Hebrews Lesson 200 June 2010
NKJ Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
NKJ Proverbs 3:6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
Open your Bibles to Hebrews 12. One of the things I keep thinking about doing (or at least I've been thinking about it for two weeks and I just run out of time at the end of each class) is to have some opportunity maybe at the end of class for a little question and answer. Sometimes questions come up or I'm not as clear or you took a mental vacation for 3 seconds and missed something. A little Q&A sometimes is good but it seems like every class I've thought about that for the last three weeks I just run out of time and hardly squeeze in everything I want to say. So maybe we'll have a little time this evening.
We're in Hebrews 12. We covered the first 2 verses in the last couple of weeks. Now let's go back to verse 1 and just kind of think our way through this verse again because this is one of those verses that appears at sort of first glance to be saying one thing; but when you stop and you really dig into the grammar (especially in the Greek) and you understand the metaphor that's being used here; it's actually saying something that is pretty familiar to all of us. But it's not saying what a lot of people think that this verse is saying.
So we have a conclusion with the "therefore."
NKJ Hebrews 12:1 Therefore we also,
That is as believers. The author includes himself in the exhortation here because it applies to every one of us. There's nobody – there's no apostle, there's no individual believer – that ever gets to a point in the spiritual life where they are too mature to fail, to where they can't fall prey to just the most simple set of circumstances which cause them to fail. Whether it's a small failure or large failure is not relevant, because when you are out of fellowship you are out of fellowship. We all have to evaluate our own lives and be thinking about it. That's really one of the main ideas that come across in these verses from the word that is translated from the beginning of verse 2.
NKJ Hebrews 12:2 looking unto Jesus,
That word is a word that emphasizes concentration and thought.
Then again in verse 3:
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured
Again, the word "consider" emphasizes careful thought and deliberation. So underneath this the writer is challenging. And this exhortation and in terms of the structure of the book this is the last exhortation in the book. It will end with a warning in the last of 5 verses. But what the writer is saying here is that what undergirds the Christian life is thought. Many times, I know you've heard it said that the spiritual life is ultimately about thinking. That doesn't mean it's simply a cerebral activity; but it is not without the action of thinking. It is grounded in thought and reflection. It's not just about collecting Bible (you know) notebooks and Bible doctrines. It's not just about thinking about your notes that you've taken in the class. But it's taking those notes as they inform your thinking and then stopping to think about what you have learned in terms of your own life and how the principles apply to you.
So the writer here is setting forth a basic command which is in most English translations set at the end of verse 1 which is to "let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."
So the Christian life is viewed here as a race. The Apostle Paul used that same metaphor in 1 Corinthians 7 and it's used in other passages in Scripture that we use a race to depict the Christian life because it's a contest. It's a struggle. It demands focus. It demands discipline. It demands training, and at the end of the race there is a reward. There is the winner's wreath.
That applies directly to the spiritual life because it is a challenge. There's opposition. That opposition comes from Satan, from the world system and from our own sin nature. We have to somehow overpower or surmount those challenges. We have to get passed the opposition and sometimes it's very difficult. Sometimes the opposition of our own nasty little sin nature is just as bad as the opposition we may experience overtly through persecution. Now we don't usually experience a lot of overt persecution in the United States. But there are people who live in countries and cultures all around the world that do experience a tremendous amount of persecution or opposition or resentment or ridicule. If you live in certain areas of this country and operate and live within certain subcultures in this country, then you too will experience a lot of overt or covert opposition because you're one of those strange Bible believing Christians and you need to be relegated to the 19th or 18th century because you are so backward you are not up to date with anybody. But we all face these kinds of things that challenge the race that is set before us.
Now as this sets up, you have the command: "let us run with endurance." Then there is the statement before that that is translated as if it is the same kind of command.
KJ Hebrews 12:1 …let us lay aside every weight,
This is one of those verses where it's very clear that you just have to go back to the Greek. You just can't figure out what the writer is saying completely by looking at the English text because English grammar doesn't function like Greek grammar functions, in the same way that if you were studying any other piece of literature written in another language you would want to make sure that you had a professor that understood the original language. If you're studying French literature you, want to have professor that can read whatever it is you're studying in the original French. If you're studying Russian literature, you want somebody who can read Dostoevsky in the original Russian. If you're reading anything that originated in another language you know that it loses something in translation. It doesn't mean you can't understand a good bit of it; the idea that some people get that we shouldn't sit down and read the Bible in English because we might get confused. You know you can sit down and read the morning Chronicle get more confused than reading the English translation of the Bible. Yet people do that – or just watching the news. You can get confused just waking up in the morning sometimes, right? So there's no excuse for not reading the Scripture, but we have to also recognize that translations have a certain limitation to them.
Then there's another problem with some translations, and that is that they go beyond simply the standards of the canon for translation. The translators actually move over into the territory of interpretation. When you look at the range of translations that are available today, it's actually mind-boggling. Every couple of years somebody comes out with the latest, greatest, newest, most necessary, modern English American translation of the Bible that you just can't live without. Some of them are very close to one another. I don't know – it's just a business. That's sort of a negative and sad part about it. The positive part about it is that because of capitalism there is competition, so you have competition for better Bibles. If we didn't have that you wouldn't have the competition and we'd all probably still be reading the King James Version. So we have good modern translations. Some are very good and some are not quite so good.
And you have different theories of language that inform a translation. For example, the New International Version is what's called the dynamic equivalence. That really means that you don't necessarily translate word-for-word. You translate phrase-for-phrase, idiom for idiom. It can get somewhat fairly loose, almost like a paraphrase in places, like the Living Bible. The Living Bible which started coming out of the late 50's was written by a Dallas Seminary graduate by the name of Ken Taylor. He was reading his Bible to his children and they didn't understand the bombastic diction of the King James Bible. So he was trying to just reword it for his children. So he wasn't working from the Greek or the original languages. He was just taking what was in the King James and he was paraphrasing it or putting it in a simpler form of English. Now that's a paraphrase. That's not a translation.
You have translations like the New International Version, Cotton Patch Gospel, which is a more extreme form of dynamic equivalence, and then there are a few others – "The Message" which is the sort of translation that I love to hate. They try to get so down into the idiom of the street – and I mean the street, the hood – way down into but very idiomatic slang English where you can't really understand what the original is all about.
Then you have what they call formal equivalence, which is the New American Standard, the English Standard translation, or ESV (English Standard Version), which just came out in the last couple of years. There's a Holman translation that just came out within the last year, the New King James version. These are more formal equivalence.
The problem we've got folks is that the more you move towards a good straight formal equivalence, the higher the Bible is on your grade level for reading. You take a King James Bible and that's on about a 10th or 11th grade level for reading. You take the New American Standard; that's on an 8th or 9th grade reading level. You take the ESV; I think it's about 7th grade. I think the NIV is down to about the 6th grade level. We have to have produced a culture of people who are so functionally illiterate that they really can't read and understand and repeat back to you in their own words most of these translations even the ones that are down at a 5th or 6th grade level. We're so impoverished in our education system that we're just not producing anybody who can read and think beyond a certain grade level for most people or large masses of people in this country.
So one of the things that I as a pastor wrestle with is that you can just look around and see the congregation and see that we're not attracting a lot of 20 and 30 something's. This is a little over their head. That's a real struggle that other pastors and I talk about is we have produced a couple of generations now of people who don't think analytically like this. They weren't ever taught the first thing about grammar when they went through school or very little – to a large degree. I'm speaking in a large generalization here, but this is the trend of the culture. This is why if you go to churches that appeal to entertainment and to emotion, they run in the thousands. But the more of the pastor tries to really explain and teach and analyze the text, the fewer and fewer people come.
The other thing is that the older and older those congregations tend to be. This is sort of a tension that we have to deal with, what do you do to be able to communicate to a younger generation that is not prepared academically to really get into the details of the Word of God. It doesn't have a simple solution.
Of course a common solution is that you compromise with what they want and give them a lot of entertainment. But that's a very poor solution and really doesn't accomplish anything. All of that is just an aside to point out why it's important at times to get into the grammar. As I pointed out when we went through this in the last class, you have this grammatical structure in Greek where you have usually an aorist imperative and that's preceded by an aorist participle. About 90% of it is that way. It's called a participle of attended circumstance. What that basically means is that the action of the aorist participle has to precede the fulfillment of the action of the command. When you look at a passage like this normally what you see, and during the last week I went back and read a lot of different commentaries and the emphasis is - they graft….
They don't really come right out and say, "You know there's a problem here with the way this is structured."
So they'll either restrict the meaning of "laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us," and they try to say, "Okay, that just applies to the act of giving up your faith. That's it. That's all that refers to. It doesn't refer to anything else."
I read one commentary today and it said both of these terms refer to the sin of unbelief on the part of a believer, on the part of a Christian. But they're not grappling with the underlying grammar, which says you have to lay aside these encumbrances before you can run the race. The pictures as I pointed out last time are from the Olympics and the fact that your runners in the Greek Olympics would come out and they would first strip off. They competed completely naked. They competed in the buff and they took everything off so that they didn't have any togas or any clothes or anything that could possibly trip them up or slow them down. Now they have to take everything off before they can run. They're not going to go to the starting blocks all wearing their togas and then when the signal goes off as they start running, they start taking things off. That's how most people conceive of this verse is that as we go through the Christian life we need to be taking sin out of our life. That's just the old concept of spirituality by morality, pulling ourselves up by our moral boot straps and that what we have to be doing is taking all, getting rid of all of these sins in our life so that we can run the race with endurance. But that doesn't fit the grammar or the metaphor.
I took you two passages last time one in James, in James 1:21.
NKJ James 1:21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Then 1 Peter 2:1-2:
NKJ 1 Peter 2:1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
NKJ 1 Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire
That's a command there.
the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
In every one of those passages you have the same verb apotithemi meaning to take something off - remove it. Then it's followed by a command that must take place after you remove these sins. The sins in all these passages are different. I pointed out that the way that's normally taken is first of all you have to clean up your life. You have to scrub out all the immorality and sin in your life before you can ever go forward in the Christian life. Before you can take in the Word or desire the Word or run the race with endurance you have to clean up your life. That's just spirituality by works. That's spirituality by morality.
The point that it makes (and we have to plug it into other passages of Scripture) is this is referring to cleansing the life which comes only by confessing sins. When we confess sin until we sin again the life is cleansed and we remove these sins from our life experientially. The slate is wiped clean when we confess. But the point is that if we haven't dealt with the experiential sin then we can't go forward as long as we're out of fellowship. So the command to run with endurance must be preceded by a complete removal of the easily besetting sin, which is what occurs when we confess our sins.
Now the next verse as I pointed out last time gives us through the use of the participle at the beginning there gives us the means. How do you run with endurance? By looking at Jesus. The word that's translated "looking" means to put your gaze on Him, to focus on Him. So how do you run with endurance? You run by thinking about Jesus. Not like you're thinking about Jesus at that moment. This relates to the believer who sits down at times in his life whether it's each day in a quiet time or weekly or while you're driving, and takes the time to reflect upon who Jesus is, what Jesus went through; to think about what you've learned as we've gone through all these passages in Scripture. We've talked about the passage earlier in Hebrews 2:10.
NKJ Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting for Him,
That is the Father.
for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect
…or complete.
through sufferings.
Now that word perfect is really the standard word from the teleioo word group that indicates maturity. So we see that word group even in this passage. Jesus is the author and the teleiotes (the completer or finisher) of our faith. He becomes the ultimate end of doctrine. We see full spiritual maturity in the character of Jesus. He becomes the pattern and the role model for the believer. So we don't just sit around like some Christians do in terms of the popular culture and just think in a vacuum about "what would Jesus do?"— put it on a tee-shirt, tattoo it on your arm, or whatever. You have to have content to that question. So when you think "what would Jesus do?" you know the Word well enough to understand the thinking so that you can evaluate your circumstances in terms of doctrine. It involves thinking it through not just in reading through notes, but internalizing it so that you've given it a degree of concentration beyond just the words that are taught by the pastor.
So we're to fix our days our gaze, our mental gaze, our mental focus on Jesus who is viewed as the pioneer – same word used back in Hebrews 2:10.
NKJ Hebrews 12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
Then in the next verse we read:
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
There it's translated "for." The preposition there is anti which in some cases means against or instead of as a preposition of substitution. Here it means because; and in several places…
So it gives the reason that Jesus was able to endure. He endures because of the joy that was set before Him.
That word that is translated "set before Him" is a word that indicates the long-term goal. So as you grow and mature as a believer, you begin to understand that God is really taking you somewhere in the spiritual life. There is a destiny. There's a direction and purpose and a plan.
Sometimes when I use the phrase "God has a plan for you", that plan is not necessarily a day-by-day, moment-by-moment, this-is-where-you're-going-to-be-and-what-you're-going-to-do plan. It is a blueprint that God has for every one of us. He plugs us into that blueprint in the same way. Now the details are going to be different because we're all different. God is going to bring different circumstances into our lives. But the basic principle in the spiritual life is to get to this point where we can look down the road to where God is taking us, and then we make decisions today in light of that future destiny.
That's been the message all through Hebrews. We've been in this book for what - 5 years, 6 years. This is the 200th lesson in Hebrews tonight.
But that is the major theme of Hebrews is living today in light of eternity. But it takes time to develop that long-term foresight just as it did as you grew up in your life. When I was 7 years old my mother used to tell me that I needed to look beyond the end of my nose. That's the same principle. Your mother probably told you the same thing.
It's not until we get a little older into our later teen years or maybe into our twenties that you begin to think that, "You know there really are consequences to the decisions I make whether they are good consequences or bad consequences. I need to start thinking in terms of the consequences and long term goals and directions and plans that I have for my life and not just in terms of what makes me feel good today and what seems to get me through the day as we go forward."
There's an end game here that Jesus focused on which is the joy set before Him. Because of that He endures the cross, which is a key word in this passage.
He runs with endurance. That's the noun hupomones. Runs with endurance the race set before us.
Then in the second verse we have:
for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
That's the verb form hupomeno.
despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Then verse 3 says:
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured
Here we have a participial form.
such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
The key idea that runs through the mandate the command of verse 1, the illustration of verse 2, which is Jesus, and also again the illustration of Jesus in verse 3, is the idea of endurance.
I thought I would bring this chart out of mothballs tonight and we would go back and review the basic plan and structure that God has for the spiritual life. This comes about in three basic stages as we look at things. First of all there's what we refer to a phase one which is our salvation when we are justified, when you trust Christ as savior. At that instant God imputes to you the righteousness of Christ, declares you to be just, and regenerates you. At that point you are born again. You're a new creature in Christ, and you now start a new game. You've gone from outside the stadium (to use the race metaphor) to inside the stadium, and you get to compete in the game. The competition in the game isn't to be there. Salvation gets you there, and then it comes after that. So we go through these stages that James identifies as tests of doctrine.
Now if you just hold your place there, I'm going to take you back and forth to James a couple times tonight.
If you look at James 1:2-3 (we'll just look there), James says:
NKJ James 1:2 My brethren,
Then we have our first command.
count it all joy when you fall into various trials,
NKJ James 1:3 knowing
That's really a causal adverbial participle there that should be understood as "because you know" something. See you can't "count it joy" unless you know this principle. It's because you know this principle that you can have joy in the midst of difficult circumstances.
that the testing of your faith produces patience.
That's an evaluation term there. The testing there isn't to see how you are going to fail. It's to show, to give you an opportunity to show off what you've learned. God's tests here are designed to give you an opportunity to demonstrate what you've learned in your study of the Word and not to reveal that you're a failure. Of course if you haven't been paying attention and you're not learning the Word then it's going to have a negative evaluation.
that the testing of your faith produces patience.
It is translated patience in the King James. Endurance in the New American Standard is much better. It's the word hupomone again. But it's the testing of your faith. There it's the idea of not just testing you to see if you believe, but testing what you believe; giving you an opportunity to take what you say you believe and putting it into practice. That's the same idea that we've have all the way through Hebrews 11 is to take the promises and the principles that you learn from the Word of God and then to believe them and live on the basis of them. God is going to give you tests whether you like it or not.
Every day in many different ways we get little spiritual pop quizzes to see if we're learning and applying what we've been getting out of the Scripture. The key issue then becomes volition. We have a choice to decide. And that's what makes it a test because you have to make a decision. Sometimes these are little things, and people are not volitionally conscious. They're not volitionally aware. So some situation occurs and they just go into the habitual mode of either getting depressed, getting angry, becoming grumpy, lying, stealing, whatever it is, whatever the response is from the sin nature to handle certain negative circumstances in life; that's their default response pattern.
The issue of the Christian life is that we have to get rid of that natural sinful habitual sin nature produced default response pattern and replace it with the new response pattern. That involves volition.
Something just happened. Am I going to think in terms of the circumstances as an opportunity to glorify God? Or am I going to think of this set of circumstances as just another irritation in my day and I'm not getting done what I wanted to and so instead of getting done (operating on my agenda) I want to realize God has another plan for me today and I need to get online with His agenda. That violation thing comes in all the time. Phase two of the spiritual life involves either walking by the Holy Spirit or operating under sin nature control.
So we have these two options. According to Galatians 5:17, we either walk by means of the Holy Spirit or we're walking by the flesh, one or the other.
NKJ Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill
Paul uses this Greek construction, which means it's impossible to do something. Oume plus the subjunctive form of that verb teleioo again meaning to bring something to maturity or to completion.
the lust of the flesh.
So we have these two options. Now when we looked at the first option. We can either go in one direction. James says that it produces life.
NKJ James 1:3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
The testing of your faith produces endurance.
NKJ James 1:4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
We go through that whole process, and we produce (when we apply the Word) the evidence that God's plan is good – Romans 12:1. It produces life, the full abundant life. It produces divine good. It produces endurance and it leads to the adult spiritual life.
If we operate in disobedience and sin then it produces sin or human good. If we stay there, it leads to temporal death or carnal death. We're not experiencing the life that God has for us. This in turn produces weakness or instability in our lives. This is what James is getting to in about the 6th verse.
NKJ James 1:6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
NKJ James 1:7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
He's a double-minded man. He's weak and unstable. This in turn leads to spiritual regression and produces a hardened heart. That is if we stay in that flesh driven cycle.
Now this in turn leads to when we die (phase 3), we go to Judgment Seat of Christ. That is going to lead to either, rewards and inheritance, or it's going to lead to the loss of rewards and temporary shame. That's the blueprint. Every one of us follows that every day in almost every set of circumstances.
So we need to recognize what is going on in terms of our life because God is really directing things. I believe that He is bringing into our lives basically the things that we need so that if we respond right and apply doctrine correctly, that is what we need to make us more like Jesus Christ in terms of our character. That's why some of us keep running into the same kinds of tests over and over again, year after year, decade after decade. You just feel like you're just never making it. You just never overcome. You just never seem to get passed it. You really are in many ways moving forward. It's just that we tend to look back and think that we're not making any progress. But we do, and I believe in many cases we are. When we get to the end of our life we can look back and see some of that progress that's taking place.
So when we look at this passage in Hebrews 12, it's very much like what James was saying in James. So the key is we run the race by looking at, by gazing at, by thinking about Jesus who is the pioneer, the pattern, the role model for our spiritual life. He endured the cross because He focused on the end-game which was the joy set before him. That meant that He was able to reject or to ignore the shame of the cross and the result was His glorification that He sits now at the right hand of the throne of God.
Now we're going to get a further explanation starting in verse 3. The writer of Hebrews says:
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
He is focused on one area of application and that is the application of people who are being rejected, who are being despised, who are being persecuted, who are being ridiculed, and who are being ostracized from their community because they're trusting in Jesus as Messiah. And that relates to these Jews who have trusted in Christ and they are now becoming a minority.
Now the interesting thing about the study of the early church in terms of history (and there's very little to go on here) is that in the initial stages of the church (from a roughly 33 AD up until about 45 AD) the makeup of the church is about 98% Jewish, maybe even higher. Then after the death of Stephen and with the salvation of Paul, Paul has to go back to Tarsus for a little growing up training. When Saul returns to the church at Antioch and from that point (chapter 8) he becomes known as Paul. From approximately the time of the first missionary journey which is in the in the book of Acts – takes place about the same time that you have Peter going to Cornelius, the Gentile Roman Centurion in Caesarea – is when the early church had to really struggle with this concept of what "we're all Jews and we're still following our traditions from the Old Testament, but now we have all the Gentiles who are trusting in Jesus. So how do they relate to the law?" They had this whole tension problem in the early church as to what was required of the Gentiles in the church.
So we have the Jerusalem Council that followed in Acts 11 and you have the book of Galatians that's written at that time. But as you go through the next 40 years or so or 30 years up to the fall of Jerusalem, the church becomes decreasingly Jewish. The Christians in Israel – in Judea especially – become more and more ostracized. When you get into The War of the Rebellion (the Jewish War of the Rebellion) in 66 and especially after Titus had to back off for a little while when Nero died, and they had to go back to the coast and reorganize; it was at that point that all the Christians left Jerusalem because they were thinking in terms of what Jesus had said in Luke 21 that when they saw in Jerusalem surrounded they needed to leave. So they left. Now after the defeat of the Jews, the destruction the Temple, the capture and destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews who were not Christians did not have a real positive attitude towards the Jews that had trusted in Jesus and left Jerusalem and didn't fight and didn't defend the city because they followed what the Lord said. They left.
Then as you go through the next 50 years or so up to the time of the second rebellion (the Bar Kokhba rebellion), there's still a very strong presence of Jewish believers (Jewish Christians) in the area of Judea and the Galilee. But with that second revolt – and they did not want to follow Bar Kokhba because that was a claim Rabbi Akiva said that he was the Messiah and then of course they rejected that – that further ostracized them. So the book of Hebrews is written in that period that's about 6 or 7 years before AD 70. It's in that time when Jewish Christians are becoming more and more ostracized by the mainstream Jewish community that was still following the teachings of the rabbis and that rejected Jesus as Messiah.
So they're becoming ostracized. They're getting blamed for things. They are of being ridiculed by family members and so the application here is you're going through antagonism. Jesus also went through antagonism. Look at how He endured and handled the antagonism and that is your pattern when you face opposition, antagonism and hostility.
The word there that is used at the beginning for "consider" is a Greek word, analogizomai. So it has a proposition prefix ana that is tied to the verb logozomai. Logizomai is the word that is used in James 1:2.
NKJ James 1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,
It goes back to an accounting term to add up in your mind the various elements and put it together because you thought your way through the different elements of something. It started off as an accounting term; and it comes to mean to concentrate, to reason, to reflect upon.
Sometimes you'll hear some people say, "Well, I'm going to study on that for awhile."
Well, that's the idea, to really think through what you have learned and put things together – put the different elements together.
So the writer of Hebrews says to think deeply and profoundly about how Jesus' handled opposition, and how He endured. How He stayed in the circumstances, how He endured such hostility from sinners against Himself lest you become weary and discouraged in your soul.
There are two end results. One is you can become overwhelmed by your circumstances and the opposition. And you can become discouraged and tired in your spiritual life. Or you can focus on Jesus and think through how He handled things, apply what you have learned. Then you're not weary, and you're not discouraged by those who oppose you and those who have rejected you. Those are the two options that you have. What makes the difference is whether you are not just thinking doctrine, not just reading over your notes, but where you truly internalize the thought process (the mental attitude) and the focus so that when you do go through that – and it's not easy. Nobody likes rejection. Nobody likes it when people who they wished respected them and liked them don't like them and treat them harshly. Nobody likes that. Everybody feels badly about that. That's a normal reaction. There's nothing wrong with that reaction. It's when we let that reaction control our behavior beyond the initial incident.
We have to say, "Okay, fine."
We may have to tell ourselves that 15, 20, 30, 50, 100 times. But that's the process. We keep going back to doctrine; repeating it and retraining our thinking to think about circumstances the way God would have us to think about things. That is all involved in that whole concept of analogizomai.
Now the writer has an interesting way of playing on words here because he uses that word analogizomai for "consider him who endured such hostility." The word he uses for hostility is antilogia, which has very similar components. It sounds similar. It's a preposition anti plus the word logia, which also comes logos or word, which is where you get analogizomai. These are all somewhat related words: anti has to do with opposition and logia has to do with words. It came to mean opposition, those who are speaking against you, those who are rebelling against you, the opposition has put themselves in an adversarial position.
The result is that lest you become weary and discouraged. Now here's an interesting word here that we only find twice in the New Testament. That is this word translated weary, the Greek word kamno. It's used here, and it's used in James 5:15.
Now I want to pay attention to this verse for a second. If we don't focus on Jesus and you focus on the details of life (the circumstances and the people and the rejection) the result is it gets tiresome. You get discouraged in your spiritual life and you are weary. You get up and running the race isn't fun anymore because of the hostility. This leads to where you're just defeated spiritually. But it doesn't have anything to do with being physically ill.
Now hold your place there are turn to James 5:15. Now I've gone through this passage in detail before so I'm not going to do that tonight. But this is one of those passages that people always stumble over when they read through James or they read through the New Testament and they think that this passage has something to do with getting healed physically. It doesn't have anything to do with getting healed physically. He's not even talking about that. It's not even talking psychosomatic illness. Everybody wants to somehow try to rationalize this passage into getting something physical in here. And it's not there! Forget about it! Nothing works. It's not about physical problems at all. It's about a spiritual problem. At the end of this epistle where James is challenging people to endure, the flipside of endurance again is the same thing we see in Hebrews 12. If you don't endure you're going to be weary, discouraged, defeated in your spiritual life. So he begins with a question: is anyone among you suffering? That's the idea if you encounter various trials. What's the solution? Prayer. Is anyone cheerful? Well, great! Sing songs. It's great to be cheerful and joyful over your circumstances and to express that.
Then the third question:
NKJ James 5:14 Is anyone among you sick?
The word there that translated sick is a Greek word that can mean either physical sickness or spiritually weak. It's used that way (as "spiritual weakness") by Jesus when He says that the soul is willing but the flesh is weak. It has that idea of not sick but physically weak. Most of time in the Gospels though the word means physically ill; but most of time in the epistles it means to be spiritually weary. So it can go either way - physical or spiritual weariness; context has to determine.
Now if you look down to verse 15 we read in most English translations:
NKJ James 5:15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick…
In English it's the same word that you have in verse 14; but in Greek it's not the same word you have in verse 14. The word that you have in verse 15 is a smaller (has a narrower range of meaning) than the word in verse 14 and is going to tell you which way to go – physical or spiritual. Well, the word that's used for sick in verse 15 is that word we just saw in Hebrews komno. It means weary. If you retranslate "the prayer of faith will save the weary" all of a sudden you realize that verse 15 doesn't confirm the fact that you're talking about sick people. It confirms the fact that you're talking about weary people. You're talking about people who are getting worn out in their spiritual life because they're not enduring. So the prayer of faith will save.
And save doesn't always mean justification. In many cases it's used to refer to being delivered from a set of circumstances and thus refers to phase 2 of the spiritual life. So the prayer of faith will save the weary and the Lord will lift him up (that's a better term there – lift him up). In other words you're spiritually refreshed via the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. If there are sins that are associated with this then you'll be forgiven because sometimes sin enters in and that's the reason you feel beat up and defeated and overrun in the spiritual life is because of guilt or because your sins aren't forgiven. There is spiritual failure there.
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
If you don't want to be weary and discouraged, the solution isn't to go to counseling. It's not to go listen to one these guys like Bradshaw on PBS. It's not to find the latest greatest technique in psychology. It's to focus on the Word of God. The solution is simple. It's the Word of God and focusing on the Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to not be weary and discouraged in your souls (and that's how it's translated there), and it refers to that same weakness of soul that James gets at when he uses that word of being a double minded. It's literally dipsuchos or being two-souled.
NKJ Hebrews 12:4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.
The point is Jesus resisted the bloodshed and He didn't fail. He didn't fade out. Jesus resisted to the point of death. So what he's telling his audience is, "You only think you've handled this; but you haven't."
NKJ Hebrews 12:5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons:
Then he's going to quote from Proverbs 3:11-12.
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
NKJ Hebrews 12:6 For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives."
Now the key word I think that we find in this particular quotation that really helps us to understand it goes back to the Hebrew.
We're almost out of time so I'm just going to touch this tonight, come back the next time where we read in Proverbs 3:11:
NKJ Proverbs 3:11 My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor detest His correction;
It's chastening in Hebrews 12:5, but in the Hebrew it's discipline. It comes from a Hebrew word musar. What's interesting about this is the root meaning of that word is to bind or to restrict. When somebody was thrown into irons and put into prison that's the word that is used. Now a lot of people think that's exactly what discipline is. It just restricts them too much and they can't have any fun any longer. But the idea of discipline is to channel - to control our sin nature so we can channel our abilities to produce for God. That is the idea. It's training. The word that we find in the second part of verse 5 is translated:
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
That word is translated is a translation of a Greek word paideia. Paideia refers to the parental training of a child so that when they are mature they can successfully face the challenges of life. That's what divine discipline is. It's not just getting a spanking from Jesus. Divine discipline is the Lord training us in terms of this whole plan and procedure so that the end result of our life produces something that is rewardable and part of our inheritance at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
You didn't know this, but when you trusted Christ as savior they just told you that you were going to get eternal life. Then didn't say you're getting ready to go to spiritual boot camp in the Marine Corps. And God is a better drill sergeant than any Marine drill sergeant. He knows exactly how to take you through all the drills you need to go through in order to learn to trust Him so that when you come out the other end (which is when we're glorified and we're going to serve and rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ) then we have matured and we're responsible and we know how to lead and we know how to carry out the responsibilities that we're going to be given. So from the day you were saved until the day you die, I hate to tell you this but you're just on Paris Island that whole time. You're going through the Marine Corps boot camp spiritually speaking. Every one of us is.
And that's what paideia is. And that's what chastening is. It's training. It's discipline. It is teaching us to restrict (control) the lust of the flesh, our sin natures and to focus on responding to what God has for us in the spiritual life.
So now I said I'm going to start having question and answer. I don't know if anybody has any questions.
Calvin?
In your series on dispensations you teach that nothing the unbeliever can do can be part of the spiritual life.
Right.
Could you explain? The example you use is morality.
Morality – you've got a lot of very fine moral people out there. The spiritual life isn't morality – morality being able, the ability to observe a code of ethics or code of conduct. You had for example in Galatians with the Judiazers. The Judiazers came in.
They said, "Well, Paul kind of got the gospel right but it's missing something. And what it's missing is, if you're going to really experience everything God has for you (and that's kind of phrase we run into modern times) then you have to apply the law. Men have to be circumcised. You have to go through all of the Jewish ritual as well. Then you're really going to be living the super spiritual life."
That's a focus on just morality. That's why Paul says in Galatians 3:3:
NKJ Galatians 3:3 …Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
"The Holy Spirit regenerated you. Are you going to continue?"
He uses the same word teleios or teleioo. Are you going to continue in the flesh, mature in the flesh? So while the spiritual life is not anti-morality. It's not antinomianism or lawlessness or immorality. Morality isn't enough. You've got to be in fellowship and walking by the Spirit. That's what makes the difference between the unbeliever who goes to a religious service and who is moral (and it doesn't count anything for God); and a believer who is out of fellowship and he does the same thing. He reads his Bible. He witnesses. He prays.
But as David said:
NKJ Psalm 66:18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear.
It's all morality; but it's not getting him anywhere in terms of the spiritual life because he's doing it in the power of the flesh. And that's where you get the whole idea that the flesh can produce good things. That's where Paul really drives in Galatians. He raises that issue in Galatians 3:3 using all of that key terminology: the Spirit, the flesh and the verb teleioo for reaching maturity. He doesn't come back to that terminology until Galatians 5:17 where he makes it clear that you're either one way or you're the other way. It's either the work of the flesh or the work of the Holy Spirit.
In Romans 7 Paul realized that no matter how much he tried to be spiritually mature and right by just obeying the law, ultimately what it exposed was that there was arrogance behind it. Arrogance always leads (eventually) to the works of the flesh. So you have disunity, all the sins that are listed there in verse 19.
Does that answer your question?
Let's close in prayer. We had time for one question.