Hebrews 12:1-2: “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Have you ever watched a tela-evangelist on TV? If you have, you may have heard something like this: “If you call now, you can have my miracle spring water which the Holy Spirit led me to Russia to collect so that you may be healed by it.” Or perhaps you heard something like this: “If you call right now, we’ll send you our special prayer fleece which has been blessed by the Holy Spirit. By holding this fleece while you pray, you hold the power of the Holy Spirit to heal you from your ailments.” And certainly, you’ve heard something like this: “And you can have all of this for a small contribution to our ongoing ministry of just $19.95.”
Now, I think most of us would agree that you’re probably not going to be healed by miracle spring water from Russia, or by praying with the aid of a special prayer fleece. And I’m sure that we would consider the motives of these people to be questionable at best. But there is an important truth conveyed here about what many Christians think Christianity is about. Many people today think that when you become a Christian, everything should become easy. All of your worries go away. All of your pain and suffering disappear. If you have enough faith, nothing bad will ever happen to you.
Many people think that Christianity is supposed to be a walk in the park. However, if you were to ask the Hebrew Christians in the first century, I think they would speak differently about what Christianity is. If we were to look at the whole book of Hebrews, especially chapter 10, we would see that the author refers to the persecution, hostility, and torture that these Christians were facing. Some of the members had grown lax in their attendance. Some members had been imprisoned, and others suffered the confiscation of their property. They were also facing public abuse and ridicule.
It sure doesn’t sound like being Christians made the lives of these people any better. In fact, Christianity probably made their lives more difficult. Now we don’t face the same kind of persecution in our culture as the first century Hebrew Christians faced, but our lives are not perfect even though we claim Jesus as Lord. Maybe this is why instead of describing Christian faithfulness as a walk through the park, the author describes it as a race, and not just a short sprint, but a long race the requires endurance.
So how can we run this race of faith with endurance? I don’t know how many of you have ever done any type of distance running, but if you have, you know how difficult it can be. When I was in high school, I ran cross-country, and we used to run anywhere from about 5 to 8 miles every day. There were some benefits to it. I was in the best shape of my life, and that felt good. There was a great sense of accomplishment when I achieved a personal goal or won a race. But it was never easy. It was never fun, and I concluded that people that though it was fun must not have been breathing correctly while running and enough oxygen must not have been getting to their brains. Maybe some of you have the same feelings.
When the writer to the Hebrews refers to the Christian faith as a race that must be run with endurance, he is talking about something that is difficult. One cannot just get up and run a marathon without training. There are things that runners must do in order to get themselves in shape to run. So also, in order to run the race of faith, there are things that we must do.
Well, let’s look at the things we must do. The first thing that the text tells us that we must do is lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us. In other words, in order to run this race, we have to stop sinning. The problem should be obvious. The text itself describes the problem. Sin entangles us very easily.
I love to eat, and I’m sure I’m not the only one here. And like most of you, my favorite foods to eat are the foods that are the worst for me. A love for bad food does not help one train to run a race. In fact, eating bad food is probably the worst thing you can do if you’re training for a race. But it’s so good. It’s so attractive. Maybe I can have just one cookie. Maybe I can have just a few potato chips. Some ice cream here or there isn’t going to hurt that much. If you love food like I do, you understand what I’m saying here. Food is so attractive and so readily accessible that it’s easy to slip and consume food we know is going to hinder our efforts to get in shape to run the race.
This is what sin is like. Our sin hinders us from being able to run the race, but we love it. It’s so good. It’s so attractive. You know what sin you struggle with. Maybe there is a sin that you know that you are committing every time you do it, but it makes you feel so good that you do it anyway. You know that it hinders your faith, but you can’t seem to resist the temptation. Maybe it’s a sin that you’ve done so often and for so long, that you don’t even feel guilty anymore, but if you were to think about it, you know that it hinders your faith.
Our sin entangles us and weighs us down so much, that we are unable to run the race of faith. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. Not only does our sin weigh us down, but it kills us. If we’re dead in our sins, not only can we not run the race with endurance, but we can’t even get to the starting line.
Our sin also keeps us from fixing our eyes on Jesus. We are often so weighed down by our sin that we can’t even pick our heads up from the ground to look up to find Him. When we face problems in our lives, do we always go to God in prayer and seek His guidance, or do we try to find our own solution? Our human nature is to try to do everything on our own. Our culture exalts the power of the individual. If we just try hard and keep working at things, everything will work out perfectly.
But no matter how hard we work, no matter how hard we try, everything doesn’t always work out like we want it to, yet we keep trying to do things on our own. We fail to fix our eyes on Jesus, and this keeps us from being able to run the race of faith.
Yet, though we fail to get ourselves into shape to run the race that God requires us to run, there is still hope for us. That hope is in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Our text reminds us that Jesus endured the cross for our shortcomings. Because we could not run the race, Christ ran the race for us. He ran the race for us because it gave Him joy to do so.
Christ didn’t have to become a man and die for our sins. It’s not as if He was obligated to do so. God would have been completely just to leave us in our sins and condemn us all to death. But He wanted to save us. He wanted to give us the ability to persevere in our faith, so Christ came down and ran our race for us. He did it for the joy set before Him, the salvation of our souls.
And Christ’s work for us does not end there. Our text tells us that Christ is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God where He pleads for us before the Father. Hebrews 7:25 tells us that Christ is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. Christ’s ministry on our behalf continues as he makes intercession for us at the right hand of the throne of God.
Through Christ’s death on the cross and His rising from the dead, Christ perfects our faith. Our faith is perfected though the grace we receive in Christ. Through this grace, we are able to persevere in our faith. Jesus Christ perfected our faith by dying for our sins and empowers us to run the race of faithfulness.
Jesus Christ has taken away the weight of our sin. He takes the weight of our sin and throws it off of us so that we can run with endurance the race that is set before us. Our sin no longer weighs us down to the ground. We are no longer dead in our sins. We can get up and run the race of faith by putting our faith in Christ.
The Christian race is not completely smooth sailing, but Christ gives us the grace that we need to persevere. We are also encouraged along the way by the faithful of both the past and present whom God has blessed through his grace.
In the previous chapter of Hebrews, there is a list of faithful people of the past who succeeded greatly because of their faith. These people were not perfect. Abraham, fearing that he would be killed so that someone else could take his wife said that she was his sister. Jacob lived a life of deceit. He stole his brother Esau’s birthright and blessing, and later deceived his father-in-law Laban. Moses tried to use every excuse he could come up with to convince God to find someone else to lead his people out of Egypt. David, a man after God’s own heart, committed adultery with Bathsheba and then to try to cover his sin, and had her husband killed.
Every person listed in chapter 11 of Hebrews had problems, but through their faith in God, they were able to run the race of faith with perseverance. When we look at these people, we see people just like us. They were sinners, and yet, by God’s grace they were able to accomplish many things.
The same is true for us, and we see this every day. We read about Christians today who, because of their faith in Christ, are able to persevere in the faith. We see Christians, who despite persecution and oppression, because of their faith in what Christ has done, are able to persevere in the faith.
We are not promised that running the race of faith is going to be easy. After all, it is still a race, and running a race requires perseverance. But we can run this race with perseverance. God has given people that ability in the past. God gives that ability to people around us. And God gives that perseverance to us today. So let us boldly run the race that is set before us, putting our faith in the One who gives us the power to run the race, Jesus Christ. Amen.
