Since Jesus is the originator and completer of all that was promised, these Jewish believers were exhorted to fix their eyes on Him and run the race set before them lest they fall under the discipline of the Lord.
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Since Jesus is the originator and completer of all that was promised, these Jewish believers were exhorted to fix their eyes on Him and run the race set before them lest they fall under the discipline of the Lord.
Stay engaged with new and up-to-date content, including newsletters, articles, podcasts, etc. Download the Teach Me the Bible App from any app store or Apple TV/Roku device.
Speaker 1:
You're listening to Teach Me the Bible podcast, where we unpack the meaning of books, passages and themes from Scripture. Join us each week as Dr David Klingler walks us through God's Word and teaches the Bible. Each episode has a study guide available in the show notes. This is Teach Me the Bible podcast.
Speaker 2:
Hello everybody, welcome back to Teach Me the Bible podcast. We are in Hebrews, chapter 12 today, so we're so glad you've joined us and we hope that this book is starting to make sense to you. And last week we were in chapter 11 and we looked at all of those who, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised Because they looked towards perfection. And today we're going to pick up and we started in chapter 12 last week, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us that was pointing back to all of those saints that he mentioned back in chapter 11. And so we're just going to kind of keep carrying this argument forward, carry the ball forward as we approach the end of the book. So, if you want to take us away in chapter 12.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, chapter 12, I want to just tie a few things right at the onset back to what he said earlier in the letter. And again, we tend to kind of read these things, memorize these things. This is one of the first verses that I memorized, I don't know why, the 12, 1 and 2. But when you memorize the verse without a context, it's somewhat not only unhelpful but sometimes detrimental. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses that's referring back to chapter 11, we'll talk about that Surrounding us. Let us lay aside every incumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles. That's talking about the sin of falling back, of going back, going. You know what Israel did, you know, wanting to go backwards. And that's been the point of this whole whole letter up to this point. And let us run with endurance the race set before us.
Speaker 3:
And I want to draw our attention back to chapter 6. The verse is really in 620, but we'll pick it up in 617. In the same way, god desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of his purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two things which are impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge should have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us. We ran before having become a high priest forever, according to Oromak-Isidak, and so the promised one, who would bring the ultimate rest, has appeared, bringing a new covenant, ascended to the right hand of the Father making intercession as a new high priest, a better high priest, a priest according to Oromak-Isidak, and he has been the runner before. Okay, so he ran before.
Speaker 3:
He is the originator, the author, the beginner and the completer of the faith, and he's running before. He's in the middle of the race, or he's maybe towards the end of the race. He's at the end of the right hand of the Father. The only thing that's left is his return right, and so there's no going back. He didn't go back. He ran before us, he endured. Now it's our turn to follow after him, just as all of the other saints have before. So therefore, having so great a cloud of witnesses, all of those Old Testament saints in chapter 11 surrounding us, let us lay aside every incumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles. It's so easy to wanna go back, to fall back, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. And so this, the race set before us, is that's the thing that they're in the middle of this race. Now, this word, endurance, is going to be pretty central to chapter 12. I mean, this is right in the middle of his discussion.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, endured the cross, endured hostility yeah, and in chapter 10, you are in need of endurance this is in 1036, for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God well, what's the will of God? Endure, to run the race, to remain steadfast, to walk faithfully, to hold on to the author and perfecter, you will receive what was promised. And so here is our remaining steadfast, endurance word, and this is what he's calling them. I guess, if you had to, it's Hupa, mino and the word Mino. There it's showing up a bunch. I mean it's like 15 times in this book and it is quite a bit here in chapter 12. It's 12, one, 12, two, 12, three, 12, seven, 12, 27.
Speaker 2:
It's all the way through here and then into 13,.
Speaker 3:
one, let love of the brethren remain, continue, endure, right, and so all of this enduring and lasting stuff, that's kind of right where we are. All of those Old Testament saints endured. They never received what was promised. Christ endured, and so you endure. And how do you do that? Well, you fix your eyes on Jesus, the originator, starter, arcade beginner, they translated author. And the perfecter, the one who brings, comes to completion, the perfecter of the faith who, for the joy, said before him, endured the cross, he, christ endured. He ran before you, run after him, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. He's seated at the right hand making intercession. For consider him, who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of the shedding of blood and you're striving against sin. He certainly did right, do you have not yet?
Speaker 2:
And not to his shame, but to his glory.
Speaker 3:
And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him, for those whom the Lord loves. He disciplines and he scourges every son he receives, and so there's a lot of Old Testament passages there. So it is for discipline that you endure, for God deals with you as sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you're without discipline, of which all have become partakers, you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of the spirits and live For? They disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness. So all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful. Yet those who have been trained in it afterwards yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hand of the weak, the knees of the feeble, and make straight the paths of your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather may be healed. Well, why does he go to this? Well, he gives them his exhortation to actually go and do what the Christ will do in Isaiah. And so they are now the carriers of the testimony to their brethren, to their fellow non-believing Jews who are undergoing the discipline of the Lord. And so you don't want to join them, but you want to carry the message of restoration to them.
Speaker 3:
And, of course, back in Isaiah, the judgment that comes on Isaiah is they're going to be. Isaiah's ministry is going to proclaim this judgment upon Israel. They will be left blind so they can't see, deaf so they cannot hear, lame so that they cannot walk, and exiled from the land. And so, in the foreign land, their hands will be weak, their knees will be feeble, their paths will be crooked, they won't be able to walk on the highway, in other words, in exile. They won't be able to see what's good and right in the eyes of the Lord. The Lord be healed and returned on the highway to the Lord, or they won't mount up on wings like eagles. The eagle, the Lord, carried them on the wings of an eagle from Egypt into their land, and now they've been exiled back out and they're looking for this second return, the second exodus, where they return back to the land, and so their choice is to do the work of the Lord or to be disciplined. So pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.
Speaker 3:
See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness this is back to Psalm 95, springing up causes trouble and by it many be defiled. You see this even in 2 Peter and Peter's writings, that because when believers don't walk by the truth, the truth is maligned and the belief of others are affected. Both believers and unbelievers are affected. People are led astray, and believers are led astray as well, so that there may be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected and he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.
Speaker 3:
For you have come not to a mountain. I'm sorry, but you have not come to a mountain that may be touched in a blazing fire and darkness and gloom, in a whirlwind and a blast of the trumpet. In other words, you haven't come to this old testament mountain which, if you come to it, you get wiped out, but you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the myriads of angels and to the general assembly, to the church and to the firstborn who enrolled. In other words, the old testament was a big deal, but this is even bigger. And Moses was a mediator of an old covenant, but now Jesus, verse 24, is a mediator of a new covenant.
Speaker 3:
And to sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel, the partial, which was looking forward to this one, abel's blood. He was looking forward crying out to the ground, but his hope was in this one who would come and resurrect him from the ground. Yeah, that's cool. So see to it that you knew, not refuse him. Who is speaking? See, we're right back to where we began, that the Lord spoke through angels spoke of his son, but now his son is speaking and you don't reject his son.
Speaker 3:
Well, that's full circle, yeah it is, and for if those who do not escape when they refused him, who were born on earth, much less will escape those who turned away from the one from heaven. In other words, if you rejected Moses and they were refused, don't reject the Christ. And his voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised saying yet once more. I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven, and the expression once more denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, in order that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service, with fear and all, for our God is a consuming fire. One of the things that I think that continues to not well, it doesn't surprise me, but but come to my attention is that our current state of affairs, our current view of God and our current view of Christ is not in keeping with the scriptures. I mean here he's saying you know, it's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Our God is a consuming fire. The Lord is one to be feared. And so not only do we not fear the Lord, we don't fear Christ. I'm reminded back in Ephesians, chapter five, he says and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. And so we have no fear of Christ, we have no fear of the Father. And to reject the Christ is to reject the Father, and that brings discipline. And so by the end of chapter 13 or in chapter 12, I think he's made his case. There's no going back and nobody wants to go find out what's down that trail. Right, let's not. Let's not do that. Instead, let us love the brethren and let us continue in the love of the brethren, let us not neglect showing hospitality to strangers and all that. And so if there's no going back, as those Old Testament saints didn't go back, the only choice is to follow after, to run after, christ, who is our forerunner. You know the author is making this point.
Speaker 3:
Then what does it look like to go forward? What does it look like to live forward? So we had 12 chapters of theology so that he could say, okay, right, so there's no going back. Do we all agree? Yeah, okay. Then what does it look like to go forward? And there's one chapter of application, and so next time we're going to pick it up in chapter 13 with the application. So we'll bring this book to a close and we'll look at all right, what is what? For them? Did application look like? And we're going to see that it looks a lot the same as it does for us today. And so if the theology doesn't change, if the age of the church doesn't change, if there's no going back, then what does go forward look like? What did it look like for them? And we'll also see what it looks like for us.
Speaker 2:
That's right. That's amazing. You know, I'm just struck by these 12 chapters making this one big point that we've been emphasizing it over and, over and over again. It's become, at least in my mind, so clear, and I hope that it has for our listeners as well. But I'm just thinking of even the love that the author has for this audience. These are believers. He could let them fall into the hands of the Lord and be disciplined. But don't go that way. I think about my two sons, and the oldest he's started, he's four, and he's started doing this now like hey, hey, don't do that thing, daddy's going to get you, because he really is concerned about his brother, and so it's a very good example of this author loving the brother, and I think that's going to be a lot of the application. You see your brother going off, you know, and we see that all through the do test. We see your brother going off and going the wrong way. Grab and pull him back. Yeah, that's really what this guy is doing, I think.
Speaker 3:
And so you don't just say well, I hope it works out for you, see you later, that's right. You know I told you so. Yeah, that's not the right answer at all, so anyway, so join us next week and we'll be back in chapter 13. We'll close this thing out. See you then.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to Teach Me the Bible podcast. Our desire is to use the power of God's word to change lives. For more information, download our app. Join us next week for another episode of Teach Me the Bible.
