By Faith (Pt. 5)
Hebrews: The Life of Faith • Sermon • Submitted
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Big Idea
Big Idea
Tension: How does the author of Hebrews seek to instill a lifelong faith in his audience?
Resolution: By mainly pointing them to the theological trajectory of those who trusted God, culminating in Christ, for examples.
Exegetical Idea: The author of Hebrews seeks to instill a lifelong faith in his audience by pointing them to the theological trajectory of those who trusted God, culminating in Christ, for examples.
Theological Idea: God has given his people a great cloud of witnesses, culminating in Christ, to understand and to imitate their faith.
Big Idea: Let us look to the heroes of our faith, and especially Christ, to strengthen our faith today.
Outline
Outline
Introduction: Have you ever grown weary or fainthearted?
The reality is that we all grow fainthearted and weary. We all have times when our faith crashes. And the reality is that if you and I don’t have a faith that is sturdy and strong then we will not last in those times.
Let us run the race with endurance
True Faith perseveres (Heb 3:14)
How do we run the race with endurance?
Look to Jesus
Why should we look to Jesus?
The Great Cloud of Witnesses - Every single character in Hebrews 11 points us to the faithfulness of Christ.
He is the author of our faith - It is because we are united to him that we have faith in the first place.
He is the perfector of our faith - He is the one who finishes off our faith, who
What? Endured the cross
he endured the cross
The cross was a mark of shame and disgrace.
It was a curse: Gal 3:13-14
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
He endured such hostility from sinners against himself.
How? The way he endured the cross is that he despised the shame. The greatest hatred for sin and shame and the curse that God has is expressed in the cross, because that is where Christ finally put it in is place, finally put it to death, finally nailed it to the cross.
Why would he do this?
Why? Because: of the joy that was set before him.
What was that joy? It was his ascension to the right hand of God. His joy was that one day he would sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty again, that after his resurrection, he would ascend to the heavens.
This was predicted by Psalm 110:1-4
The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
And to which of the angels has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”?
Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,
But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
When faced with the prospect of enduring the cross, of dealing with sin, and receiving the joy of being seated with his Father, he did not waver even a little bit, but rather chose to endure the cross.
The author puts forth Christ as the ultimate example of endurance, of faith that lasts.
There is an obvious discontinuity. Christ’s endurance was the cause of our salvation. Our endurance is the result of salvation.
Yet, it was because Christ endured that you and I can endure. Christ’s endurance purchased our endurance. This is why he is both “the author and the perfector of our faith.” (12:2)
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,
Which is why you and I can look to him as an example. And which is why, every single other example the author has mentioned before now is only a shadow, only a type, of Christ. Because as good as those examples were, they only gave us an indication of Christ’s ultimate example.
Let us then endure like Christ
What?
Let us run the race with endurance. Notice that “endure” here is a similar word to what Christ himself does in both 2 and 3.
We should look at our lives as a continual communion with the sufferings and the cross of Christ.
How?
Well just as Christ despised the shame, so we should lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles.
Sin will entangle you and tear you down. It will trip you up. It will worm its way under the baseboards and the rot will set in.
That’s why we need to cultivate the continual discipline of prayer and confession where we are constantly bringing forward sins, even the small ones, so that we might not be entangled.
Every weight - But there are morally neutral things which will also trip us up.
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Why? Why should we do this? Why should we endure?
The joy that is set before us
Because the rewarder is the reward (vs. 18-24) Because to commune with Christ, to know him, is its own reward. And it is a reward which nothing can compare with.
Application
You cannot endure on your own
His endurance purchased your endurance
If you want to endure, you will put aside eveyr sin and weight which compels
If you find yourself too attached to the thigns of this world, if you don’t let those things die, they will curl themselves around you like a viper and strangle you to death.
Despise the sin
Look forward to the joy
Today, which will you follow, sin or Christ? Who will you obey Satan or the Savior?