the rest.

And the rest is the other parts of our body. Beginning at verse 20 of Proverbs 4, “my son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Don’t let them depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart. For there are life to those who find them, health to all their flesh. Again, a blessing there. Keep your heart with all diligence. Out of it are the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth.

Put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet. Let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left. Remove your foot from evil.”

And that the last one there is what he quotes in Hebrews. The point is our being enduring and being finishers involves all of these things. What we hear, what we say, what we look upon, what we put our heart to do.

This text is a text that calls for total consecration in running the race and being those strong men like the martyrs of old, the army of God to march forward with full consecration of every bit that we have. Because Jesus has given us his bright and shining eyes. The tongue that is the sharp sword that comes out of his mouth is to be corrected speech and wonderful speech that exercises dominion in the world.

Here his legs that shiny brass stuff in Revelation 1 is to be the solidity by which we march in obedience and finish the tasks with the endurance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. That’s what we’re called to do. God says the way we get there. The way we become strong warriors, the way we inherit the blessings of Almighty God is by looking at Jesus enduring the cross so that we might accomplish the throne room, that we might have the throne.

I want to close with a quotation from a man who has an internet journal of all the persecutions, all the horrible things that this man who claims to be the guardian of the planet, this evil dictator of North Korea, who ought to be taken out. This man has a journal of all the persecutions that happen in that place and he knows these people and he knows the sufferings. And in this article that Esther sent to me this week, he talks about why he wants to quit because there doesn’t seem to be anything happening.

But then he concludes the article by saying why he stays in the fight to articulate the persecution of Christians in North Korea. And he stays in the fight because he understands Hebrews 12. He endures. He continues to run the race because he knows the cross is the precedent of the throne. Let me read from his article.

“Since God’s inbreaking reign was inaugurated on the earth through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s reign manifested in justice and peace can today even now be discerned in creation social, political, economic as well as spiritual spheres. It is precisely because this is my gospel—and that’s our gospel—the good news is that all the world is moving toward the manifestation of Jesus. It is precisely because this is my gospel that I stay in this fight. I can discern even in North Korea today proof of what God is doing and will consummate when Jesus comes again.”

And we would say we’ll manifest that before Jesus comes again. He sits at the right hand until all his enemies made his footstool. “When his journal helps rescue four North Korean orphans I savor it as a foretaste of God’s promised deliverance. When ministers in China suffer threats of arrest and assassination for sheltering North Koreans, I see a reaffirmation of the power of the cross healing through solidarity. When thousands of churches from England and South Africa to the Philippines and Denmark tearfully lift up prayers for North Korea as we do today, I discern the first fruits of the promised redemption.

Ion of the world in their spiritual groans. When the United Nations is mobilized to condemn Pyongyang for systemic, widespread, and grave violation of human rights, I see it as a preview of God’s coming vindication for millions of silent victims. When I meet and pray with the remnant of the Jerusalem of the East, I am reassured that God’s kingdom will indeed consist of every nation, tribe, people, and language.

When I see South Korean churches arrange housing, education, and employment for North Korean defectors. I hear a resounding amen to the truth of the gospel that Christ has indeed made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. If the gulags, biological experiments, and mass starvations are proofs of God’s absence, these are evidences of God’s inbreaking presence. Yay, it’s Friday and Sunday is coming.

It is Friday and Sunday is coming. When you go through the trials and tribulations that make you discouraged, put it off and recognize that Friday is always followed by Sunday. The cross moves us toward the crown. The suffering is a pre-indicator of establishment and rule. I can persevere, he says, because I view everything that happens today from the foot of Jesus’s cross. Only by being there through the power of the Holy Spirit do I experience the hope that allows one to perceive God doing glorious work even in the most deprived places.

Only by being there at the foot of Jesus’s cross, not lost in the taunts and the tortures of the ruthless guards, but able to be fully there to hear and believe in the cry, ‘It is finished.’ Jesus is a finisher. There do I perceive God’s present achieving of redemption of the whole world that was achieved on the day of Christ’s crucifixion. I can sense God’s work of redemption in a plight like that of North Korea here and now and thereby know that I do not fight like a man who beats the air.

I do not even fight to win, but so that I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. For what must be fought today we know was all already defeated 2,000 years ago. And what must be done today, we only do in remembrance of him, the cross.”

Why does he stay in the fight? Because he knows that if it’s Friday, Sunday is coming. He knows that the nations of this world have become the kingdom of our God in Christ.

And the same thing’s true of you. If that’s true, looking at the kind of horrible persecutions that go on in North Korea, how much more you and your problems in your job, in your family, in your trying to affect righteousness and peace in the political arena. Endure, run the race. Jesus was a finisher. He said that his very food was to do the will of the Father in heaven and finish the work he’d been given to do.

And at the end of John’s gospel, the great triumphant victory cry of Jesus, and that’s what it was. It was not a whimper. It was a victorious victory cry, “It is finished.” And he then delivered over his spirit of encouragement and finishing endurance and obedience to us, to the church. This is what Jesus has come today to make us finishers. This is the power of the Holy Spirit giving us endurance to finish the small tasks and the big ones that he’s called us to do, to do the will of our Father in heaven and to finish the work that he’s given us to do.

May God grant us grace to that end.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for the captain, the author, the beginner, and perfector of our faith. We thank you for reminding us of your great love. Lord God, you know, it doesn’t do us any good to acknowledge your sovereignty if somehow we doubt your love. It scares us all the more. Your strength, your power, your majesty, your omnipotence.

Without a knowledge of your love, Lord God, it scares us, doesn’t strengthen us. Add to us a firm belief in the love of our heavenly Father for us, Lord God. And help us then to put off the discouragement, the whining, the complaining, and put on the strength of the Lord Jesus Christ to be finishers with endurance. In his name we ask it. Amen. Amen.