Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:16] Amen. So we're continuing on in the book of Hebrews and Hebrews chapter 12. This is an amazing chapter. Pastor Brad Pitt preached on verses one and two last week, and he spoke about how kind of the overarching metaphor for this chapter is that the Christian life is a race.
[00:00:41] And the idea is that we're to run this race with endurance and with pace because we're not running the race against one another. We're to run this race with one another. And specifically, as we saw in the text from last week, there's this borderless great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, namely the Old Testament saints from Hebrews chapter 11.
[00:01:10] And what we saw last week was that the key to running this race with endurance is by looking to Jesus.
[00:01:19] So listen to verse two again, because it's going to set us up contextually well for where we're going. This is verse 2 of Hebrews 12. It says, 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.
[00:01:44] This is what I call one of those gospel mountaintop verses because. Because if you notice, in this verse, he's encouraging us to look at both the person of Christ and the work of Christ.
[00:01:59] So he's the founder and perfecter of our faith. That's his person, right? He's the God man sent from heaven, the fullness of God's deity, the fullness of God's love on display. He's the manifestation of God's glory, the exact imprint of, of his nature. In him all things hold together. He's the alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the chief executive officer of our faith.
[00:02:30] He's the eternal founder and perfecter. That's the person of Christ. And then you have the work of Christ, which this is him enduring the shame of the cross. This is him bearing the punishment of sin that you and I deserve and rising three days later, victorious over sin.
[00:02:49] And he's now at the right hand of the Father, ruling and reigning, and he lives to make intercession for his people. It's an amazing text, and it's one of my favorite verses in all the Bible because I usually just stop reading it there when I read Hebrews 12. I'm just good after verses one and two, like, I'm ready to go home. And we could do that if we wanted to. I could just pray and we could just be dismissed after reading that text, right? Like, you feel pretty good.
[00:03:21] But no, no. The author of Hebrews doesn't stop there. He has more to say. Because the reality is that the Christian life is not meant to be lived from spiritual mountaintop to spiritual mountaintop.
[00:03:39] In fact, that's how I lived a lot of my life growing up. So a little bit of background about myself. I was raised in a Southern Baptist church in Al, Texas, not too far from here.
[00:03:55] And as I look back and reflect on the way the dynamic of my relationship with the Lord, it was usually always lived in between summer camps.
[00:04:11] So for those of you who were raised in the church, summer camp was where you went to kind of like get a spiritual high.
[00:04:22] Okay, that's where you went to hear really good music and hear a really good guest speaker, and you played games and there were sports, and that was my experience.
[00:04:37] And so we went to, growing up, a place called Glorieta, New Mexico, and there was a retreat center there. And every year we did the centrifuge camps. And so this is the last year that I went as a youth student. So I'm a junior going into my senior year of high school, and it's the last night of camp. And for those of you who have been to a summer camp like this, the last night of camp is usually when the preacher gives his best sermon.
[00:05:16] And that's when all the students are emotionally and spiritually vulnerable and. And they make promises to God that they usually don't end up keeping. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Are any of y' all raised in. Okay, so a lot of us. So, you know, kind of the experience here. All right, so this is the last night of camp. And my youth pastor gathers the guys and the gals from our grade together in one room.
[00:05:48] And he says, hey, guys, it's really, really important that going into your senior year, all of you are united, that you're all good friends with one another, and that you're able to walk together as a united front. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna leave the room. This is my youth pastor talking. He says, I'm gonna leave the room. And he says, I'm just gonna see what the Lord does.
[00:06:16] And it's like, okay, so bear in mind, this is a bunch of 17 year olds, okay? We all just, like, heard the last sermon. We're all spiritually vulnerable. We're, like, on the verge of tears. We're, like, ready to cry, right? So he leaves the room, and one after another, we all just start Confessing our deepest, darkest sins to each other. Like, we're just unloading on one another.
[00:06:43] And I'm hearing things from girls that I probably shouldn't be hearing as a 17 year old. Like, things that they're struggling with and that they're hearing things from guys that they probably shouldn't be hearing, you know, like in a youth context.
[00:06:58] And there's just this massive amount of confession and there's crying, and at the end we all hug one another. And my youth pastor comes back in and he's like, so how'd it go? And then we're all like, we're united.
[00:07:13] Like, we love each other so much. We're ready for senior year. Like, we're just gonna. We're gonna follow Jesus. We're gonna be the best that we possibly can be. And we made all of these promises to one another. We were on the mountaintop.
[00:07:28] But then senior year happened and life happened.
[00:07:33] And those promises eventually turned into gossip, which turned into backstabbing, which turned into division.
[00:07:47] And people even using the information that was confessed against one another.
[00:07:53] It's a very sad thing.
[00:07:56] And the reason that I share that with you is that many of us are adults, so we don't go to summer camp anymore.
[00:08:06] But if we're honest, we live our Christian lives mostly. If we're just being real with each other, we tend to live our Christian lives from one Sunday to the next, right? Or from one community group to the next. Like, this is where we come in and this is where we do Christian things. This is where we kind of get saved all over again and we rededicate our lives again.
[00:08:35] And it's good that we come to this, it's good that we show up.
[00:08:39] But there's a problem, right? Because if we're honest, the rest of that time, the time in between the Sundays, the time in between the margins, is usually marked by numbness or doubt or struggles with sin.
[00:08:58] And there's just not that same amount of vibrancy that you get when you're in a Sunday service or when you're at community group. You don't feel as connected and close to the Lord.
[00:09:12] This is that mountaintop experience that I'm talking about. And so how do we combat this kind of cycle of the Christian life where we just knowingly or unknowingly stake our spiritual life on living between one mountaintop to the other, but in between, we just only have dryness?
[00:09:34] What does it look like to consider Jesus when we've perhaps grown weary or fainthearted, when we're off the mountaintop and even find ourselves descending into the valley.
[00:09:48] This is where our text today comes in to the picture. And it's why it's good that the author doesn't stop writing after verse two because he understands the nature of the race.
[00:10:02] Going at a full sprint between mile markers is not a recipe for finishing well, but neither is a slow, unengaged, shoulder slumped over kind of walk.
[00:10:17] In fact, living on either end of those spectrums will only lead to a shallow spiritual life, one marked by sin, one marked by weariness, and most tragically, one. One marked by a lack of depth in our relationship with Jesus.
[00:10:33] Because that's what we want. We want depth. We want something real. We don't just need a mountaintop shot in the arm every now and then. We need fellowship with God himself.
[00:10:47] So here's the main idea of our two verses today. Here's how we avoid living the Christian life from mountaintop to. To mountaintop. And this is simply building on what Pastor Brad preached last week. If verses 1 and 2 in Hebrews 12 are about endurance, the theme of verses 3 and 4, we can summarize it with the word resilience.
[00:11:10] Resilience.
[00:11:12] This is the main message that our text is conveying today. It's that the enduring Christian is the resilient Christian.
[00:11:21] The enduring Christian is the resilient Christian. What is resilience?
[00:11:30] This is the dictionary definition. It says resilience is the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties with regards to objects. Resilience is the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, like the stretchy elasticity of a rubber band or how bungee cords can secure something and absorb the shock of objects. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about a resilient faith that knows how to get stretched but then return back to its original form. Does that make sense?
[00:12:09] And so, following the flow of our text this morning, if you're new with us, we like to just extrapolate and explain verses of the Bible. That's exactly what we're gonna do. So following the flow of this text, what we're gonna see is that the faith of the resilient Christian is marked by three things.
[00:12:29] The resilient Christian considers Jesus intentionally.
[00:12:34] That's verse, the first part of verse three.
[00:12:37] The resilient Christian does not give up. That's the second part of verse three.
[00:12:43] And finally, the resilient Christian struggles against sin.
[00:12:49] The resilient Christian considers Jesus intentionally, doesn't give up, and struggles against sin. That's where we're going.
[00:12:59] So these are not mutually exclusive, this idea of endurance and resilience. In fact, they complement one another. That's why we say the enduring Christian is. Is the resilient Christian. Because if the Holy Spirit is going to equip us for endurance, he's also going to equip us to be resilient. Right?
[00:13:17] Philippians 1. He who started a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. He's going to see us through. But we need to build up this resilience in our faith. Okay, so let's look at point one. We're gonna dive into the text together. The resilient Christian considers Jesus intentionally. Look at ver. Verse 3.
[00:13:41] Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself. Stop there.
[00:13:48] We're gonna do a little bit of Bible study this morning. There's nothing wrong with doing a little Bible study in church, right? We can study the Bible here.
[00:13:55] So first, this verb consider in the Greek means consider exactly what you think it means. It means to ponder or to think it over. But here's what's actually cool about the verb here.
[00:14:13] The verb considered is in the aorist tense. Everybody say aorist, aorist tense. What that means is that it's presenting this verb as a completed action.
[00:14:26] A completed action. So the considering that the author is inviting us to do here is to be decisive.
[00:14:37] It carries with it this idea of deliverance. So, like, that's why I'm saying intentional. Like. Like intentionally consider.
[00:14:46] Intentionally consider Jesus. And we're gonna circle back to exactly how we do that later. But let's keep following the flow of thought in the text. Consider Jesus. How? In what way?
[00:14:58] Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself. This is kind of hard to translate from the Greek into the English to kind of make it makes sense in our heads. But what he's communicating is that we ought to consider Jesus specifically.
[00:15:17] How he experienced intense persecution, how he experienced hostility, and how he even experienced hypocritical behavior.
[00:15:29] That a hostility against himself, it implies, like gainsaying behavior from the Jews, from the Romans, even from his own, from. From Judas who betrayed him, and from Peter who denied him. We're to think about his hostility intentionally. Think about it this way.
[00:15:50] No one in all of human history has endured more hostility and more opposition than Jesus Christ. Right now. Why can we say that? I mean, after all, the passion of the Christ, that is his suffering from the garden until his death on the cross was only about 12 hours. How can we say he experienced the most hostility of any human being to ever lived?
[00:16:20] Well, it's not only because of what he experienced in his suffering. It's also about who he is.
[00:16:29] Jesus is the perfect, spotless Son of God.
[00:16:33] He fulfills the law completely, meaning he loved God and he loved neighbor more fully than any human ever has or ever will.
[00:16:44] So every decision that Jesus made was the right one.
[00:16:48] Every thought that he ever had was pure.
[00:16:51] Every word that he ever spoken was in line and in step with the will of the Father. So when we have a perfect, innocent, spotless lamb in Jesus Christ absorbing the sin of mankind on himself, what it shows is that he's blameless in every way.
[00:17:15] It's not just the pain and the suffering and the intensity of the hostility that he went through. It's the object of the one experiencing the pain and the hostility and the suffering. Because he's absolutely, perfectly spotless and blameless.
[00:17:34] So if you think about it like this, if I go and kick a rock, I'm not very guilty of anything, right? It's just a rock.
[00:17:45] I can kick a rock all day long. Our kids kick rocks, right? But if I go up to the president, and I kick the president, bad idea, right? You're fired. Like, it's over.
[00:18:02] Sorry.
[00:18:05] Not good.
[00:18:07] It's a bad idea. It's a bad idea to kick the president. And in the same way, if I go up to the perfect, spotless Son of God and I kick him, I'm infinitely guilty because of the object of the one I'm sinning against. And therefore all of us are infinitely guilty before a holy God. Unless we are made right by him. Unless we are justified by faith, we are guilty.
[00:18:39] Now let's go back to this verb, consider for a second.
[00:18:43] In addition to what we've already said about how it's decisive, it's deliberate, and the air is tense. The author is also using this as a verb of comparison.
[00:18:56] You're meant to compare yourself here. So the author is acknowledging the hostility.
[00:19:04] He's saying, look, Hebrews, the church, in Hebrews, you're enduring some persecution right now. And we know that they're enduring persecution because he says in Hebrews 10 that you joyfully accepted the plundering of property, since you yourselves knew that you had a better possession and an abiding one.
[00:19:23] But in light of the present suffering you're experiencing right now, Hebrews, compare what you're going through now to the experience of Jesus.
[00:19:33] So you think about what that means for us. The author of Hebrews is Probing us here a little bit.
[00:19:40] You think about your own life.
[00:19:42] Like, how is life going for you right now?
[00:19:46] Are you suffering? Are you walking through pain? Are you in the midst of loss? Do you feel stuck where you are?
[00:19:58] The verb of comparison is to say, consider Jesus. Consider the path that he walked. Ponder the hostility that he faced. Remember that Jesus was abandoned by his friends.
[00:20:11] Remember that he was betrayed by his own. Reflect on how he humbled himself on the cross, that he also felt forsaken by his Father. That's what we're to consider.
[00:20:25] The problem is that there are so many other things that we consider that are not Jesus.
[00:20:34] Like maybe you're in between jobs and you're considering a career change.
[00:20:41] Maybe your marriage or your relationship isn't going well and you're pondering that perhaps you're neglecting the people you care about most. You're not being considerate at all.
[00:20:55] There might be a tough choice you're considering, and it's weighing you down heavily. Or maybe you're dwelling on a past sin, a past scar, and you're considering going back to it. Whatever it is that you find yourself considering in this moment, ask yourself, are you considering Jesus by way of comparison?
[00:21:15] Are you considering him intentionally?
[00:21:19] Put it this way, have you brought Jesus into the situation that you're experiencing?
[00:21:27] Or is he just an afterthought after you've exhausted all other options?
[00:21:34] Or take it a step further, and I'm just as guilty of this.
[00:21:37] It's not just that we fail to bring him into the nexus of our decision making of our lives. It's that we're not seeking him properly.
[00:21:49] We, we tend to do the inverse of Matthew 6, you know, that seek first the kingdom of God and the rest of these things will be added to you.
[00:21:58] Usually it's we're seeking first the kingdom of self, and then hopefully Jesus will come on board and be added to our plans at the end.
[00:22:09] Matt Chandler puts it this way. He says, God isn't asking to be your number one priority. He's asking to be the paper that every priority is written on.
[00:22:22] The thing is, if the Lord Jesus is not the cornerstone of our lives, all we're doing is building a house on sand, right?
[00:22:33] It's not on solid rock because it's based on us. We're building a kingdom that is guaranteed to be shaken.
[00:22:43] We're not going to be resilient disciples if we don't learn to intentionally consider the person of Jesus in both times of joy and times of pain.
[00:22:55] So that's the Application point here.
[00:22:58] Ponder Christ.
[00:23:00] Ponder the good news of the Gospel. Consider Jesus. Consider his loveliness.
[00:23:08] Consider his death. Consider his resurrection. Consider that there's everlasting hope for you, that if Jesus Christ got up and rose from the dead, that everything is going to be okay like truly it is.
[00:23:24] It may not feel like it right now, but he's alive and he's ruling and reigning. He's breathing.
[00:23:30] He lives to make intercession for you. He prays for you.
[00:23:36] He cares about you.
[00:23:39] He likes you.
[00:23:42] That's our God. That's our Jesus.
[00:23:46] And so when we do this, when we consider him, it doesn't mean that our trials and our conflicts and our storms will cease when we place him at the center of our lives.
[00:23:56] But what will happen is that we're going to have clarity, we're going to have peace, and we're going to have the resilience to move forward, to be stretched when times get tough so that we can come back to Him. So that's the first point. Consider the person of Jesus intentionally. Number two, the resilient Christian does not give up. This is the second half of verse three. If you look at your Bibles, so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted. So that you may not grow weary or faint hearted.
[00:24:33] So that is the conjunction grammar school. This is the connecting clause.
[00:24:39] So why do we consider the person of Jesus who has endured such hostility?
[00:24:44] So that you may not grow weary or faint hearted. It can also be paraphrased, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.
[00:24:55] Resilience, friends, is not forged out of victory. It's forged out of adversity, even defeat.
[00:25:04] Which means that if we're going to be a resilient people, a people who don't give up, we have to change our perspective on suffering when suffering hits us.
[00:25:16] Suffering is not random.
[00:25:19] It's not accidental, nor is it surprising. To a sovereign God.
[00:25:25] There's no condition that you and I will find ourselves in that God has not already ordained.
[00:25:31] And that's good news, because it means that suffering isn't meant to be wasted.
[00:25:38] It has a purpose.
[00:25:40] Like listen to Romans 5, 3. It says not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character. And character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Amen.
[00:26:05] Amen. So there's a direction to our suffering, because suffering produces these virtues within us that make us resilient and it transforms our minds because God's love has been poured into our hearts both through and in the suffering itself.
[00:26:25] That's the hope of suffering.
[00:26:28] But listen, if you're here, and maybe you identify with the second half of verse three, that is, you're doubting, you're weary, you're discouraged, you, you find yourself in a place of faint heartedness. Listen, that doesn't mean that you're failing. It simply means that you're normal.
[00:26:52] Because so was the church in Hebrews 2,000 years ago.
[00:26:58] If they weren't weary or fainthearted, why would he write it?
[00:27:03] Why would he say these specific words? He could have said, consider him who endured such hostility against himself so that you won't grow too puffed up or too arrogant.
[00:27:15] He could have said, so that you won't grow too rich or too prosperous or too comfortable or too lazy. But instead he says, so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted.
[00:27:33] So what does this look like? How do we prevent ourselves from not losing heart or growing weary? How do we remain in the faith and not give up? I want to just give you three practical principles for you.
[00:27:50] First one is lean on friendship.
[00:27:54] Lean on friendship and community.
[00:27:57] Friends.
[00:27:59] We were talking about this a couple nights ago with Brad and some other guys. Friends are more important now at this moment in our culture than ever.
[00:28:11] It's harder as we get older to make lasting and true genuine friendships, right?
[00:28:19] But the truth is, as Christians, we need that.
[00:28:22] Like, we don't just need buddies or gal pals, you know, we need real friends who will call us in and call us out, call us into the Lord and call us out in our foolishness, in our sin. We need people like that in our lives.
[00:28:43] And I know for some of us this might be difficult, but let me encourage you, a great place to start is your community group.
[00:28:52] Tell them what you're going through.
[00:28:56] Tell them what's going on in your life. Lean on the safety of a few brothers or sisters who will welcome you in your weakness.
[00:29:05] We want to be a gospel culture here. You know what we mean when we say that? Like a place of honesty, a place of grace and authenticity where there's freedom to confess and fail. Because you're going to be met by brothers and sisters that say, brother, sister, that's sin. Let's go to Jesus together.
[00:29:30] Let's just, let's just go to the mat together.
[00:29:33] That's what we need. We need friendship. That's number one. Number two, fight to be present.
[00:29:43] Fight to be present.
[00:29:45] I'm not talking about merely just showing up to places like showing up to church on a Sunday or showing up to your group or family functions or anything like that. Showing up is certainly part of it.
[00:29:58] Certainly is.
[00:29:59] But you and I, let's just be honest, we know how to be in the right places and still in our hearts. Be a thousand miles away. Right?
[00:30:09] Like I can do that.
[00:30:12] I have done that even here in ministry on Sundays where I'm here, but I'm not really here. You know what I mean?
[00:30:20] My heart's not here.
[00:30:23] Jim Elliot, the famous missionary and martyr, he puts it best. I just love this quote. He says, wherever you are, be all there.
[00:30:32] Live to the hilt. Every situation you believe to be the will of God.
[00:30:38] So if you're at work, be there.
[00:30:41] If you're at home, be all the way there. If you're at church, be all the way here.
[00:30:48] We, as a church, we're better when you're present, not just physically, but when your soul is actually here and ready to engage and ready to pray and ready to seek the face of the Lord and to just enjoy God's presence for an hour or so.
[00:31:09] And by the way, that doesn't mean that we put on a happy face and do this kind of fake it till you make it happy clappy Sunday thing. That's not presence.
[00:31:20] Because true presence with true presence, there's an honesty to it.
[00:31:25] So when you come in, come in as you actually are.
[00:31:28] If you're joyful, be joyful. If you're sorrowful, be sorrowful.
[00:31:34] If you're sinful, bring your sin, Bring however you're coming in, be all the way there.
[00:31:41] And God will honor that.
[00:31:44] Because God doesn't like a people who honors him with their lips, but their hearts are far from him.
[00:31:52] He wants the real you.
[00:31:57] So that's number two, fight to be present. And number three, hold fast to Jesus.
[00:32:03] Hold fast to Jesus. The thing is, is that the growing weary and the faint heartedness, it's simply going to happen to us. It's going to happen to all of us, if it hasn't already.
[00:32:15] Our mountaintop experiences are too far between one another. We need a more solid foundation than just going from spiritual high to spiritual high. We need the solid rock of Jesus Christ because despair will pull you in like a magnet and weariness will flood the vessel of your soul.
[00:32:37] We're all going to face this.
[00:32:40] Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of all time in the 1800s, was a famous pastor who dealt with depression and chronic illness.
[00:32:52] This is how he illustrated holding fast to Jesus.
[00:32:55] He said, I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of ages.
[00:33:03] I've learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of Ages. What he's saying there is. He's saying that I've been so tossed and turned by the waves of life that now I just embrace them because I know they're going to drive me deeper and deeper into the person of Jesus.
[00:33:22] So, like, what waves right now are hard for you to embrace, may I encourage you to let them toss you not against the rocks of false idols, but against the solid rock of the Savior.
[00:33:40] So we lean on friendship. We fight to be present. We hold fast to Jesus.
[00:33:45] It's not a formula. It's just simple tools and principles that you bring to the right job. A good craftsman selects the right tools to help him diagnose and repair the issue.
[00:33:58] So some of us, right now, you need friendship.
[00:34:02] Some of us need to fight to be present.
[00:34:05] And some of us, in our weariness and our discouragement, need to hold fast to Jesus, need to be flung to the Savior, to the rock of Jesus Christ.
[00:34:18] But all of these are given us from the Lord that we might not give up.
[00:34:27] The resilient Christian does not give up.
[00:34:30] Number three. This is the last point. This is where we'll close. The resilient Christian struggles against sin. Look down at verse four.
[00:34:39] In your struggle against sin, you have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
[00:34:45] This is another one of those places. I talk about this a lot, but the Bible is the most relatable to the human experience and particularly the Christian life. This is a very relatable verse because the reality is that all Christians are going to struggle.
[00:35:05] We're all going to battle with sin. We're all going to wage war with the flesh. There is genuine, real struggle in the Christian life. But look at the text closely.
[00:35:18] Notice the author chooses his words very carefully. He doesn't say, in your struggle with sin. He says, in your struggle against sin. And I want to kind of draw out a distinction.
[00:35:34] When we struggle with sin, we're already entangled in it.
[00:35:40] We're caught in its web, and the flesh devours us like a spider. We're passive with our sin. We know it's wrong. But rather than giving up, like in verse three, we give in to our passions.
[00:35:56] When we struggle with sin, we're struggling from inside the sin, so we're coddling it. We know that we're not supposed to do it, but we just kind of Let it take up residence in the living room of our hearts that's struggling with sin. Now this is important.
[00:36:14] Can the Christian struggle with sin?
[00:36:19] Yes.
[00:36:21] Yes. Paul says, I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.
[00:36:27] Paul has already committed the sin. He's been caught.
[00:36:31] He struggled and he failed. That's why he says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. That's the cry of someone who has struggled with his sin and failed.
[00:36:44] So what's the flip side?
[00:36:46] The flip side, and this is what our text is talking about, is this struggling against sin.
[00:36:52] And this is where we build resilience.
[00:36:55] Because when we struggle against our sin and not with our sin, there's an active resistance, there's a waging of war on our part. We're using the armor of God. We're using the weapons of warfare that he's given to the Christian to actively fight against our own sin. We're not just passively allowing sin to happen to us. That's struggling with sin instead. No, when we struggle against sin, we're doing the hard work of crucifying the flesh and putting off the old self and putting on the new. Am I making sense? This makes sense.
[00:37:32] And so here's the thing, because this is a battle, we can fight against our sin and still end up sinning.
[00:37:40] But the difference is that when we struggle against our sin, we're using grace, driven effort and the power of the spirit against our sin, not our own flesh. Oftentimes. And I do this, if I'm struggling with sin, I'm doing it in the power of my own flesh. I'm using the flesh to fight the flesh.
[00:38:00] That's like trying to fight a fire by pouring gasoline on it. It's not going to work.
[00:38:06] We need living water. We need the Spirit of God to fight our flesh.
[00:38:13] And lastly, this is the great news of this text, especially if you're competitive like me, struggling against sin means that we can win, we can overcome.
[00:38:29] We don't win when we struggle with sin, but when we struggle against sin, we can line up, run it over, score, and spike the ball on its head in the end zone.
[00:38:42] So when we struggle rightly, that is struggling against sin by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit, we can put it to and gain victory over it.
[00:38:52] Like, don't you want that?
[00:38:55] Don't you want victory over that besetting sin that keeps attacking your soul?
[00:39:02] So instead of us settling as Christians to struggle with sin, why don't we fight against it.
[00:39:10] Why don't we go on offense for a change?
[00:39:13] We don't let it fester. We do battle.
[00:39:17] So if it's lust, what does the Bible say? It says, flee from it. Don't face it head on. Flee from it. If it's anger, we humble ourselves. If it's gossip, we hold our tongues.
[00:39:29] We go on the offensive. We think ahead, we simulate in our minds. We play out how this is gonna be.
[00:39:36] We look ahead and say, is this thing that I'm about to say or do, is it going to lead to my destruction? Is it going to lead to my sinning against the Lord?
[00:39:49] But here's the best part.
[00:39:51] He says, in your struggle against sin, you have not resisted yet to the point of shedding your own blood.
[00:39:59] The author, he's exhorting his audience. He's basically saying, things are bad for you right now, but they could be much worse.
[00:40:06] Because likely nobody in this church has been martyred for their faith yet.
[00:40:11] Nobody's been killed yet.
[00:40:13] But just the mention of it is ominous because it's very likely that years after this letter circulated that they were persecuted and some of them were put to death.
[00:40:25] But once again, there's even more gospel richness here because by way of allusion, this time, the author of Hebrews is inviting the church to compare their struggle against sin with who?
[00:40:40] Jesus. It's Sunday. It's Jesus. He's the answer to everything.
[00:40:46] It's Jesus who struggled in the garden. Now, he wasn't struggling with a sinful flesh like ours, but he was agonizing over the death that he was about to die over the cup that he was about to drink.
[00:41:01] He was in such distress, such torment over the weight that he was about to bear, that he began to shedding his blood before anybody laid a hand on him.
[00:41:15] Luke says that he began to sweat drops of blood and he cries out to the Father, lord, let this cup pass from me.
[00:41:28] Nobody has struggled like Jesus did.
[00:41:32] And it's why I believe the Gospel is so crucial to keep central in our minds. When we consider our struggle against s.
[00:41:41] When we consider this war that we're in, we need to put Christ at the head of it.
[00:41:48] Because Jesus is the ultimate model of resilience and resistance against the world, the flesh and the devil like. The beautiful thing is that he won the war.
[00:42:01] When Jesus comes to the end of his struggle, what does he say?
[00:42:05] Not my will, Father, but your will be done.
[00:42:09] That's the beginning of the victory of the cross right there.
[00:42:14] Jesus has won in that moment, Adam and Eve, when they were in their garden, they gave in to their temptation.
[00:42:23] But Jesus resists and overcomes in his garden.
[00:42:29] We chose to eat the fruit of disobedience in our garden.
[00:42:33] But Jesus in His guardian, he drinks the cup in obedience.
[00:42:39] We died when we chose sin in our garden. Jesus lived when he chose the Father's will and bore the penalty of sin and rose again triumphant over it.
[00:42:53] Friends, we're not going to be perfectly resilient because we haven't resisted to the point of shedding our own blood.
[00:43:02] The good news is that Jesus shed His blood on our behalf. His blood for all time covers us completely.
[00:43:13] So yes, the resilient Christian struggles against sin, but we're only going to struggle healthily when we look to the one who overcame perfectly.
[00:43:24] The beauty of the Gospel is that God moves towards us.
[00:43:29] He sends His Son to take our place and rises again victoriously. And if we repent and believe and trust in him, whether it's for the first time today or it's for the thousandth time, we will overcome too.
[00:43:46] The Christian life is so much more than living between the spiritual and mountaintops.
[00:43:52] It is a day by day race that requires both endurance and resilience.
[00:44:01] The resilient Christian considers Jesus intentionally, does not give up and struggles against sin.
[00:44:10] And most importantly, the resilient Christian banks his soul on the person and work of Jesus Christ, his righteousness, his grace, his faithfulness, his victory, not our own.
[00:44:27] Then, and only then, friends, will we learn that resilience comes from his strength and not our own.
[00:44:37] Because the Gospel and the example of Christ cultivates this resilience in our hearts. Amen. Amen. Let's pray.
