Hebrews Lesson 198 May 20, 2010
NKJ Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You!
Open your Bibles to Hebrews 11. Last time we came to the last two verses in Hebrew 11, the conclusion to this wonderful chapter; but it really is only the conclusion to the argument that he has set forth (a summary of it let's say) because the real conclusion comes in the punch of the first three verses of the next section. Unfortunately whoever put the chapter divisions into the book the Hebrews put a chapter division here, and it really should not come for some time because the last verse just flows right into the first verse. It is a strong conclusion based on everything that is stated in chapter 11.
So as we come to this sort of summary in verse 39, let me just read that for you. Then we'll begin to analyze it just a little bit.
NKJ Hebrews 11:39 And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise,
NKJ Hebrews 11:40 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.
Now that's the New King James translation that we have up there. It is not really the best, especially in terms of a modern language, modern vocabulary. There are a couple of things in there that could be handled a little bit better. So let's start off at the very beginning. We have a phrase.
NKJ Hebrews 11:39 And all these,
…which summarizes what we've been studying since verse 1. If you take a look at the beginning of the chapter we have a statement which introduces the basic topic of chapter 11 and that is faith.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
NKJ Hebrews 11:2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
Now we'll come back to this in just a minute; but the thing you need to keep in mind as we start to orient to verses 39 and 40 is that the elders that are referred to in verse 2 are all of these heroes of the faith that are mentioned in the rest of chapter 11 starting with Abel then Enoch then Noah then Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Joshua. Then we get down into the judges: Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jephthah, and David and Samuel. All of those he includes as the elders. So he's talking specifically about the Old Testament men who were aside from the initial ones that preceded the flood, but from Abraham on who are the spiritual fathers of Israel. These are the great leaders of Israel in the Old Testament.
Now a couple things I want to remind you of because we have to hold this in mind as we look at these next 5 verses. It is very important to remember this. First of all, don't be misled as it's commonly taught to think of these as great mature believers. I think that I've done a fairly good job over the last of several weeks of pointing out that although some of them were mature believers such as Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Samuel and David, there were also others that were listed here that were not quite as mature. Some of them were in fact just barely operating on any clear doctrine or teaching from Scripture, such as some of the judges that we have covered here – Samson, Jephthah, Barak, and Gideon especially – who were not great examples of mature believers.
They were though great examples of someone who had been commissioned by God to a particular task and at some particular moment they really trusted God in terms of the promise He made; and for that that they are mentioned in this chapter. Especially when we look at Samuel and to a large degree Gideon as well, we see when we look at how they are presented in the book of Judges that these are not sinless individuals.
That is one of the great evidences of the uniqueness of the Bible compared to other religious books. Many other religious books when they talk about the founders of their religions, these men are painted (written) with rose-colored glasses. Their faults and their flaws are not evident. Yet when you go through the Scripture we studied Noah how he was great in trusting God at time of the flood. But then the next picture we see of him after the flood he is drunk and passed out in his tent.
Then we come to Abraham, and we see how he fails to trust God. He takes Sarah's advice and has relations with the handmaid of Sara so that he can fulfill God's promise on his own. That began the whole problem between the Arabs and Jews.
You come to others such as Moses; and he had his failures. You come to Joshua; and not too many failures are mentioned there. But then you come to men like Gideon. As soon as Gideon is commissioned by God he begins to try to get out of it by putting out the fleece. God just keeps answering his impossible requests. So that confirms the initial commission to deliver the Israelites from the Midianites. Then Gideon trusts God that God has constantly coddle him by giving him these reaffirmations of the commission so that Gideon will finely muster up enough confidence (and that's a key word for understanding faith – enough confidence) in God's promise to actually engage the Midianites in battle and win. But then the next picture we see of Gideon is that he puts on this great show of humility.
The people come to him they want to make him king.
Gideon with his great show of humility says, "No, I don't want to be king. That's not what God called me to be."
Everybody thinks, "Oh isn't he wonderful."
Then we find out that he has a son and he names his son Abimelech. Abimelech in the Hebrew means, "my father is king." Then he sets up an ephod, which was a priestly garment; and he begins to worship that and prays to that and leads the Israelites (all the nation of Israel) into idolatry, worshipping and praying at this ephod.
Then Jephthah comes along and Jephthah who's basically grown up outside of the community of Israel. Jephthah is a son of a prostitute but not of a marriage. He grows up, and he gets in with the brigands and the bandits and the terrorists of that day. The Ammonites are oppressing the Transjordan area. So God brings in Jephthah to deliver them. But we never see anything real positive about Jephthah's spiritual life. He's not even as focused on God at any point as Gideon was. He understands that God wants him to defeat the Ammonites, but then he decides to operate just like every other pagan and he's going to make a bargain with God. We think well when he makes a bargain with God. He tells God that if God would give him a victory he'd sacrifice the first thing that came out of the house to greet him when he came home.
We think well that can't be a human sacrifice; but it was. That's how it has to be understood if you're consistent with the text at all. His daughter comes out to greet him. We think in our culture that maybe a pet would come out, but they didn't have pets in their culture like we do. So he probably understood that it would be a human being that came out, and that was part of the paganism of that day, and just like we have lots of pew sitting Christians today who don't act any differently from their pagan counterparts at work on Monday and they think the same way, they act the same way and they're constantly trying to make a bargain with God one way or the other. That is just as pagan as what Jephthah did. It is just that it doesn't go quite to the extreme of a human sacrifice. But human sacrifice was clearly operational among the Moabites and among the Ammonites and among some of the Canaanites groups at Jephthah's time. He is just reflecting the culture of his time.
Samson doesn't do anything right until he comes to the end of his life. He may have done other right things that we're not told about in the book of Judges but as far as what the book of Judges says all he was was a womanizer who, every chance he got, broke the Nazirite vow and he is touching dead carcasses and he wants to marry a Canaanite which was outside Israel in violation of Deuteronomy.
What we see is all of these different men have major flaws, some more than others. But they're all sinners, because that is what the Bible teaches: that we are all sinners. Now keep that thought in mind. That is crucial if we're going to properly understand and interpret the first two verses of chapter 12.
So all this relates to all of these that have been mentioned from the beginning of Hebrews 11 down through the end. Then the text goes on to say:
NKJ Hebrews 11:39 And all these,
The reason I've highlighted the last phrase is because if you look at the structure of the Greek the main cause - the subject is "all of these" and the main verb is to not receive. What he is saying is all of these did not receive. We would say in smoother in English, none of these received the promise. And that's the point that he's making.
Now remember the writer of Hebrews is talking to a group of primarily ex-Jewish priests. They had been operating in temple service. That's why he's spent so much time alluding to Leviticus and other passages in the Old Testament: the Tabernacle, the sacrifices and offerings and all of that. It is very clear that he is speaking to an audience that is deeply, intimately familiar with all of the ritual and regulations in the Mosaic Law. These were Jewish Levites that had trusted in Christ as Savior. Now we know that there were thousands upon thousands of Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah.
You go through Acts and Peter's message on the Day of Pentecost which actually was observed Tuesday night. I mentioned that at dusk on Tuesday night through dusk Wednesday night was the Feast of Weeks – Shavuot. I didn't mention it the other night, but the way modern Jews celebrate Shavuot is to read the Torah because they interpret the feast a little differently than in the original passage in Leviticus 15. They observe it by reading the Torah and eating dairy. I just thought that was great: the Bible class and ice cream. We need to remember that next year.
But the Day of Pentecost Peter preached there on the steps of the Temple and over five thousand believed. Then the next day he preaches again in Acts 3 and over 4,000 men – that's not counting the families and wives and children – men were saved. So you probably have somewhere in the first six to eight months after Christ rose from the dead and ascended; you probably have somewhere between fifteen to thirty thousand Jews trust Jesus as the Messiah. Until you get to Acts 7 with the stoning of Stephen, the church is primarily Jewish. It's almost 100% Jewish. It's not until Paul was saved in Acts 8, and then you begin to have Peter go to the Gentiles to Cornelius in Acts 10 that the church begins to break out of being a primarily Jewish group of believers.
So by the time the time Hebrews is written it's only thirty years later so you still have quite a large number of Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah in Israel. They have believed Jesus is the Messiah; but they're coming under persecution (rejection, opposition) from other Jews. Now this is intensifying more and more. It is during the period of the early 60's. The Jewish rebellion against Rome broke out about 67.
It was at that time that the Jewish culture really fragmented into a number of different groups. The arrogance and hostility from one group to another became almost tangible. One of the reasons that led to their inability to resist and win against the Romans was because they were so fragmented. You had the Zealots. You had the priests. You had those who wanted to go along with all the Romans. Earlier that group had been called the Herodians. So you had all of these different groups that were vying for power; and they couldn't unite against a common enemy. In the midst of that, you would clearly see a rise of Jewish nationalism, pride in their Mosaic roots from the Pharisees especially, against any who had become a Christian, anyone who had become a believer in Jesus as a Messiah.
There is this persecution, rejection, opposition that they're experiencing. And what do they want to do? They want to fold up their tents and go back into Judaism. So the writer of Hebrews is challenging them on that and encouraging them not to give up, not to wimp out in the midst of opposition, not to give into self-pity because they have lost friends or they've lost family or they've become outcasts or whatever; but to keep focused on the future reward, the heavenly destiny.
So he has marshaled all of this evidence going through Hebrews 11 because these Old Testament heroes were focused on a promise that they never saw fulfilled. That doesn't mean that God broke His promise (It hasn't been fulfilled to this day), but that that promise will be fulfilled in the future. The point that he is making in his summary in verse 39 is that all of these in the past, or as I would rather translate this, "none of these received the promise," – not one of them. But that didn't shake their faith. They didn't give up. They kept focused. They kept going forward.
The writer of Hebrews then structures this in the intervening clause. Remember the main idea is "none of these received the promise." Then he has this statement there. He uses a participle in the Greek, just one word. It is an adverbial participle that should be translated as a concessive. We'll pull that together when I give an expanded translation at the end, but you would translate something like this: "none of these received the promise though" (See there's your concessive idea, though or although) "they obtained a good testimony."
Now what does that mean that "they obtained a good testimony?" This word that is translated here is the root verb martureo, which is where we get our English word martyr. A martyr was someone who gave to a witness or a testimony to their belief, and then it cost them their life. But the focus of the word martyr was on their evidence (their testimony) rather than the giving of their life. That is the secondary idea that came in and then is the dominant idea when word came over into English. Now when you trace the meaning of this word in history it has the root idea of giving a witness or providing a witness in a legal context. Somebody is giving evidence of something they have seen. They are confirming something that is true or they're providing evidence or proof that something is true. So it has something do with confirmation of something as true. That's the main idea here.
Now if you go back to Plato, Plato used the word in referring to the victor's crown in the Olympic Games. Now think about that as part of this passage because if you pay attention to where we're going in 12:2 it's talking about running the race with endurance. So here you have verse 39. It's not that separate from 12:1, that they obtained a good the testimony. And Plato uses it to refer to the victors crown as evidence of their success, evidence of their dedication, evidence of their discipline, evidence of all of their hard work that culminated in winning the race.
That is a key idea when we get into the next section. So it ought to tell us something about the whole idea of awards and rewards that we've talked about previously. The key idea is a witness or providing evidence or proof of something. The word is used in the Old Testament over 130 times. In many cases it refers to the meeting of God between God and the nation Israel as the people who are in covenant relationship with God. They would meet at the Tent of Meeting, which is also called The Ark of the Testimony or the Tent of the Testimony. This too was a place where the nation would give witnesses or evidence of the grace of God and the goodness of God.
Also we find that there's also the use of this word martureo in the Septuagint that indicates the commemorative function of a monument. So it has something to do with a memorial to someone, to their life as a testimony. All of that forms the background to this particular word. It is used a number of times in Hebrews emphasizing the fact that a person's life is a witness or evidence to the grace of God within the broader scope of the angelic conflict.
When we look at this phrase we see that we'll translate this "none of these received the promise although they obtained a confirmation of their faith." That is the idea there although it's written through faith. Through faith there is a different phrase than what we've seen at the beginning of all of these verses. It is not an en plus the dative anymore, but it has the same meaning. It is dia plus the genitive indicating means so that the means by which they demonstrated their faith; demonstrated their conviction of the promise was through faith and their dependence upon God in crucial situations.
Now this takes us back again to those first two verses. We read in those first two verses that:
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
When I taught on this passage I pointed out that this is a parallelism. But it's not a definition. This is not a strict definition of faith, but it is a description of what faith does. Faith is to trust or believe something and that something when we express it verbally is always described as a proposition. We believe something that can be expressed in a declarative sentence or as a proposition that can either be validated or invalidated. That's the technical meaning of a proposition. It's not a question. It's not imperative. It is a statement of fact. It's either going to be true or not. We either believe it or we don't believe it.
Now "our faith" in that first statement there, the faith there as the substance of things hoped for, the word that is used there in the Greek, hupostasis, is a word that indicates confidence or conviction. The fact that I believe something and act upon it, that in and of itself is a conviction in the present time of something that is hoped for in the future. So the way you can understand our future focus (that we understand where we're headed, what the goal is) is by looking at the present tense faith.
Take this and put in the context of an athlete. You're a runner. You're a football player. You're a hockey player. You're a basketball player. Whatever it may be, you have to train and you have to train. You have to discipline yourself. You have to work out. You have to really get a grip on where you're headed, what the ultimate goal is because it's not something you're going to see and quantify and feel and experience today. You may not see it for several years.
Think about an Olympic athlete. Of course today there are many, many other competitions that an Olympic athlete is involved in and is engaged in prior to the Olympics. So they're constantly going to world competition. But they train and they train and they train. But they always have to keep their focus on the end result of winning, on the end result of having victory in the competition. That is what keeps them going when they have to get up in the morning and they have a cold or they have to get up in the morning and it's cold outside. There are all kinds of reasons to stay in a warm bed rather than get up and go run or to go work out whatever it may be to stay in shape to keep the focus on the goal. The fact that they are focusing right now, real time and day to day and focusing, planning self disciplined being able to put aside the things that are distractions and focus on only those things that will lead them to victory is evidence, or as the writer is saying here it shows their conviction of things hoped for. So an athlete hopes for that gold medal at the Olympics and his present time, dedication and discipline stand as physical evidence of his future hope. The parallelism, the writer says is evidence of things not seen.
He uses a different word. In the Greek he uses the word elegchos, which is also a courtroom term that indicates presenting evidence that something is true. It is a very close idea to being a witness because evidence that is presented in the courtroom is a witness or a testimony against a person or in favor of a person depending on how it is used.
So faith is the conviction of things hoped for. That present tense faith is something that you can see, understand in a person's life that affects the decisions they make today in light of eternity, in light of the future. It is also the evidence or the proof of things that are not seen.
Now the promise that God gave to Adam and Eve in the garden when He addressed the serpent (He addressed the serpent after the serpent tempted Eve. She ate the fruit. Adam then ate the fruit): He said, "Your seed will bite the heel of her seed; but her seed will stomp on your head," - stomping on the head indicating a fatal wound.
That is the first indication that God is going to solve the problem created by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 through the seed of the woman. We've traced that through the Bible many times through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, all the way down to the virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son. Isaiah 7:14, all the way up to the birth of Jesus. They never saw that promise though. It was always future, but they never gave up. The promise was also contained as specifics of the land promised later on from Abraham on in relationship to Israel and the descendents of Abraham. They never saw the fulfillment of that promise, but the faith that they had was the evidence of that future promise.
Now in verse 2 the writer states that by it (that is the faith) the elders did what? They obtained or they received a good testimony - same word that we have here in Hebrews 11:38. It's focusing on the fact that the elders then obtained a good confirmation. Their faith was a confirmation and present evidence of the reality of what they believed.
We learn a couple things about faith. First of all, that faith is a present certainty based on the conviction of a future expectation. We know this is going to happen in the future. We may not know how or exactly when, but we are convinced it is true because of the One who makes the promise, because God is a trustworthy God. He is a true God. He is a faithful God. He's not going to lie. When He says something's going to happen a certain way, it's going to happen that way. We have seen many times historically where the things that the prophets said would happen, happened exactly that way. In fact God was so concerned about documenting and protecting His integrity that the test for a prophet was 100% accuracy. If a prophet missed in even the slightest way on his prophecy, the penalty was death. And it wasn't because God was a mean and harsh God; but God can't have people running around representing Him and saying that God said "this" when God didn't say that. So God had to protect "His brand", so to speak, in modern business parlance. He had to make sure that nobody was going to tarnish His reputation by making errors in predicting the future. So faith is a present evidence of a future expectation. It's a confident assurance of a future reality.
The second thing we see in summary is faith puts its confidence always in the revelation or the witness or the authority of God. These words are used interchangeably so that the revelation of God in the Scripture is also a witness or testimony to His character, to who He is and to His authority. In summary we can say that basically faith gives us a certainty and surety of the future fulfillment of God's promise. It is sure and it is certain.
That comes because we know. It is not faith in a vacuum. It is not faith in faith. It is looking at the Word of God and seeing that there is evidence after evidence after evidence that the Bible predicts things that come to pass exactly as they said they would historically that even though in the Bible there are 66 different books written by over 40 different men from many different walks of life, from Egypt to Persia to Greece, to Turkey, Israel; all of these different individuals who wrote these book of the Bible agreed on every different subject that they that they touched on. And they touched on some the most controversial subjects ever known to man. They talk about everything from law to politics, economics. All of these other things are covered somewhere in the Scripture, and yet they don't disagree. There is perfect and complete harmony because behind those 40 plus men who wrote the Scripture is God who is guaranteeing that what they wrote was absolutely without error and was to be preserved for all of the ages. So we can have confidence in that.
Now let's look at an expanded translation of verse 39.
And none of these who trusted God received the promise yet
I didn't point this out, but one of the problems in the way that it is stated in most translations (that they did not receive the promise) almost has the sense of a perfect tense verb that they won't receive the promise. They didn't yet receive the promise. It's an aorist tense. It's not a perfect tense. It states that historically they never saw the fulfillment of promise, but it's not to be taken as having ongoing future consequences which is what you would have in a perfect tense verb. So it should be translated to catch that nuance - it should be translated:
None of these who trusted God received the promise yet even though what they believed was confirmed by their actions.
When they trusted God, God gave them victory. It is not just that because they believed it and they acted a certain way. It is that when they believed God and trusted Him, God gave them victory over their enemies in a number of those different examples, or God fulfilled a promise that was true for that time; but that was only a sign of the future fulfillment of the promise to come.
Verse 40 in your English text starts off as if it's a second independent clause. Tonight grammar is important, because grammar is what helps us to understand the flow of the writers thought, and when they were writing on their scrolls in the ancient world they didn't have boldface type and italics. They couldn't change the fonts and font sizes and underline things and all those things we do today to try to draw people's attention to something. They didn't even have highlighters. They used grammar to do it. What is interesting in this without getting too technical is that when I first looked at this in the Greek it starts off with a genitive phrase that you would think should be translated "of God." Now a genitive doesn't express the subject of the clause. It's a nominative case that expresses the subject of a clause.
As soon as I saw it, I went, "That's really odd."
It immediately captured my attention. That's because you have this funny little thing that happens in Greek that's called a genitive absolute where you have a genitive clause, a genitive phrase "of God" associated with a participle that's in the genitive that is used by the writer in order to emphasize or highlight that particular clause. It's not related to anything else in the sentence. So it stands apart as a nominative clause; and that's how it should be translated. That is why your English Bible translates it this way.
God having provided something better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us.
This emphasizes the fact that God is doing something here that is providing for the future. So when it says "God having provided something better," the "having provided something better" is another participle.
You have to understand a little bit about grammar. A participle is a verbal adjective. That means that sometimes it acts like a verb and sometimes it acts like an adjective and sometimes a noun. When it acts like a verb, it modifies a verb. It's adverbial. Now what happens in a good translation is that the translator is not going to define the participle for us.
Why didn't he do that? Well because as Bob Thomas pointed out (and I think he's right) - Bob Thomas spoke last year at the pastors' conference, has been a professor of hermeneutics (Bible study translation) at Masters Seminary out in California for many, many years. He's in his early 80's now. He made the point when I first read I thought, "Well, that's unusual." But I think he's right. A translation is put this way so that many different people are going to you this translation. So there's a certain level of ambiguity when you get into looking at a participle like this. He said a basic principle for translation of versions like this is to leave the ambiguity there at the same level it is in the Greek. But see a Greek speaker would immediately understand the nuance of the ambiguity just like you do when certain things are ambiguous in English. But it's the role of the pastor to explain the significance of the participle. When the translator does it, he's moved from translating to interpretation. If you've got the NIV he's actually moved into doing theology for you, and he gets completely away from what the original says. That's one reason I don't like the New International Version.
Here you have a participle that is translated "having provided something better", and it should be understood as a causal participle "because God provided something better for us." The main thought, remember, goes back to verse 39 – all these did not receive the promise because God provided something better for us. That doesn't mean that Christians in the Church Age are superior to the Jews in the Old Testament in an existential way; it does because they have a greater testimony. They have greater revelation in the person and the work of Jesus Christ who fulfills all those promises and prophecies from the Old Testament related to the Messiah; and He completed what was incomplete in the Old Testament sacrifices and in the Old Testament ritual so that this is what he means when he says, "God provided something better for us but.."
Notice that the purpose clause is that they (that is the Old Testament believers) should not be made perfect apart from us. In other words, that the Old Testament believers aren't going to reach their fulfillment, their ultimate destiny, realization of the promise, apart from Christians. Why? Because, it is through Christ and His work on the cross that there is the completion of what was partial in the Old Testament. So this is what pulls together the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Now there's something else that's going on here that setting the stage for where we're going to go in the first 2 verses of chapter 12. Chapter 12 then shifts into another metaphor, the metaphor of a race. Now that was already a part of the nuance in terms of the testimony (the martureo) and some of the imagery that we've seen already. But it hasn't been real clear. You wouldn't have necessarily guessed it if it stopped here. But in verse 1 of chapter 12 it's going to pull it out.
Now this verse reads as follows:
NKJ Hebrews 12:1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded
He includes himself with his listeners.
by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
So this then pictures a race. This is very common in the ancient world. You had the Olympics that were held in Greece. There were various different places where the games were held. There were games held at Delphi. They were held at Corinth. They were held at Sparta and a number of other different places. The picture is this race: that you have an athlete who's going to go out before the stands. The stands are filled, but the stands weren't filled with spectators. The stands were filled with athletes that have already run the race. It would be like in the modern Olympics going and performing at the modern Olympics and everybody in the stands that are observing you run this race are all of the athletes from the ancient games in Greece all the way up to the present. So you're now running in front of amateurs or in front of spectators. You are running in front of people who are previous athletes who've already run their competition. That is the picture. That's the great cloud of witnesses that's observing us in running the race, and we're to run that race with endurance.
When you look at this, there ought to be a question in your mind. You may not catch it from the English. Some of you might. That is, how can we lay aside every weight before we can run the race? That doesn't seem very realistic, and it's not. You have to understand and plug this into the web of teaching that we have in the New Testament. But if you just took this verse as it stands, you could easily move into a lot of legalistic guilt manipulation which is exactly what has happened in a lot of churches and a lot of groups that don't understand the first thing about God's grace. God's grace isn't permissiveness. God's grace recognizes that none of us can do a cotton-picking thing to solve the sin problem; that God had to do that. That's evident in the way this is structured and in the terminology that is used here.
The first thing you think ought to think about as you look at this is: "Well, there's no way that I can lay aside every sin. I can't become sinless and perfect before I can run the race", because running the race is comparable to how we live our lives. If you take it that way, then you've got a real problem because you think that the text says you've got to clean up everything in your life and become morally and ethically and spiritually perfect before you can run the race. That is not what the writer is saying. That's why I emphasized in the introduction all of the failures and sins and flaws of all of these heroes mentioned in the first part of chapter 11 from Enoch to Noah to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samson, Jephthah, Samuel, David. They continued to be (and in many cases royal) sinners long after they became saved.
And throughout their life even near the end David has a major sin covered at the end of 2 Samuel when he numbers of people with a census and God says, "Okay. I'm going to come and punish you and I'm going to give you three options here as to how you're going to accept this punishment. Which one do you want for your punishment?"
So there is a major discipline on David and to the nation of Israel because of David's sin of arrogance at that particular point. So we don't get rid of it. There's no way we can get rid of it. That doesn't mean that you justify it, rationalized it, minimize it or any of those other things; but you have to understand that the grace of God isn't coming to you and saying, "Okay. First of all you have to clean up your life, and then I'll deal with you", because God says He already cleaned it up because of what Christ did on the cross.
Let's look at the main idea. I find this is always very helpful when you have these sentences that have numerous clauses, just focus on the main clause. Remember what we saw in verse 39.
None of these received the promise because God provided something better for us.
That's the summary of chapter 11. Then he is going to draw a conclusion. Now this conclusion is well translated as therefore. If the writer could write "therefore, wherefore and now in conclusion," you would capture what's said in the Greek. There's a three word Greek compound word here toi gar oun which is brought together which is the strongest way you can say therefore in the Greek language. So he's drawing an extremely strong conclusion from all of the evidence he has presented in the previous chapter. "Therefore we also" - so he brings in himself along with his audience. They're all together. He's not setting himself apart. He's not saying, "I've arrived and now you have to arrive also."
He says, "We also."
Then you have a clause, a causal clause.
since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
Drop that.
let us lay aside every weight,
Drop that.
and the sin which so easily ensnares us,
Drop that.
Then you get to your main thought.
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
That is the main thought. That is the main command that is set forth here. So the first thing that we see as we start with Hebrews 12:1 is that the reason for the challenge is stated. We're not the first to face such a challenge. Adversities are obstacles. We're just the most recent, the current generation that's facing all of these challenges and obstacles. The writer is saying that in light of the evidence that he just gave from Abel down through David, we're not supposed to whine. We're not supposed to give into self-pity. We're not supposed to feel sorry for ourselves that things are so tough for us because as he is going to point out later on that in living out our Christian life we haven't faced martyrs' death, we haven't been thrown into the Coliseum with lions, we haven't had to go through overt physical persecution, beatings, we haven't been threatened with being sawn in two or any of those things.
"You've all had it so easy and you whine. There's no reason for it."
What he is saying is that because we are surrounded by this cloud of witnesses. And this cloud of witnesses picks up this whole metaphor of the running a race (an athletic competition) in the midst. And before those who have run and run well and have therefore received the victor's crown. That's the imagery.
The second thing that we see here is the command that is given and that command in the last phrase, which really I think should be put up at the beginning if we're going to catch the thrust of it. By putting it at the end it's lost in these other dependent clauses.
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
Now this phrase "let us run" is expressed in the Greek in a subjective mood verb, which doesn't mean a whole lot to you. But that's how you express a first person command. In English all we have is second person commands. I can either talk to an individual and I say, "Now I want you to run a race," when I'm talking to an individual. If I'm talking to a group then I use a second person plural pronoun. I say, "Y'all run the race," if I'm from south of the Mason Dixon Line. Y'all know what the plural of y'all is – all y'all. So all y'all run the race with endurance. That's the focus here. But that's a second person plural. Now if it's a third person command, the way you expressed this is "let them do it" or "let him do it." But in the first person command it's expressed as "let us do it." It sounds softer, but it's not in actuality. It's really as much of a command as much of an imperative as any command barked out by a drill sergeant in boot camp.
As I read this today I came up with a perfect example of this kind of hortatory subjunctive.
Let's play this. This is from Winston Churchill's well known speech Of Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat." It was his first speech as Prime Minister to the House of Commons. On May 10, 1940 he was appointed as the prime minister in England and on May 13th he gave this speech which is one that many of you heard and read parts of, but I just want to play the last minute or so of it and when he comes to the last line you're going hear the hortatory subjunctive. This is a great speech.
"…as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. Victory! Victory at all costs; Victory in spite of all terrors; Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.
Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal.
I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."
Okay, now did you catch it? Do you think that it was an option for anyone in Britain not to go forward with our united strength? That's the last statement he makes.
Let us go forward together with our united strength.
Nobody in Britain had an option there. That is the same thing that the writer of Hebrews is saying here.
Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
I think that is a great parallel with the warfare metaphor or the warfare reality of Churchill's speech and the competition race metaphor here that we are to go forward with endurance.
Now when we get to the next point in understanding this verse, we need to understand how we are to run the race. That's the next thing that the writer addresses. First of all he addressed the cause for it – our motivation.
since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
Then he gives us the command, which is to run the race with endurance. You think in the English that you are supposed to let us lay aside every weight and the sin, which so easily ensnares us. You think that's a command because it's expressed the same way. But those are participles in Greek. The only imperatival force verb that you have here is the "let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." But what you have here is a very interesting connection or grammatical construction here. It is called a participle of attended circumstance. What that means is that the participles describe the conditions that must be met before you can carry out the command. Let me say that again. In this kind of construction the participles of the attended circumstances describe what has to be fulfilled or carried out (the conditions that have to be met) before you can fulfill the command. What that means if you're reading this is that before he can run the race you've got to quit all sin. You've got to clean up your life. Nobody can do that. We can't pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps in that way. In fact there are a couple of other passages in Scripture that are very similar to this.
But first of all I want to focus on just briefly as we wrap up what the problem is. That is that we're all flawed. We all have committed sin, every one of us. That's the clear testimony that you find not only in the New Testament but also going back to the Old Testament.
Psalm 14:3 reads:
NKJ Psalm 14:3 They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one.
In an absolute sense in comparison with God's perfect righteousness no one does good, ever. And you can't get there. No one's ever going to be good enough to meet God's perfect standard of absolute righteous. You can do things that are relatively good (better than other people), but nobody ever does absolute perfection.
David says:
NKJ Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.
So he's not talking about the fact that his mother had an affair and he was born as an illegitimate child. He's talking about the fact that from birth we sin.
Then we have passages like Isaiah 59:7-8.
NKJ Isaiah 59:7 Their feet run to evil,
He's describing people as a whole.
NKJ Isaiah 59:7 Their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; Wasting and destruction are in their paths.
NKJ Isaiah 59:8 The way of peace they have not known, And there is no justice in their ways; They have made themselves crooked paths; Whoever takes that way shall not know peace.
Then of course we come to the great passage in Isaiah 53 where Isaiah talks about himself (includes himself) in the whole group that he is addressing and says:
NKJ Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
That doesn't leave anybody out.
NKJ Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
Everybody fails to meet God's standard.
NKJ Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one,
Except for maybe you! No. Oh, that's right everyone to his own way.
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
He's talking about the Messiah here, that this is what the role of the Messiah would be: He would be bear the sins of the world.
Now see in Psalm 51 when David recognized he was a sinner, what's the solution? The solution is expressed through the same imagery we have throughout the Old Testament.
NKJ Psalm 51:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.
Why?
NKJ Psalm 51:3 For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me.
In other words he is acknowledging (admitting) his sin - his confession.
In verse 4 he says:
NKJ Psalm 51:4 Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight -- That You may be found just when You speak, And blameless when You judge.
Yet David is in heaven today. He is with God because of God's grace and forgiving him of sin.
Now when we look at Isaiah 53:6 we read:
NKJ Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way;
The solution is because God provided the solution.
And the LORD has laid on Him
That is the Messiah.
the iniquity of us all.
Now look at where that goes in the next 3 verses.
NKJ Isaiah 53:8 He was taken from prison and from judgment,
..indicating that the Messiah was predicted to be one who would be taken from before a court of law. This is fulfilled with Jesus because He is taken to Pilate, and it was the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate who condemned Him to death.
Isaiah goes on to say:
And who will declare His generation?
That is, who will declare who He is – His person.
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
…referring to His death. The Messiah would die.
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
This is the point that's made that Jesus went to the cross to die for the sins of the world.
NKJ Isaiah 53:9 And they made His grave with the wicked -- But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
His grave was provided by the wealthy. It was the grave owned by a very rich Pharisee by the name of Joseph of Arimathea.
NKJ Isaiah 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You
Addressing God – upper case You.
make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
This was the role of the Messiah. He was the one who would bear our transgressions, bear our sins. He was the one whose soul would be made an offering for sin. Because of that, the sin penalty is paid for.
Look at two passages in the New Testament. In James 1:21 and 1 Peter 2:1 we have the same grammatical construction that we have in Hebrews 12:1.
James says:
NKJ James 1:21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness,
That's horrible translation, but you get the idea. It is the same word apotithemi that you have in Hebrews 12 – remove sin basically…
and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Same construction, attended circumstances. Before you can receive the Word you have to get rid of all the sin in your life. 1 Peter does the same thing. I didn't put the second verse here. That's the command. The first verse says:
NKJ 1 Peter 2:1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
Then the next verse says:
NKJ 1 Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
The command is to desire the milk to the Word; but before you can do that you've got to get rid of all this sin. Now you can't do that, and I can't do that. The only way that can be dealt with is by somebody who takes that sin upon himself and pays the penalty for sin, so that we then receive the benefit of their righteousness that's applied to us.
He is not talking just legally here about the doctrine of justification by faith. He is talking about the practical ramifications of that in terms of confession of sin and dealing with sin in the life of the believer before you can move forward. That's why we have passages like 1 John 1:9 which is comparable to Psalm 51 that if we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness so that then we can move forward. But we're still going to sin. Now it's not a license for sin, but it gives us the liberty and the freedom to recover when we do sin so that we can keep going forward in our spiritual life. That's the focus of this going forward and enduring the race because we're going to have a lot of things to come along that hinder us. It's the baggage that's mentioned here (the every weight, the entangling sin), which for his audience here was the desire to just give it up and forget their Christianity go back into Judaism and to give up in light of the persecution, the opposition.
So how do you do that? That's next verse and we'll get there next Thursday night.
Let's close in prayer.