Good morning. Let's go to the Lord and ask him to bless our time. Father, we bless you and praise you this morning, the giver of life and hope and encouragement. We ask you to attend this Bible study, to minister to our hearts, to speak to us through your word. Thank you that you love us and that you're with us. And you give good exhortations, warnings, encouragements, cautions, and we need them all. We need all the grace you'll give us today. So help us have ready hearts and minds to receive all that you have for us. Help me to speak the truth in love. In Jesus' precious name, amen. Okay, back in Hebrews 12. We'll read today verses 12 and 13. So Hebrews 12, 12 and 13. The author says this. He says, therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Amen. So I'm limiting our focus to these two verses today because This is the final exhortation in this whole grand theme of endurance. From verse 14 and following, the author will give his fifth and final warning before he closes the letter, and it will be the warning of basically rejecting God's grace. this God who's a consuming fire, who's given us such blessings in the new covenant, and warnings even about how Esau behaved, and this root of bitterness, and all the grace to be had. So before I get into all of that, I felt like there's too much in these two verses, in verses 12 and 13, to just pass over too quickly. We need to really get this, what he's saying right here. It's really the capstone to his argument on the whole thing about endurance, in this race, in this Christian pilgrimage. So, just by way of introduction and a little bit of review, the author, he's been talking and speaking about, most recently, about the fatherly discipline of God, remember? God's fatherly discipline, he disciplines those he loves. And endurance, or faith that endures, is the theme here on this first part of chapter 12. And he used that word endure, or a form of that word, three times in the first three verses. One time was pertaining to us. We've got this cloud of witnesses, you need to run this race with endurance. And two times he used endure regarding Christ. He endured the cross. Right? And he endured all the hostility from sinners. And now one more time in a very key verse, in verse seven, he says, it is for discipline that you have to endure. That is a very important verse. It is for discipline that you have to endure. This is about perseverance. He says, God is treating you as sons, not like sons, as sons. You are his daughters and children, his sons. He's gonna treat you that way. So we're to endure even every form of suffering as discipline. So the author uses the metaphor here. He shows us of this race. And he also kind of subtly brings in a metaphor of not just a race, but a fight. because he talks about all these realities of blood and those possibilities. So you don't typically bleed when you're on a jog or on a long distance run or race, right? But you do when there's a wrestling or a fighting involved. So he gets into that some. And the dangerous cause, he addresses, of not enduring is that of growing weary. faint-hearted, that weariness can set in, this whole fainting aspect. It's a reality. And so how are we to endure and not faint from weariness? It's by looking to Jesus. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We're to consider Jesus, who endured from sinners such hostility. And so that could be coming, these hostilities from sinners. There's where some of the blood comes in, has come in from church history, and could then and could today. So we're to look to Jesus, and we cannot forget. I love how he draws our attention back to the scriptures, especially like the Proverbs. He said, you have forgotten Proverbs 3. And he quotes Proverbs 3 there in verses 5 and 6, speaking of this fatherly discipline, which led him to speak into this precious and needed blessing now of the discipline of God. If you're getting the discipline of God, that means He loves you. And that means you're also blessed. And in verse nine, he does this comparison with the earthly fathers and with the heavenly father. So he's dealing with the earthly aspect of who you are, and he's dealing with the spiritual aspect of who you are. And the earthly fathers, only they can help you or train you in physical earthly ways, and it's only for a little while, right? Most parents that have grown children say it seemed to go so fast. So your opportunity for disciplining them is just a short window, but it's not the case with God. He disciplines you on into your 20s and 40s and 60s, all the way to the end. He's your Father, and He disciplines you all the way. It's for the long haul, and this is a blessing. You remember how the Apostle Paul starts his letter to the Ephesians, where he says, in Christ, You have received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Well, one of these blessings is God's discipline in your life. More often than not, we think of the love and blessings of God as coming to us in this form of like a sweetness or like a heartwarming, moving comfort or even a joy, a spark of excitement, right? An encouragement. But there's a balance presented here that the fact is even the painful things or the disappointments or the losses or the trying and the heart aches. that come from God's discipline shows that He loves us. And these are forms of the blessing He's bringing into your life. And Alan, you're nodding, and you're probably thinking of James 1. Remember how James starts his letter? What did he say? He said right there in verses two and four, he said, count it all joy, my brethren, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces what? This steadfastness, this endurance, this going on. And he says, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. That's what's going on. So faith lays hold of the truth that God works all things together for good, for those who love him. And faith has to kick in when some things are hard, trying, disappointing, challenging, discouraging. That's when faith says God's working this for good. He's working it together for good. He has a purpose. And what is God's revealed purpose for our discipline? He tells us in verse 10. He disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness. That's the biggest deal of your life. That's the most important thing in your life. If God is working in you, that you may share in His holiness. Not just holiness, His holiness. You get to share in it, and this is the process. This is His way. God's sanctifying his children, right? He's going to set them apart. Esau, what? Did not get the discipline. Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. Jacob he hemmed in. He disciplined him. He even got him in the hip socket, right? He was limping. He shaped and fashioned him because he's sanctifying his children. He's preparing us to see him. to see God. He'll tell us in verse 14 that there's a holiness without which no one will see the Lord. He's preparing us to see Him. And so human fathers and mothers, they can only do so much, and they'll fail when it comes to this kind of work. And we have to realize that. I touched on that a little bit. This producing holiness is outside of our realm of capability or authority. We can't do it. But God does. See, He's sovereignly working in us through all these challenges, trials, circumstances that are difficult, or all these disciplines. He's working in us, producing all this good fruit in us. So we can, as parents, we can, how do you put it? We can tame, we can temper, or we can correct, we can train a child to some form of obedience. But we have to realize this is still a human work. This is a work of the flesh. This is still just a human achievement, so to speak. Some people may be proud that they've disciplined their children so well and they're perfectly obedient, but that's still a human level of obedience. So get this, no parent can work holiness into their child. So if you've been beating yourself up over the failures in this department, you can stop beating yourself up about that. Because that's what God does, and He will do. And the last thing I focused on was the question of how we can distinguish the discipline from God from just the common results common to mankind when they sin and mess up and do bad. How do I know I'm a real child of God receiving discipline from God and that he loves me? How do I know? And I believe verse 11 shows us that the key is the fruit. this peaceful fruit of righteousness. These are the unpleasant and the painful things in life in due time producing this peaceful fruit. As the patience starting to crop up, there's glimmers of more patience or more self-control, more gentleness, more love for the Lord. and more desire even to keep going. These peaceful fruits of righteousness start coming up. If they're not there, we'll see later, the bitterness starts setting in, then that's a telling sign as well. So the author, he's wrapping up this powerful and important aspect of our Christian life, namely, enduring all our hardships in this race, trusting our Father, Right, that he's working his holiness in us, and that he's shaping and fashioning us into the image of Christ. That's what he's doing, and we ought to be thankful. And he closes out this argument showing that we have to press on, and the only way we can do it is now come into the theme of these next two verses, with healthy hands, knees, and feet. Let's look at this again, verse 12 and 13. He says, therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees. He brings in this picture and he brings in the word therefore. Said it before, how important that word therefore is because he's taking all that he's just said and now he's bringing this into the how we're to live aspect. Based on all that, this is the result of how you should live. This is what you're gonna have to do. You have to do this. This is to live, and it's an expression that relates to the state of our hands, our knees, and our feet. Now remember, what he's doing is he's communicating spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. This is a spiritual reality about hands and knees and feet, not their physical hands and knees and feet. It's a spiritual reality. He is very pastoral. I just love how pastoral he is. And when you read it, you need to read it that way for you. Even God's pastoral heart for you through this man. He's pastoral, he cares about every single member of the church. And so often, what a good pastor should do is see the struggles, see the dangers, see what's going on and provide some remedies. and give instructions on what you need to do, how you need to make a change or shape your life differently, and this is what he does. Basically, a good pastor wants to preserve the flock, right? The strays, on the fringe, he wants to preserve them and get them back in closer. So those that are straying or drifting are the ones with the hands and the knees and the feet problems. And so when it comes to our endurance in this pilgrimage, that's what we have to have to be healthy. And so I wanted to camp out on a little bit here, because I think we need to get this. Think about the hands. The imagery is that of hands that are drooping. That's what the ESV says. We're hanging down. Or you could say feeble or weak, but drooping. You think of your hands drooping. I kind of get the idea of like your hand, if you're just like lifted up and just go, you know, come on. It's just, it's drooping. It's flat, it's fallen flat. And this is a danger for the church. This is a danger when we become this way. Let's just say if you're in a race, if your hands are drooping, that's a bad sign, isn't it? Or if you're hanging down, like this is a race, man. You can't have your hands just droopy, hanging, sagging down, weak, feeble. Now, if you're in a wrestling or boxing match, this is even a worse sign, isn't it? You're in a fight, you're in a boxing match, and you got your hands down? See, that's a really bad sign. So just think of it from the physical and the spiritual truths. What if you, let's say, what would your life be like if you had no hands? Let's just say you got an arm up to this point and no hands, none of them, either one. Would that be trouble? Would that be a challenge? Would that be a problem? Yeah. I mean, you can see that. This is speaking in a spiritual way about these spiritual hands. Now, what would the scriptures refer to as our spiritual hands? Faith. Right? Faith is what lays hold of Christ, what lays hold of the gospel, lays hold of the promises, clings to him. Faith is what operates. Hands are active, in motion. You could say the same with our feet, our eyes. Faith operates this way. And so he's showing how dangerous it is for our faith to grow weak and ineffective. Because what chapter did we just come out of in chapter 11? The whole thing about faith. So this drooping, weak, feeble hands is showing ineffective faith. Drooping hands, it reflects this weariness, this tiredness. Just tired. Weary of what they're engaged in, or to be about, or active in. Faint or unprepared, just not ready. If your hands are down, droopy, you're not ready, right? For either defense or action. Your hands signify that. It means you're about to give up and cast off all hope of success. That's what it means. Now think about your knees. Is there anyone here that has or has ever had knee problems? There's a hand. My wife has had knee surgery. Heart knee, there's one. So this ought to translate. Even if you've not had knee problems, think of this. Is it debilitating? Now he says knees, plural. One knee, you got one knee. It's very debilitating. If you're competing or if you're just trying to live your normal life, it's hard to get around. or impossible, or all of a sudden, my hip is starting to hurt, and my spine, my alignment, my back's bothering me in ways it hasn't before. See, this is indicative of these knee problems, and so these weak knees, it can symbolize a couple of things. It can symbolize fear, or a total lack of courage. Right? Someone who's trembling with fear says their knees are knocking. You know that expression? Their knees are wobbly, they're knocking. They're so afraid or frightful, they have so little courage that it affects their knees. Makes their knees weak. And this is a problem. So it can also symbolize utter exhaustion. Now, if you're in a long-distance run, I know there's some long-distance joggers here. I respect those people, because it is not easy. You talk about, you can take a two-mile walk, that's one thing, but a two-mile jog is a whole other thing, much less the six-mile jogs people take. But that isn't that kind of the theme of this race. It's a long-distance one. It's long haul. Well, let me ask you, what happens when you start having knee failure, troubles, pains, or even knee exhaustion? We don't think often of how important these two joints between our feet and our torso are. They're vitally important. And when we're talking about races, long distance runs, I mean, if your feet are tired, that's one thing. If your lungs are burning hot, if you're sweating, I mean, that's something else. But when your knees start to go, can I get some nods? The race is about over, right? You're about to be done. You're about to be out of the race. I mean, anybody in a race, if you get a long distance runner, and they start going like this, you're done, you're out. So even just getting too weak, the knee's getting weak, this is the problem. So this is what he's showing us. If a person's spiritual hands and knees are in such bad condition, it should also tell us why. A good sports medicine doctor or coach, or trainer, they're gonna wanna diagnose this and say, why? Why are your hands so weak and why are your knees weakening at this point in the race? They're gonna wanna analyze this. Why so wobbly? Why the weakness? The simplest answer harkens back to verse one. What does he say? He said, you're holding on to too much dead weight in this race. You're not laying aside the sin that clings so closely or so easily besets you, that sin that's just hanging on, weighing you down. The way you're choosing to hang on to, those things, that you wanna grasp and lay hold of, maybe succeed in or keep enjoying that may not be sin. It's just a weight that's distracting you from the race, from the pilgrimage, from the importance of the continuous or consistent means of, I don't know, every church meeting possible. Your devotion time, your prayer, your commitment to serve and love the church, seeking first the kingdom. You got these weights you're holding on to. And then you got the other problem, it's the flip side of the coin, you got the sins, the besetting sins, those that cling so closely, you're not laying those aside. This is why. The encumbrances, the weights, and the baggage, and the sin will wear out your hands and knees. And it's too heavy, and you won't last. Not in this race. Are y'all hearing me? I'm not gonna take the time to go into all the things that that could be. You need to pray. You need to seek the Lord. What is it? What is it, Lord, that I'm just hanging on to that's dead weight, that's gonna kill my spiritual journey? Or what is it, what's the sin that so easily besets I'm not casting off? You seek the Lord in this because finishing this race is dead earnest. Right? Finishing this race matters infinitely more than these things you're holding on to. It means even infinitely, infinitely more than the sins you're continuing to indulge in. Finishing this race is blood earnest. It's all that matters. And you're not gonna make it. This is what he's saying. Your hands and feet, your knees, they cannot weaken and lose them. And so, the apostle's exhortation here, the apostle, the author, I've been reading a lot of Owen. And he calls him the apostle every time, because he's got his 32 reasons he thinks it's Paul. Anyway, we'll leave that aside. I think Luke was involved and maybe Apollos. I like seeing the three of them together. Come on, let's help this Hebrew people. What can we do? Anyway, don't let me distract you. This author's exhortation now is like any good trainer or coach, and especially pastor. He says, lift your drooping hands. Strengthen your weak knees, do it. Like do it, he's cheering you on, he's saying you gotta do it. Kind of like the cloud of witnesses too. They're probably saying something like that. Lift your drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees. Now I'll get to the feet in a minute. Because what he's doing in verse 12 is he's dealing with the inward, the inward frame of mind and heart. And what the feet have to do with are the outward, the way you live out there before God and mankind. You walk in life. So he says, lift your hands, strengthen your knees. Now if you're like me, maybe a little forgetful or slow to listen or pay too much, too close attention, you may be thinking, well how? Well, he's a good teacher and he's already been giving indicators of how. He's already been telling us how. And now he's saying, do it. I mean, he's thorough. And for example, he had just been saying, look to Jesus. This is a way to lift your hands and strengthen your knees, to consider Jesus. Now that's always the answer. It's always the first answer. Look to Jesus. When the race gets hard, the knees start wobbling, what are you to do? First thing, look to Jesus. It's Him. Remember, He's the one, He told us in chapter one, who upholds the universe. You think He can uphold your hands and knees? Yeah, He's the one. He's the one that angels worship, all of them. All the holy angels worship Him. He's the founder and finisher of the universe. perfecter of your faith. So this is gonna be found in him. Remember chapter two, in verse 18, he said, for because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to, that sweet little word, help. He is able to help those who are tempted. So there are many temptations along the way in this race, in this journey. But the big temptation in this context is to grow weary and to give up, to turn back. For the Hebrew audience, the biggest temptation probably was some of these weights. of holding on to their family's traditions, or respect, or their job, or some of these things that aren't bad, but they're gonna kill your race. You gotta look to Jesus. But there are many temptations. To turn back to Judaism, which is lame and powerless now, it's ineffective to help you, would be destruction. or to give in to the sin that so easily besets, to just say, I've had enough trying to run this race, I just like this too much, it's too fun, or too pleasurable, or too enjoyable, or it makes me feel better as a human, I don't know, whatever sin it is, and you give in. Your only source of strength comes from Jesus. And I love, I mean, I probably quoted the most from chapter four, right at the end there, verses 15 and 16, when he says, for we do not have a high priest. Now think of that, you have a high priest. He's critical to your pilgrimage, to your journey. We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Weak knees, feeble hands, he can sympathize. He knows, and he sympathizes. And he's one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. So what does he say? Let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. Now that's just so fundamental and important, that throne of grace. The prayer, the going to the throne of grace, it's not some abstract throne room or empty chair, like a king's chair up there somewhere. It has the king, Jesus, sitting on the throne. He's on the throne of grace. And we're to go to the throne of grace to seek him that we may what? Receive mercy, like when we've blown it. Like I'm having knee problems and hand problems, God did something really dumb or sinful. Mercy and find grace to help, to help. It may be that you're just, you're getting tired, you need help and you gotta go to the source of help and get that help in time of need. That's just what he says. So he himself, he is our strength, right? He's our food. Which does what? Strengthens us. He's our light. He's our hope. He's our peace. He's the lifter of our head. He's everything. And that's why he keeps drawing our attention back. Consider Jesus. Now he's also drawing a little morsel from Isaiah 35. You may have noticed some of you Bible scholars, here's a little quote from Isaiah 35.3. This is where this whole phrase comes from about weak hands and feeble knees. Isaiah 35.3, the prophet Isaiah said, strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. And he goes on to say, say to those who have an anxious heart, Be strong, fear not. That's why the knee knocking can come from fear and lack of courage. And be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance. With the recompense of God, he will come to save you. I love how he says, then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame man, the guy who has knees that don't work, the lame man shall do what? Leap like a deer. You're getting your strength. Not just a little strength to keep, but deer leaping strength. You're getting real strength and it's coming from God. It's the strength you need to make it. So this help from the Lord is gonna bring the healing referred to. And now you can move forward on the straight path. Now, that's the next part of the pastoral exhortation. Make straight paths for your feet, verse 13. See that? It says, and what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather healed. Make straight paths for your feet. So you can, in life, in your walk in life, you can turn any which way. You can even drift a little. That's usually what Satan wants, just veer off, just a little. That's all it takes. I mean, a hard left or a hard right, that's something else. We talked a little bit about that. You can turn left into this regarding lightly, this light disregard for the Lord's disciplines that he brings. Or you can make this hard right and sink into this weariness and depression and discouragement from the struggles and the pressures. Those are both mistakes. veering off the path as disciples of Christ, that we're disciples, we're going to be disciplined. We're followers of Christ. We're to follow our pioneer, our forerunner, the path he's charted. And it's a straight and narrow path. He even tells us it's a difficult path. He's honest about that. The way is narrow and hard. Isn't that what he says? and you're going to need your Lord. You're gonna need Him. You're gonna need faith, hope, and love. You're gonna have to have faith in Him, you're gonna have to hope in Him, and you're gonna have to love Him. Because if you don't, if one of these three break down, you're not gonna go to him or continue to trust him. So those things have to be there, that faith, hope, and love, all in Christ. It's that love that will have an empowering effect. It says, ah, like if a parent or child, they realize someone's in need, sometimes it's not their physical strength, it's that, ah, it's just that power that comes from, I love them, I'm gonna keep going. You hear stories of grandmothers lifting grand pianos and stuff. This surge, this power that comes, it's gonna come from your love for Christ, your faith in Him, your hope in Him. And that's gonna require obedience to Him. You got to do what He says. You say, wait a minute, obey my king? Yeah, imagine that. Obey your king. He's giving you instructions. He's giving you exhortations. He's giving you guidance. You've got to obey him. Chapter 5 spoke of that. In verse nine when he says, being made perfect, Jesus became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. See how connected faith is with obedience? Faith obeys, we obey him. So the following Christ requires obedience. And our obedience to God is called our walking before him. And obedience is what growing in discipline is all about. You discipline a kid, and all of a sudden they start obeying. You say, hey, you're maturing. You did what I said. The self-will, or the self-interest, the self-indulgence, all this self stuff yields obedience. And this is maturity, and this is what's required. Die to self. That's what take up the cross is all about. It's dying to self and obeying Jesus. Seeking first the kingdom. And he says paths in the plural. There's only one, one path, one true path to the city of the living God. I think the plural piece, true paths for your feet, because there's many people on the path. Your paths, your path. It's not some karma theology, right? We're all religions, like this big mountain. You're eventually going to get to the top. It's not that. There's one true path to the living God, the city, the heavenly Jerusalem. There's one path. And he said in verse 13, just make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. So this healing spoken of is so important because if you're on the wrong path, you know what's gonna happen to your spiritual hands and knees? They're gonna be busted up. utterly blown out, disjointed. Like it's an utter destruction regarding the race. You've got onto the wrong path. It's gonna kill you. It's gonna do that. It's gonna disjoint your knees, your hands. And this is what the author and every really faithful church member wants to help prevent for any one of us, is you getting off path. In other words, apostatizing, turning away, self-destruction. We want to do that for each other. And this idea of out of joint, what he says, it can also be translated as turned out of the way. I think the King James, New King James, others, turned out of the way, which is the same deadly result. You know, the entire gist of that book, Bunyan's book, The Pilgrim's Progress, was basically one thing, stay on the path. The first time I read it, I got that much out of it. I got a lot, but if one thing was glowing off the pages, it was this, stay on the path. Do not get off the path, no matter how pleasant the meadow looks. Even if the path gets hard, or the hill of difficulty, it's just stay on the path. But there's lions in the street. Stay on the path. You see, that's the whole framework of the book. And so it makes it so impactful. And the movement of our spiritual feet right here is now in focus, and this reveals how we're to live before God and man. And the author, he loves the scriptures, you can see that. That's probably why we love him. He loves Isaiah, he loves the Psalms, he loves the Proverbs, right? He had just quoted Proverbs 3 in verses five and six, and now he's gonna draw a little bit from Proverbs 4. You gotta go read Proverbs 4 later. It's so full of these fatherly exhortations. of his love and these sweet counsels of stay on the path. That's what Proverbs 4, a lot of it's about. But he says in Proverbs 4, ponder the path of your feet. Then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. You do that, you're gonna make it. You're gonna make it. And the Christian life involves, you know, in the church, a combination of the stronger and the weaker, right? And some of the weakness or the lameness can be from sin and failures or weak just from immaturity and inexperience. Paul speaks about this in Romans and 1 Corinthians, there's the stronger and the weaker. And Paul even had to correct Peter. in public because Peter's feet actually got off course just a little bit. Well, they made a hard left, actually, but Paul helped him. Paul stopped him and Barnabas. Barnabas was led astray by Peter's hypocrisy. Remember when James from Jerusalem sent the Jews down or up to Antioch? No, they always called it down. Everything's down from Jerusalem. Down to Antioch. And Peter started changing the way he's eating with people at the church fellowships. In Galatians 2.14, Paul said, when I saw that their conduct, Peter and Barnabas and the others, when their conduct was not, the ESV says, in step, in step with the gospel. We're talking about our feet. His feet were not in step with the truth of the gospel. It could be translated not straightforward or deviating from the truth, and Paul had to say something. He loved Christ, he loved the gospel, he loved Peter, he loved the church too much not to say something. So what I'm showing is this journey is something that we have together. And one major point in all of this is that when the stronger saints are walking in this straight path toward the goal, Those that have been injured or lame or weaker or immature, those brothers and sisters will follow more easily. And in that following, they're going to find healing. They're going to be strengthened of their hurts, their missteps, and all of that. And we're all going to make it together. So verse 13 includes this exhortation right here for our endurance. And next we're gonna, it'll shift his focus a little bit, more exhortations will come. So really chapter 12 to the end is a bunch of exhortations and combinations and illustrations like with Esau on the root of bitterness that's gonna cause trouble, but that'll be our focus next time. Father, take your word and cause it to come alive in us and bless us and help us. For the glory of Christ, for our perseverance to him, help us lay hold of this and help one another on. In Jesus' precious name I pray, amen.