Eyes Fixed on Jesus

 Read Hebrews 12

And so we come to a chapter that begins with the word therefore. We have talked about for and therefore before. I’m getting my alliteration points in early today. Both connect paragraphs, pages, or thoughts.

So, what’s being connected to chapter 12?

That’s an easy one. Chapters 1-11 are what is being linked to the current chapter.  So far, we have seen a lot of explanations, mainly targeted at those anchored in tradition and in the Law that came via Moses.

It was written to those comfortable in religious practices long ago. Such counsel is just as applicable to us, though our comfort zones are seldom rooted in the law.

Now we see a call to application. We have moved from explanation to application. We are supposed to put what God has taught us and is teaching us into practice. Such as?

Throw off, cast off, get rid of anything that hinders tops the list. What hinders?

Do you remember, God’s way and everything else?”  What hinders is anything and everything that is calling us to the everything else.

That’s a lot. The world is coming at us from so many directions all the time. How can we cast of everything that is trying to lead us the wrong way? One way is to let most of it roll off.

Bad thoughts?  Take them captive. Make them obedient to the mind of Christ that is within you. If they don’t get a foothold, they don’t have anything else to say.

Fight the battle of sinful thinking—which can lead to sinful living—at the borders of our minds. My grunt brethren who served in the Vietnam era had a phrase that nobody wanted to hear.  What?

They are in the wire!

The enemy had gotten inside the defensive perimeter. It’s a whole different ball game when the enemy is mixed in with friendlies opposed to we are here and they are there and we will stop them before they get from there to hear.

How do we keep from fighting the enemy in the wire?  The world is coming at us from so many directions. How do we stay the course of faith?

How?

Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. He is the Author and Finisher of our Faith. He is the Pioneer and Perfecter of our faith.

Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega of all that we know and that includes our faith. We have each been given a measure of faith. If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we strengthen and grow our faith.

Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

OK, then what?

Run your race of faith with perseverance. Stay the course. Keep moving forward.  Endure hardship. Treat it as discipline. Treat it as discipline from the Lord.

When we think of discipline, we often think of punishment, and the two are frequently paired with other like terms that deal with consequences for actions.

But here, think of discipline as training in righteousness. Think of it as God giving correction as we put his words into practice. Another term for what God is doing is coaching. Think of it as part of the application phase of our learning to be his disciples—of taking his yoke.

Long ago and far away, I learned the basics of instruction. It was a simple format that has surely been revised a thousand times with fancy terms, but once upon a time this was the model for instruction: LDA.

It was lecture, discussion, and application.

Understand that God knows what you are disposed to do, what you will do, and the reward or consequence in store for you and your choices. Knowing this, God may begin the discipline process before we even know what is going on.

Too often we wonder why this happened to us. The author here tells us to take our hardships and trials and treat them as discipline from God.

Understand that some of our trials are because we shot ourselves in the foot. It hurts. There are consequences. We shouldn’t do that again.

Too often, not only do we shoot ourselves in the foot, we also admire our marksmanship. Some even reload.

But here is how I understand this instruction. Take your trials and hardships—even the self-inflicted ones—and treat them as training in right standing with God. Receive them as discipline from the Lord, even though a simple root cause analysis might reveal that we shot ourselves in the foot.

Listen once more to verse 11.

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Over the past several decades, the world has realized some of this mindset and tried to frame it for general use.

It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you respond to it. This trend in thinking goes back 75 years to Viktor Frankl. So, is your current trial just grist for the mill in your journey of faith or is it truly debilitating?

Are our trials part of our training in righteousness or do they encumber us as we seek to follow Jesus?

We are reminded of this fact.  God disciplines those whom he loves.

God loves us.

God has good plans for us.

God expects us to expect some training along the way. That training might just involve some hardship or trials. Consider them grist for the mill. All of our experience goes into the process of our refinement.

We are being refined. We are being perfected. We are growing and we continue to grow whenever we step forward in faith.

We are refined so that one day, we may live in the holy city that is Zion. We are refined so that we too will be in the presence of God as are multitudes of angels.

We are warned again to pay attention. If you did not listen to Jesus while he walked the earth, you had better listen now that he is at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

Let’s go back to the very beginning of this chapter and the premise it lays. Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…

What witnesses?  The pillars of faith mentioned in Chapter 11 are surely among them, but the angels in heaven also are witnesses to our response to God’s love.

What is of the earth is temporary. It is shakable, as the author described it. But the Kingdom of God cannot be shaken. It cannot be disturbed. Nobody is in the wire in heaven. God’s got it all covered.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

We have so many witnesses that the word of God is true. These witnesses know that God rewards our faithfulness. These witnesses want us to come join them.

What are we to do? We already know most of this, but let’s make sure we don’t leave out what we just studied.  What are we to do?

Believe in the one true God and his Son, and while you are at it, include the Spirit of God that lives within you.  Believe.

Profess that Jesus is Lord.  Believe with all that you are that God raised him from the dead.

Know that God is love.

Know that God loves you.

Know that we are called to love one another.

Be God’s love. Be known by your love as a disciple of Christ Jesus.

Be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.

Be a cheerful giver.

Be an ambassador from Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven.

Be a letter from Christ. Connect the disconnected with the love of God and the word of God.

Fulfill your commission. Take the good news to the world, at least that part where you are connected. Perhaps, God may send you far away. He might just send you across the street.

Take the yoke of our Master, learn from him, and put his words into practice.

Put his words into practice.

I know those. I do know those!

Yes, I am in familiar territory with all of those. I know all of these but still struggle. There is no mystery as to what I should be doing in response to the great love of God that we know in Christ Jesus. I’m growing.

We grow in the grace of God. Our hearts and minds—hopefully not our waistlines—are growing as we seek God and his kingdom and his righteousness before all things. We are growing in God’s grace.

For the next few weeks or months or however long, if I ask you, “How are you?”  Please answer with “Growing.” We will do this in our warm-ups from time to time.

We are growing.

Now let’s add a couple of items from Hebrews 12. Know that we are not in this alone. God is for us and with us and he brought a whole cloud of witnesses. What are we adding to our growth list?

We are to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Pioneer and Perfecter of our faith.

We are to cast off, throw off, or just get rid of everything that is getting in the way of living out our faith in response to the great love of God.

Do you remember there is God’s way and there is everything else?

Live God’s way—eyes fixed on Jesus—and cast off everything else. We know the concept. It’s time to go from concept to practice.

Eyes fixed on Jesus.

Cast off everything that’s getting in the way.

Amen.