In this message, Pastor Matt exhorts us to throw off sin and run the race of the Christian life, looking unto Jesus as our strength, hope, and example.

Hopefully not too many of you are looking at that title and thinking run like pastor oh don’t run away or like pastor I don’t really run now I have run a little bit. I’ve never super enjoyed running. This is me. It’s a little dark, but this is me at the end of a half marathon, which I ran a couple of half marathons and at the risk of being braggy, I finished, you know, I didn’t finish very fast. I always joked this is maybe a semi-braggy Facebook post. Ran a half marathon. It’s nice to do, but not really an accomplishment. Like I finished half a college degree. Maybe someday I’ll train enough to do the whole 26.2 too.

I still remember the first race I ran so distinctly because I trained a bit I trained for like a month and I felt ready to go and I started the race and I went running and on really long races if you don’t know there’s these people who are like pace people and they’ll have like little balloons like an hour 45 or an hour 30 and I’m like running and I’m like man I feel great. I’m going a couple miles. I see the 130 pace person up there and I’m like, I am just going to crush this. I’m running way faster and then I get to about six miles and I’m going up this hill and I’m like, I’m not going to make it. I am going to die before I finish this race and I’m just slowing down and slowing down and pretty soon people are passing me and not just the men but the women and children too. Like everybody is passing me and I am just walking cuz I can’t keep going on this race. Now I finish limping across the finish line in two hours and five minutes. This was a different race actually. I actually did a little better that time. But our text today has one imperative.

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Let us run the Christian life. And that is my plea to you is to not be like me lazy walking it in, but to run.

Now running is something they knew very well. They loved games in the ancient world. This is actually at Deli a old stadium that still exists. They dug it up where they would run races.

And Hebrews here was talking about a long race they would run. The longest race, the docost was a five kilometer race, like a three-mile race. And Hebrews pictures the Christian life as a long race because its command is to hold fast, to endure. And it wants you to know that that is what the Christian life is like, a long race. Now, often we highlight things in faith that feel a little bit like a sprint.

We highlight coming to faith in Jesus. We highlight a mountaintop experience where we have some new breakthrough in our life. But what the Christian life is more than little bits of breakthrough here and there, a long race of endurance where we put one foot in front of the other until we complete it.

We are commanded here to run with endurance.

Hebrews all along it says don’t shrink back don’t fall away don’t turn back to Moses or angels but keep on with the Christian life and that is like the Christian life is not a one-time decision to make but a race to be run with endurance all the way to the end.

Now the thing about running long runs is that except for crazy people they are not fun.

Now after like 20 years of running like I’ve run a long time and I kind of enjoyed a little bit but that’s after a long time. When I was a kid like I did not like to run whatsoever. Every step was just a pain to me. I mean sometimes people make fun of me and they’re like you know Proverbs 28 says the wicked run when no one is chasing them.

The thing is somebody is chasing me and it’s an overweight pastor and in the Christian life like there are things that are chasing us. They don’t neglect that the world is pulling us onto that path or that path with false teaching and false pleasures that our own flesh is telling us to stop and rest. Maybe you need to care for yourself a little bit more instead of this thing that God is calling you to do like Robert Jaffrey.

Man, he was so great. And maybe we should run like the devil is on our tail because he is.

But Hebrews does not want us just to run away from something, but wants us to press forward with two great encouragements to run the life of faith. And the first is to be strengthened by the testimonies, the witnesses of what we just heard in chapter 11. And the second is to look to Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 12 begins with therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.

Now, the witnesses here, we should not think of these as witnesses of people who are like sitting up in heaven like watching us right now. I don’t think that’s what this is teaching because the therefore whenever you have a therefore in the Bible, if you take any Bible interpretation, if you look see a therefore, you should ask what it’s there for. And this is actually this therefore is a special therefore. It’s like the really emphatic therefore because there’s like a little therefore and this is like a long therefore and so it’s like therefore because he’s made all of his points of all these testimonies of God’s faithfulness and people of faith pressing on towards the unseen God in all of chapter 11 from Abel all the way down to people in the Maccabees to maybe people very recently pressing on in faith. And so he wants to say therefore because so many people are joined with faith. And it is this is all a big metaphor that Hebrews is showing us. And we want to see that it is a metaphor. They’re sitting around the testimonies in the big stadium that we showed before. But it’s not just that they’re sitting around because we are really joined together by faith with every person who believes in Jesus Christ that all of the people from Abraham from Abel all the way down to us today are joined together by faith in a real way. And so that even though it isn’t like they’re sitting there looking down on us, we are joined with the testimonies of everyone who has walked the Christian life before right down to the people around us. And so we should feel strength from the people around us and from the people who have believed all the way down. And so we read something like Robert Jaffrey who literally he had the choice to come home and live a relaxed wealthy life at any moment.

And he chose to stay even when the Japanese were knocking on the door and died under terrible circumstances in a Japanese prison camp. It’s not a fun thing.

So let us hear these testimonies and press on in faith.

Oh yeah, I was going to make the point. Yeah. Yeah. We miss the witnesses here because 11:4 the word commended here it’s translated commended in a lot of our translations. It’s actually the same word as witnessed about. Oh, similar word. It’s like one letter difference. Witnessed about which he was witnessed about as is right this just pointed to chapter 12. All right.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses to all of the testimonies around us, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

And so if we’re going to run, we can’t be dragging an anchor behind. Whether that is sin that we have let creep in. Whether that is a life of comfort and ease so we’ve said no to God’s plan for our life of going boldly like Robert Jaffrey did.

We need to lay aside those weights. We don’t want to be running a marathon like this. This is actually my friend Bill Crosby. He’s a pastor in Cavalier, North Dakota. And for some time he held the Guinness World Record for completing a half marathon in full football gear.

Yeah, that’s him. I know him. This my claim to fame. And yeah, you know what the world record for full football gear half marathon is? It’s like an hour and 43 minutes. Not that fast compared to the people who run the fastest half marathons, like an hour. And so because 14 pounds of football gear slows you down significantly. And if we are going to run, we can’t be doing it weighed down by this or that thing. So many things, worries of this world, whether that is the car we drive, the comfortable home we live in, the job that we really need, but is maybe pulling us away from the fullness içine of what God has called us to. We need to lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely if we are to run.

But if we’re going to run best, the thing that we need to do more than anything else, and Hebrews wants to drive to this point, is that we need to run looking at the goal, the goal of Jesus Christ.

Does anybody know what this is a picture of?

This is a statue of the most famous moment in the most famous race in Canadian history, the Miracle Mile. The 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada, in which the Englishman Roger Banister, the first man to run a sub-4-minute mile, trailed John Landy, who had broken his record very recently. And John Landy, who was ahead, passed him on the right just as John Landy looked the other way.

Landy said after the race, “I would have won if I hadn’t taken my eyes off the goal.”

Now, we need to let go of the weights that cling us down. We need to run with endurance. But more than anything else, we need to keep our eyes carefully fixed on the goal. And that is Jesus. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

God Trains Us in the School of Suffering

And so we need to look to Jesus who was fully human in every respect as Hebrews taught us in 2:17. He ran the race of faith with the same human legs that you have.

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who took the race all the way to the cross, enduring all the way, shedding his blood for faith, looking to Jesus, who did it for the joy that was set before him, who endured the cross. He ran his race with endurance. He kept his eyes on the goal which was the right hand of God his Father and so we too can look to the same prize to be with Christ. Now, that is not to say that life is not hard, that endurance is not hard, because it is. Because we look to Jesus in this, too. That Jesus did it for the joy.

Pain Proves God Loves Us as Children

But we look to him who did it for the joy, who sweat in the garden as great drops of blood. We look to Jesus as he wrestled with God in prayer, finally saying, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

God’s Discipline Produces Holiness

Yes. Look to Jesus as he endured what was impossibly hard for what was infinitely better to be at the presence of the right hand of God his Father.

Jesus’ Sonship Was Perfected in Suffering

Now, how practically can we look to Jesus running this race of faith?

There’s two things.

Number one, we need to remember to look to the real Jesus.

I believe that a lot of people often don’t have a clear grasp of who Jesus is because they have not spent enough time learning of Jesus in the Gospels, praying with Jesus in their prayer closet. But there’s a reason why we have four gospel accounts.

It’s like a totality. We have the four winds of Jesus everywhere and in everything. We have four accounts of his life and most especially his work and his cross. We need to see Jesus not physically. The gospels do not whisper a word of Jesus’ hair color or his eyes. Probably not like the Norwegian guy in the paintings.

But they do show his character, his holiness, his compassion, and most of all, his passion. His last days as he goes to the cross to give his life for you, for the joy set before him, to be with his Father.

And today we need to look to Jesus. And maybe you don’t really know who Jesus is. And it’s like look to him in the gospels that he gave his life for you so that by looking to him you could leave your sin behind. Believe in him and have the same joy set before you that he had before him so that you can look forward to a life where Jesus will never leave or forsake you and in eternity being in the presence of God in the fullness of joy laying down our race and having rest.

And so look to Christ in his gospels. Study them deeply, reflectively, attentively, prayerfully to see who the real Jesus is. Accept no substitutes.

And finally, look to Jesus in your deepest struggles.

In your suffering, look to Christ in his passion.

In your deepest shame, look to Christ on the cross. Enduring shame, responding with forgiveness instead of bitterness.

In social isolation, look to Jesus in his prayer life. How he went by himself alone to be with his Father and still lived a life where he called others around him.

Even in our sin, look to Jesus.

Look to him who was tempted in every way. Now you might say like, “How can I look to Jesus in my sin?” Like Jesus was sinless. But hear this. Jesus knows temptations that none of us will ever know. We have never been offered the world to sin. Like I’ve been offered jello and that has caused me to sin.

Literally jello.

And so Christ knows the fullness of Satan’s temptation and he is compassionate and cares. So look to him in your sin for he is merciful and knows what it is like to be tempted in depression. Look to Christ in the garden, wrestling with conflicting thoughts and fled, inviting others to pray with him. In anxiety, look to Christ in the garden again, focusing on his Father’s work and the joy set before him instead of the soon betrayal of Judas.

And speaking of Judas in betrayal, look to Christ who was betrayed and still said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Church, let us run the race with endurance, looking to the real Jesus as he is shown to us in the gospels, knowing that he has promised never to leave or forsake us. When it gets hard, I learned this trick when I was in cross country running.

It’s like when you feel like you can’t run the next mile, learn to run the next five steps, lower your eye level and just look to the ground in front of you and just run there. And even in this when we feel like we can’t go the next mile, know that we can run the race because even when we just have five steps to go, that Christ is still with us. He has promised never to leave or forsake us. He has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the age.

And so we can run looking just ahead of us, knowing that Christ is there.

And even so, as we close and as Ben’s going to lead us in the meal, we remember how Christ was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Even in this, we can look again to Jesus, knowing that he strengthens us for the race day by day. Let’s pray.

Oh Lord.

Oh Lord, our legs are weak.

Our wills want rest.

But I pray Lord, strengthen our weak knees. Strengthen our flagging wills that we may run the race.

Getting the pack off of our back, looking to you, and having that joy set before us to run the race with endurance.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.