Hebrews 12: 1
The Race

I. FIRST CONSIDER THE PRESENCE OF WITNESSES IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

1. I have many times heard or read or seen in art the idea that this passage means that the glorified saints are watching us as if we were in Sanford stadium with 80,000 saints -- friends from the past, family members and great hero's of the faith barking like dogs and cheering "Go dogs! Go Dogs! Go Dogs!'' That would be a popular interpretation in Athens but I think it is not a correct one.

The ramifications would be astounding. I do not know any other passage that teaches such a thing as the glorified saints watching us and it would totally change the Bible picture of our preoccupation with the Lord himself when we get to heaven.

2. But it seems to me that it is also proved not to be true because of the way Paul uses it in the context. These people in chapter 11 are not called witnesses because they are cheer leaders who eves drop on our activities but they are called witnesses -- marturon -- because of the way they witnessed to their Christian faith while they were upon the earth. They showed by the way they lived their lives that they believed in eternal life and trusted in God who gave it to them. The Greek word does not mean spectators so much as it means witnesses in a court who swear something is true. The martyrs -- the word it self coming from this Greek word martus ("a witness'') and marturia ("a testimony'') were people who witnessed to the truth that there was a God and there was a heaven and both things were more important than life.

3. Paul lists all the people he can think of in the O.T. and in Jewish intertestimental history. Many of them lived lives of exceptional faith; others were positively heroic and suffered great losses because they were so strongly committed to the Faith. And in every case they witnessed that there was a whole conscious eternity beyond this present life.

We might add to these the people who have died horrible deaths for Christ or who have suffered great persecution for the truth of the gospel and lived lives of great suffering and poverty because of their Christian faith or those who have lived incredibly sacrificial lives as missionaries. There are thousands of people in N. Korea, China, Vietnam, Africa, the Muslim lands and in other places who suffer daily as a witnesses to their faith. They are witnesses that life really is a preparation for eternity.

But there are witnesses more close at home, too. The Christians who have touched your life; the fellow members of this congregation who are living exceptional Christian lives if not ones that are called to be heroic at the present time. They give witness in more subtle ways than martyrdom that their ultimate hope is not in this world but in God, with whom we will live forever. One of the purposes for the local church is to have these witnesses in our lives day by day and each of us has an opportunity to both be a witness and to benefit from the witness of others.

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

II. BUT THEN LOOK AT THE EXHORTATION THAT PAUL MAKES

1. There is a negative and a positive and it is important that we listen to and understand both of them and consider them equally.

2. The negative is to follow these witnesses' example in laying aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely.

This sin, as the K.J.V. translates it, "the sin which doth so easily beset us'' is a constant factor in the Christian life. It hangs close to us as if were a garment. There have been well meaning Christians who have developed perfectionist theories about the Christian life that have turned into an obsession with sin while on the other hand there are professing Christians who seem to ignore sin. But Paul's theory is "laying aside the sin which doth so easily beset us." And the context would support the idea that it is a continual process. We continually lay aside the sin which clings so closely and will always do so in this life.

The true Pauline doctrine of the continuing sinfulness of the Christian throughout this life is balanced off by the truth of justification at the beginning of the Christian life making the individual perfectly righteous before God in his standing by imputed righteousness and beloved and intimate with God who has become his Father and desirous of pleasing him by his behavior. Occasionally Christians will take this as a license to sin, forgetting that their growing sanctification and deliverance from notorious sins are evidences that they were indeed justified in the first place.

3. And we are urged by the example of this "cloud of witnesses'' including the heroes of the faith from of old and those in our very midst to also "Lay aside every weight'' that hinders our lives. The word also means ``a hindrance'' -- "to lay aside every hindrance." The NIV paraphrases the word as ``everything that hinders'' us which is correct except that it loses the metaphorical nature of the passage about a person running in a race, burdened down by too much weight in his equipment. As you know, those who run in a race have the weight of even their clothes pared down to the absolute minimum.

A weight is not necessarily a sin and as it is used in this passage it is something in addition to sin. A weight may be a job, a profession, a relationship to another person (or a potential relationship to another person), a hobby, a life-style. It may be your relationships to people who are not in the faith and their effect on your life. It may be your possessions. It may be your determination to walk in certain segments of society, or politics, or of the intellectual and academic community. Anything that weighs you down and makes you do poorly in your running the race is a weight. "Let us lay aside every weight'' that hinders our running in this race of the Christian life.

Let me tell you that it is a very common thing that people who have started out heroically in the Christian life are frequently and repeatedly weighed down with these weights just as really as someone who is in a track meet would be weighed down with a microwave or a computer or a set of books strapped to his back as he runs down the track!

Examine your life -- Not only for sins that, as you grow more mature become more and more subtle. But examine your life for weights that are not necessarily sins but they weigh you down so that you cannot heroically run in the race which is the real agenda of you life as a Christian, running for the prize that goes to the winner which will be the Savior's saying: "Well done thou good and faithful servant.''

4. And then see this positive aspect of the exhortation: "let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us''. I think I may talk about this line and the verse that follows it on next Sunday but let me here just say a few things about it now.

In this metaphorical passage the idea is that running the race is equivalent to living the Christian life -- No, not just living the Christian life as many understand it; But living the heroic Christian life as verses 36-38 suggest. And that heroic living -- running, as opposed to walking in the metaphor, is an indication that you believe this gospel that has justified you and will some day take you to heaven where your real treasure is. It is incumbent upon you to run the race heroically -- and consistently -- with perseverance until the Lord comes or until he calls you home. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, . . . let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,"

The providence of God is here: It is "the race that is set before'' you. God permitted these incredibly difficult things that came into the lives of the heroes and martyrs mentioned just before this and gave them grace to run the race that was set before them. At the end of it all was the heavenly kingdom which corresponds to the prize at the end of the earthly race. As Cowper wrote:

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense but trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence, he hides his smiling face.

His purposes will come to pass, unfolding every hour
The bud may have a bitter taste but sweet will be the flow'r.