verses one through four, hear now God's holy word. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely. Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Before the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." And thus far, the reading of God's holy word. We know last week that we are as Christians like runners in a race. Life in this world is not everything that there is. Life is just a race. We are running through this life to a much better life, to eternal glory. We also noted that we are to run the race that God has set before us. We know that some races are harder than others. We may want to run somebody else's race or quit our particular race, but we need to run the race that God has set before us. And we need to do so with great confidence. Just as the innumerable saints that have gone before us finished their race and now enjoy glory, so we too can finish our race and then enjoy glory. And that's because the same God who worked in them is at work in us. And that is why we can know for sure that no matter how hard our race is, we can and we will finish it. Well, this morning we want to consider three more ways we are to run the race that God has set before us. And the first is this, we are to run without any burdens. When you are struggling in the middle of a race, a long race like a marathon, the last thing you want to do is to make running that race harder than it has to be. You wouldn't, for example, stop in the middle of that race and put on a belt weighing 30 pounds and then keep going. You wouldn't do that at all. And if you happen to be carrying a 30-pound weight around your waist or on your back, you would stop and take it off so you could run as easily as possible. Now, of course, it's true that runners will train with weights to increase their strength and stamina, but they would be foolish to wear those weights while they are running the race, at least if they want to run to win. And of course, athletes, as they train, they will want, before they race, shed any excess body weight by diet and exercise so that they are in optimal condition to run to win. Being 20 pounds overweight will make running a marathon all that harder. A runner wants to be as light as possible. no weight bags or belts, no extra body fat, and no bulky clothing. When you run to win, you run without any burdens. And this is what the athletes did in the first century, the time in which this letter was written. After they would train for their race, they would enter the stadium wearing their long, flowing, and colorful ropes, And before they would line up for the start of the race, they would remove their robes and they would race practically naked. They truly did run without any excess burdens. And it's this image that the author of Hebrews uses in verse one to describe how we are to run the Christian race. When he says, let us also lay aside every weight. We need to get rid of whatever makes our race harder to run, even if that thing is good in and of itself. We need to throw it to the side so it doesn't slow us down, so it doesn't lead to a hard race, which then makes us discouraged and maybe even want to quit. Whatever it is, whatever makes it hard for us to trust and obey Jesus in this life, that thing needs to go. In Proverbs 30, Agur asked the Lord to give him neither poverty nor riches, lest he be full and deny the Lord, or poor and steel, and so profane the name of his God. Agger is not saying that it's sinful to be poor or wealthy, and that you need to be kind of middle class. In fact, Agger could have asked for the ability to use poverty or wealth rightly. But he doesn't because he knows his own particular frailties and tendencies. And he wants to avoid anything that would personally tempt him or lead him away from serving the Lord. So what are your particular frailties or tendencies? What are your burdens that you need to discard? As one commentator put it, they could be career ambitions, hobbies, associations, and friendships, habits and preoccupations. And any of these sorts of things may or may not be a burden to you. and what is a burden to you may not be a burden to me, and vice versa. The point is simply this, is that you need to identify your burdens, not his or hers or theirs, but yours, and you need to get rid of those. Now if I were to venture a guess, spending time at the synagogue or hanging out too much with their old friends who are not Christians might have been the burdens plaguing or weighing down these Hebrew Christians. Now remember, the recipients of this letter were Hebrew Christians and they were being tempted to forsake Jesus and the church and to go back to the synagogue, to go back to a Christless Old Testament, if you will. And no doubt, spending a lot of time with their old friends, those whom they grew up with in the synagogue, would not have helped them in this regard. Because, of course, their friends would have been encouraging them to leave Jesus and to come back home. Look, you were one of us, and you left, and you need to come back home. This is where you belong. Don't you remember all the good times that we had? And no doubt, their rabbi, as they would spend time in the synagogue, would present to them all sorts of persuasive arguments of why they need to leave Jesus and leave the church and come back to the synagogue. And you combine all of that with the fact that for them, at that juncture in their life, following Christ was kind of troublesome for them. And also, they probably had issues with some people in the church, which made going to church maybe not so pleasant. You combine all of that, and now you have a real problem. The race for them has become increasingly difficult, because now they have their friends, their old friends, their old teacher, encourage them to leave Jesus. which is now hard to follow, who's now hard to follow, and to leave all of that behind and go back to the synagogue into a Christless Old Testament. Now, of course, it would not have been wrong in and of itself for these Hebrew Christians to visit their lifelong friends or to even talk to their rabbi or visit the synagogue. It wasn't wrong for athletes to wear their long flowing robes in the race. But if it's burdensome to you, if it's making it hard for you, it's stupid, it's foolish to do it. So even though something is good and okay to do, if it's weighing you down, if it's leading you astray, if it's making your race really difficult, get rid of it. Let us also lay aside every weight. run without any burdens. The second thing we need to do is to avoid entanglements. Another thing we don't want to do while we are running our race is to get tripped up. Verse one says that we are to lay aside sin, which clings so closely. The idea here seems to be that sin clings so closely that it entangles you. Think of that long, flowing robe wrapped tight around your legs. Sin will then be like that, cling so closely that it will hinder you from running and even trip you up as you try to run. Some of you might remember back in the 1980s, two famous women long distance or middle distance runners by the name of Mary Decker, the American, and the South African Zola Budd. They were going to race against each other in the 1984 Olympics. And Mary Decker, the American, was the favorite to win the gold medal. But unfortunately, during the middle of the race, the two collided together. And Zola Budd knew that she wouldn't be able to beat the other runners in the sprint to the finish. And so she started to pick up the pace in the race. And when she passed Decker and moved into the inside lane, the two collided. And Decker ended up tripping and falling to the inside of the track. She hurt her hip and could not continue the race. She didn't just lose the gold medal, she lost the silver, the bronze, she lost it all. She lost her dream because she couldn't finish the race. When you are running to win, you want to avoid any and all entanglements. You don't want to be impeded or tripped or thrown off the track. But that is what sin will do to you as you run the race that God has set before you. It will mess up your race, and it will mess you up in the process. You see, sin will deceive you, as the author has already talked about. It will weaken your faith, which you need to run. As we've noted many times in chapter 11, you run by faith. and sin will damage your relationship with God. You know, as you consider the scriptures, we see how the love of money pushed Judah down, tripped him up. Love of this world threw Demas off the track. Adultery, then murder, entangled King David. Solomon says that if we conceal our sins, if we hide them, we indulge in them and hide them, we will not prosper. And the Psalm says that if we cherish sin in our hearts, the Lord will not hear us. See, that's what sin does, it disrupts our relationship with our Father in heaven. God will not be pleased with us. He will be displeased with us. And what is more, if we are indulging in sin and covering it up and hiding it and enjoying it, we will tend to run away from God instead of to God. And we need to run to God if we're going to run the race with endurance to the end. I mean, if you know you're doing something that God hates, your conscience is bothering you, you know it. and yet you refuse to repent of it, then guess what? You're not gonna pray, you're not gonna wanna come to church, because then your conscience is gonna really bother you. And even if you do come to church, and even if you do pray and worship God, all those things will quickly turn to lifeless prayer and worship. You will go through the motions You will have the image of being close to God. Your lips might be near God, but your heart should be far from him. Because you know deep down in your heart that you are offending your father in heaven. And like King David, when he was in the grip of his sin, his body ached, as it were, and he lost the joy of his salvation. That's what sin does. It will make your race hard. Think about what anger and bitterness can do to a person. We have just started a science school lesson on that very topic. and anger and bitterness can grow and grow and take root in a person's body and soul and slowly turn that person into a cold, hard, and bitter human being. And before you know it, that person is dead, both to God and to other people around them. See, sin can mess you up and throw you off track. So don't indulge it. And if you do, then repent, even as David did, and turn back to the Lord. And remember, as we've learned in this book, we have a great high priest, not just a high priest, but a great high priest who is able, truly able to bring us to God, whose blood truly does cleanse us from all sin, who atones for every transgression, who is able to lead us to our God. In Him we have forgiveness and cleansing and grace, renewal and strength. In Him we have the power to get back up and to keep running with endurance. And so if you do get tripped up, and you will, if you do get pushed off the track, and you will, then get back up and back on the track. Don't let sin have the last word. Don't let sin mess up your race and mess you up too. Avoid any and all entanglements. The third thing we need to do as we run our race is to look to Jesus. We want to run without any burdens, we want to avoid entanglements, And we want to fix our eyes on Jesus. I've said before that as I was growing up, Nova Scotia, I was a cross country ski racer. And when you cross country ski, you have to go up hills, not just down hills or in flats, you gotta go up hills. And that's the hardest part. And as you're charging up a hill, it's easy to get tired and to think about the pain that you feel in your legs. And as you're having a hard time going up that hill, your head kind of naturally just goes down and looks at your skis. But our teacher taught us to look up and look ahead to where you're going, because that helps drive your momentum forward and upward. If you're focused downward, it kind of impedes your forward momentum. So when you're going up the hill, be sure to look up and look ahead and let that kind of drive you forward to the top of the hill. Well, in the Christian race, we need to, especially when it's hard, we need to look up and look ahead and fix our eyes on Jesus. Verse two says that we are to run by looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. What a great statement. The founder and perfecter of our faith. And it's full of meaning. And first of all, that statement refers to the fact that Jesus is our leader, who has blazed the trail for us to God. Again, as a cross-country skier in Nova Scotia, some races that we went to, the track had not been set. And this might have been because this is Nova Scotia and the East Coast way out there, the boondocks as it were, we didn't have the right equipment back in those days to set a track. Or sometimes it was due to the fact that there was a heavy snowfall the night before and so all the new snow covered the track that had been set. Now, in those kinds of races, it's a serious handicap to race at the front of the race, because then you have to set your own track. You have to expend a lot more energy going through that new snow. And so what would happen is that one or two non-racers would ski the trail and set the track for everybody else to follow. They would be the trailblazers. They would blaze trails so it would make it easier for everybody else behind them to race. Well, when you fix your eyes on Jesus, you need to see Jesus as your trailblazer. Our way to God, of course, was barricaded, not by snow, but by sin, by death, by the evil one. But Jesus has come to us and he has destroyed sin, death, and Satan by his own death and resurrection. He has accomplished salvation for us. The road has been made. The trail has been blazed for us now to go to God. And this was an especially relevant point for the Hebrew Christians. because as we noted already, they were tempted to go back to Moses without Christ. And so instead of seeing Jesus as the trailblazer, as the pioneer, as the one who brings us to God, they were looking to the law of Moses. They were looking to the priests in Jerusalem and their animal sacrifices in the temple, all those things to lead them to God. They're looking to the law then to blaze the trail for them so they could go to God. But the only one who can lead you to God, the only one who can bring you to God is Jesus. He alone is the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to God except through him. And so as you run, you need to look to Jesus and see that your path is clear. You need to see that he has saved you. He is saving you and will save you. You need to see that now there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, that nothing will separate you from the love of God. You need to see Jesus as he has gone before you and as he is now, as the author says in chapter two, leading many sons to glory. He is leading you to glory. So as we focus our eyes on Jesus, we see our trailblazer. He is the founder perfecter of our faith. The second thing though that that statement teaches us is that Jesus is our example. Now in chapter 11, all those saints that are mentioned also serve as examples of how we are to run the race by faith to the end. But Jesus is the example par excellence. Because he alone lived in complete and perfect trust and dependence upon God. All the saints mentioned in chapter 11 had their faults and their failures, like you read about concerning King David. But Jesus ran the race set before him flawlessly. And in so doing, he serves as the example of how you are to run your race, how you are to live your life. But what is more, we could say that Jesus is the person that we all ultimately follow. He is the one who brings many sons to glory. Not Abraham, not Aaron, not Moses, not Joshua, not your pastor, Jesus. And so we follow him, we imitate him. In a ski race, If I'm racing my race, and we often would start at different intervals. And so I would go, for example, then two minutes later, another racer would go after me. And as I'm racing, sometimes the guy behind me is faster and he will pass me. Now when he passes me, I will try to follow him and stay right behind him. He will motivate me to keep going. Sometimes you realize you don't know how fast you can go until somebody passes you who's faster. And you're encouraged to keep following him. Now both of us, both the guy who passed me and myself, we are following the trailblazer who was already established and completed the course in the same way. In the Christian life, we might imitate or follow the example of godly leaders like the Apostle Paul, but we only follow them insofar as they are following Christ, the trailblazer. If the person in front of you veers off the track, don't you dare follow them. Because you're not ultimately following them, you're following Jesus. And sometimes, golly, Christians and leaders like David will veer off the path. But don't imitate them. Don't go down that road. Stay on the track because your eyes are fixed, not on Moses, not on Paul, but on Jesus. Well, how then do we imitate him? How is he our example? Well, verse two says, 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. Jesus endured his suffering and he disregarded the shame that accompanied his crucifixion because he kept his eye on the joy that was before him, on the joy that would be one day his on the other side of his suffering. And so the present hardship and pain was endured because of the future reward. which he now has, as we read there in verse two, that he's now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. How do you cope with chronic pain, with pain that is constant? Many years ago, one of my sons had to deal with that very question. And while we were in Kentucky, we traveled to Cincinnati on a regular basis to learn how to do that. And one of the techniques, excuse me, that he learned was to lie down, to close his eyes and to focus on a pleasant place like a beach. And to help him do this, when the pain became unbearable, his teacher recorded a message talking to him about the beach, which he could listen and to help him deal with what he was going through. Well, in the midst of his suffering, Jesus did something similar. Now, he didn't visualize the beach, but he visualized in his mind's eye the joy that would be his, that he would experience at the right hand of God the Father and with his people in the new heavens and the new earth. He focused, as it were, on the light at the end of the tunnel. And that helped him endure his present suffering. And now he is in glory. But we're not yet in glory. We're on the way, but we've not yet arrived. And so there are gonna be moments in our life that we will have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And to help us make it through those moments, we need to imitate Jesus by visualizing the prize, the joy that is set before us. And we do that when we actually fix our eyes on Jesus who is enthroned on high. You don't need to visualize him on the cross, visualize him sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. as the one who has conquered sin and death, who's now in glory. Because when you do that, you not only see Jesus enthroned, you see the prize, the reward, the gracious reward that will be yours when you finish your race. Because as we follow Jesus and persevere to the end, we are going, as incredible as it sounds, we're going to enjoy the same joy and exaltation that he now presently enjoys and experiences. 2 Timothy 2.12 says, if we endure, we shall also reign with him. And Jesus says in Revelation 3 in verse 21, To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. You have no idea the joy that awaits you at the finish line. But picture it, visualize it, and run towards it, just like Jesus did. Now, if our future reward seems a little too distant, a little too far over the horizon to help us in our present hardship, then one thing that we can do is to take time to compare and to contrast our race with the one that Jesus had to run. You know, when our race does take a turn for the worse, we do tend to compare our lot with those who have it better than us. We then begin to think that our situation is much more worse than it really is because all we see is, wow, it's so much better for them, look at me. But in times like these, you need to compare your situation with those who have it worse than you to get a little perspective And there are lots of people in this world who have it worse than you and me. Some of the saints of Hebrews 11 had it pretty rough. I mean, some were song and tune. But more to the point, we ought to contrast and compare the race that we have to run with the one that Jesus had to run. This is what the writer of Hebrews wanted his readers to do in verses three and four. Jesus, of course, because he took his sins upon us, upon him, had to suffer much more than we will ever after suffer. And at the very height of his suffering, Jesus was forsaken by his Father, by the Father. When you and I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, at the very height of our suffering, the Lord's rod and staff, they comfort us. Jesus says he will never leave us or forsake us. You will always have that encouragement, that comfort. That's what Jesus didn't have. He was utterly alone when he felt the full weight of God's wrath for our sins. And when seen in this light, our race will not seem so bad. In fact, your race won't seem as bad when you look at what other Christians in the past have had to endure or what some Christians are presently enduring around the world. And like the original recipients of this letter, we haven't had to die in our struggle against sin. That can't be said for Christ or for numerous Christians. So when things are hard, broaden your horizon, look at what Christ went through for you, and look at the more difficult races that other Christians have had to or are running. When the going gets tough, the tough get some perspective. Well Christian, you are a runner in a race. The race you are running is the most important race you will ever run. You have everything to lose if you quit, but everything and more to gain if you finish. So run without any burdens, avoid any entanglements, and run by looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of your faith. Let us pray. Lord, our God, we do pray you'd help us and enable us to run the race that you've set before us, that we would lay aside every weight, that we would avoid the sin which clings so closely, and that we would run with endurance to the end by looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.