Let's have open this morning Hebrews chapter 11 and we're going to look at the last part of Hebrews 11 and the opening few verses of Hebrews 12 but also to have a finger or a marker in our second Bible reading, our Old Testament reading this morning which is Psalm 40 and you might think why has Psalm 40 been given in conjunction with the reading from Hebrews 11. We'll come to that later but Psalm 40 is a great psalm of faith and Christ as the great exemplar of faith lives, so to speak, in Psalm 40 and we'll come to see how that works out for us a little later. The main thing that we'll be saying today is this, that faith as the writer to the Hebrews has been talking about it in these chapters, faith looks beyond itself and faith looks beyond its circumstances to God who is faithful. That's the fundamental point that he's been emphasising all the way through. Faith looks beyond itself and beyond its circumstances to God who is faithful. But the second thing that comes as a consequence of that and which gives that even sharper focus is this, Christ is the revelation of God the Father. He is the express image of the invisible God, the exact representation of his nature, the one who holds all things together by the word of his power and because Christ is the express image of the Father, He is in his flesh and bones, in his words but even more in his work. He is the revelation of the faithfulness of God to his covenant promises. And so it is not simply that we look to God in some general sense who is faithful, that our faith looks beyond ourselves and our circumstances to God. But because of who Jesus Christ is, and because of what Jesus Christ has done, faith looks particularly to Him. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, or the originator and completer of your faith, however your translation handles that. So, we're talking this morning about faith which is looking to Jesus. Faith is seeing the unseen. Faith is walking by faith, not by sight. But what we do see is Jesus and in looking to Him our faith finds its goal and its completion. He is the revelation in human flesh and bones of God's covenantal faithfulness And so the writer of the Hebrews says, throwing aside every encumbrance, let us run with patience, having our eyes fixed on him. As you know, in the olden games, the athletes used to run with no encumbrances. You see the athletes running today, it's almost as though they have no encumbrances, but the athletes then, who were all male, they didn't have female athletes, would run naked. and they would not have anything that would tangle them up and trip them over. And one of the things that God purposes to do in the life of his people is to rid us of those things which tangle us up and trip us over. Because in the end, as we learn elsewhere in the scriptures, we bring nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of the world and all of the things that we think we own and possess in this world, if we think we get our life from them, they trip us up, they tangle us up and they make us topple over. So the writer to the Hebrews here in Hebrews chapter 11 has been talking about this great reality of faith all the way through. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence or conviction of things not seen. And while he brings many examples of faith from Abel onwards, the bulk of Hebrews 11, as we've seen, is focused on Abraham and then on Moses. After he's dealt with Abraham and Moses as the two great sort of covenant heads in Old Testament, the covenant of Abraham and the covenant of Moses, he's shown both men and therefore both covenants had to be entered into by faith He then comes in verse 30 to what seems at first glance to be a ragtag and rather random collection of names from the Old Testament. He mentions the walls of Jericho falling down in verse 30. He mentions Rahab the prostitute and then he lists others, Gideon, Barak, Samson. We are not going to go through all of those today because you can find out lots of information about them in the Old Testament. You can read their stories and if you're familiar with their stories, you'll find that much of what he speaks about in the following verses relates to them, like, from their weakness they were made strong. Well, that's Samson, wasn't it? Shut the mouths of lions. Well, that could be Samson, but it could also be Daniel and those in the lion's den. Conquered kingdoms, well that could be David. But then you get others a little later on who seem not to be mentioned in the Old Testament but were well known. By faith they were sown in two. And early tradition suggests that that was actually what happened to Isaiah the prophet. that he was placed within a hollow log and he was sawn in two, or some suggest that he was sawn in two with a wooden saw. Whichever way you go, it's not going to be pleasant, is it? But by faith he endured, and indeed in one of the old rabbinic traditions it says that while that was happening to him, it says, or the tradition says, he uttered no threats but his lips moved constantly in prayer by the Holy Spirit. But he died by faith. So these people are a collection of others from the Old Testament, from the traditions that the people knew, right up to the day of the Hebrew's own contemporaries and it's a collection which illustrates the same point that people live by faith which looks beyond themselves and their circumstances to the faithfulness of God. Now, if we were to go through each of these in detail, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah and so forth, you would find that each of those, David, Moses, Abraham himself, each of those had deep flaws, deep moral crises, deep failures and anyone who reads the Old Testament can sometimes be embarrassed by the way in which the Old Testament doesn't gloss over any of that. Indeed, in some cases it seems to make a very pointed magnification of those flaws and failures as in the story of Jacob. Jacob almost is magnified as a slippery eel, a snake in the grass type figure and sometimes we can read the stories of Jacob and we squirm and think how can God be merciful to him? Well, you only have to ask the question, how can God be merciful to you? And you've got the answer. Because the point that is being made in the Old Testament throughout the stories of the patriarchs and here in Hebrews chapter 11, the point that's being made by mentioning these people, and in each they were subject to deep foolishness at various points in their lives. The point that's being made is that their faith did not look to themselves. Faith of which the writer is speaking here, not positive thinking type wacky faith which seems to be high on the billboards today, but the true faith of which the writer is speaking here does not have an origin within us. True faith is not an expression of the moral righteousness of people who've got it all together compared to those people who are sinners and don't have it all together. True faith has its origin outside of us and its goal beyond us and so we have God who is the author of faith now revealed in Jesus Christ as the author of our faith. And God, who's the perfecter of our faith, now revealed in Jesus Christ, who's the perfecter or completer of our faith. But the way in which the writer uses these illustrations is not to set them up as some sort of heroic figures who have great moral capacities which innately enable them to draw something from within themselves, to exercise great faith that somehow God blesses. No, it's the opposite. It's saying these people are of the same sum and substance as the rest of us And the God who has come and spoken to them, who's called, who's revealed himself, who's drawn them on, who's commanded, it's that God whose faithfulness they've seen, it's drawn them out of themselves, out of their circumstances, out of their weaknesses and sins and failures and inabilities, and they've trusted Him. And so they are witnesses to faith. One of the things that's notable about this collection of people in the last part of Hebrews chapter 11 is that by faith their lives ended in contradictory outcomes. We have in the churches today very often a language of faith which puts faith in the victory basket. By faith we're going to overcome, by faith we're going to conquer, by faith I'm going to stand against this disease. And that fits some of these people. By faith they conquered kingdoms because they were commanded. By faith they were strengthened from weakness because that's what God gave them to do. But by faith they also died. By faith they were rejected. By faith they were sown in two. By faith they lost their lives as well as by faith in some instances they gained their lives. So you can't look at the outcome and say, oh, David who conquered kingdoms, there he was operating by faith. Isaiah who was sown in two, he was a bit of a wuss and wasn't very victorious. Both of those live by faith and in the end both of them have to go to glory by faith. So the outcome is not what's in view here, Because from the writer of the Hebrews point of view, what he's arguing here and what he wants us to understand so clearly is that the outcome of our life is not measured in this life. If you were to just measure the outcome of the life of any of these people of faith by what happened in this life, it would be a fairly meagre harvest. But the outcome of the life of the people of God is actually found in eternity. So faith looks beyond itself, beyond its circumstances, beyond the life that is lived here in the seen world and it looks to that life which is to come. Abraham seeks for a city whose maker and builder is God. Abraham looks for something beyond his own lifetime and beyond his expectations or the expectations that you would gain from this seen life. Faith itself always draws us on beyond the circumstances and events of this life to eternity. So that takes us to a realm in which faith speaks in a way that is so different from the way in which we hear faith in inverted commas spoken of in many situations today. Faith often is spoken of today as something that you can use or manipulate to get something that you need in this life. Like, do you want a million dollars? Well, if you only exercise faith in the proper way, you can have it. Well, dear Isaiah obviously didn't know the secret. Dear Paul didn't know it. The faith that is rooted and grounded in God and in the covenant faithfulness of God by its very nature is going to be a faith which takes us beyond anything that this world offers and anything that this world is because we are not destined for this world as it is. We are destined for a new creation and a new heaven and a new earth and new inheritance which is reserved in heaven for us as Peter says, which is imperishable and undefiled and unable to fade away But none of that is related to what you see here and if you think the inheritance is going to be what you see here, it will tangle you up and trip you over and Christ will be a stumbling block because he will get in the way of what you want to achieve here in this life. So these people who are mentioned in this chapter, a writer therefore identifies as witnesses to faith. Now seeing therefore, he says in verse 1 of chapter 12, we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses and that does not mean we are surrounded by a great cloud of spectators. It does not mean that we are running on a track and all these people looking down at us, clapping from the sidelines These people are actual participants in what he's describing here as a race of faith and they're fixed with their eyes set on the end point. And so the cloud of witnesses, they're not witnesses to us as we're jogging along, they are witnesses to faith. They're not spectators of us making our journey But if we could put it this way, they and we together have been brought out. Remember we said at the beginning of this series of Hebrews that there's a new exodus that's taking place. We all together, Abraham and all of his descendants, we are, we have been exodused, we have been brought out and we're being led on by the great shepherd, Jesus Christ. and we're travelling through now what is not our dwelling place but which is currently trying to pull us aside to make it seem as if it's our dwelling place and we're being drawn on all together to the city whose maker and builder is God and as we're travelling along all together on that great Exodus journey to the resting place which is still to come, to the rest which remains for the people of God, As you look around that, you're surrounded by witnesses, all witnessing to the faith that manifests itself in the faithfulness of God or the faithfulness of God causes to be manifest in our life. So in your mind's eye, you can see this great caravan of holy ones as we sing sometimes in the song, making their way along and there somewhere at the head of the caravan, there's Abraham. and he made it by faith. And then a bit closer to us in history is David. He's in the same caravan of holy ones and he's had to go by faith. And then right up close to us is Henry Smith and he's had to make it by faith. We've all had to make it by faith. So the witnesses are not so much spectators which would put us in an invidious position but they are witnesses to faith, they are not witnesses to us. And among those witnesses to faith, and chief among the witnesses to faith, is Jesus Christ. Fixing your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. Now the writer in Hebrews chapter 12 speaks about Jesus in two ways. On the one hand he speaks about Jesus as the originator, the author, the completer of our faith, but on the other hand he also speaks about Jesus as a man who's had to live by faith and die by faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross. Now if you think about it, that has been the pattern all the way through Hebrews. On the one hand you have a proclamation of Jesus Christ which sets him above and beyond us. In many portions and in many ways he spoke to our forefathers, the prophets, but in these last days he's spoken to us by his Son through whom he made the world and who is the heir of all things. He upholds all things by the word of his power and this one who is the exact representation of his nature, the outshining of his glory, he's come and he's made purification for sins and he's seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly places. And so much of Hebrews is about Christ seated at the right hand of God and Christ as the great high priest in whom we trust and Christ as the great intercessor who intercedes for us as we travel along this journey to the resting place. So, you've got that thread which runs all the way through Hebrews but then you've also got the parallel thread that runs all the way through Hebrews. that he seeing the children shared in flesh and blood, he also likewise partook of the same. That he through death might render powerless him who has the power of death, even the devil. That this Jesus whom we look to and whom we worship is the incarnate Jesus who has actually stood among us and who himself in his human life lives by faith. He is the one who has had to learn obedience through what he's suffered. That is the one who's had to learn to trust God as he walks on this earth by faith. He's the one who's had to go to the cross by faith in the promise of God. He's the one who's had to go into the tomb by faith in the promises of God. And so the Jesus who is the author and perfecter of our faith on the one hand, is also the Jesus who is the great exemplar of how faith works on the other hand, and both of those go together. He is the great High Priest over us who intercedes for us, but in another sense He is the Great Shepherd who travels with us and shares fellow substance with us and who understands us and we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathise with us because He Himself has been made flesh and blood and He shares all of the temptations that we share and He's never given in to them by faith. Now, we read as an Old Testament reading, Psalm 40. Just turn back to that. Psalm 40 is actually not quoted in Hebrews chapter 11 or 12. Psalm 40 has been quoted in Hebrews, particularly in chapter 10, verse 4 and following. Behold, I have come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, I have come to do your will, O God. And Psalm 40 is a psalm of faith, a psalm of trust in God. It's a psalm of how God sustains his servant and while it may originally have come from the pen or the quill or the stylus of David, It has come to apply beyond itself to Jesus Christ. It is one of those Psalms which is taken out of the New Testament and whose glory and destiny is seen in the Messiah, in Jesus Christ himself. And while you can read therefore Psalm 40 in the context perhaps of David's own life, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined my ear." So also you could read this, so to speak, on the lips of Jesus and he in his earthly life as the great exemplar of faith has had to wait patiently for the Lord. That is his father who has inclined his ear and heard his cry. He has been lifted up out of the pit of destruction He is the one who's had his feet set upon a rock. He's the one who's had a new song put in his mouth. But as you go through, you find in verse 4 that the man who places his trust in the Lord is blessed and he's not turned to the proud or those who lapse into idolatry or falsehood. So Christ himself did not put his trust in princes in the proud of the world and he guarded his heart in his worship all the way through. Remember right at the beginning of his public ministry the devil said to him, just bow down and worship me and I will give you all the kingdoms of this earth. And then in verse 6, which is quoted earlier in Hebrews chapter 10, sacrifices and so forth, you've not desired, ears you have opened, my ears you have pierced, one translation says, another says literally ears you have dug for me, as I've come into the world, it's applied to Jesus in Hebrews chapter 10, as I've come into the world, the only thing I've come to do is to hear your voice. The only thing I've come to do is to understand your will and I delight to do that will. In the volume of the book it is written of me that I delight to do it and I'm testifying that I delight to do that will and the joy of doing that will is set before me and the joy of going to that inheritance is set before me. So the joy of doing your will is set before me even as I go to the cross, it surrounds me and so Verse 9, I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation. Who is the great preacher of faith amongst the people of God is Christ himself. He has not restrained his lips, verse 9. He has not hidden the Lord's righteousness within his heart. He has spoken of God's faithfulness and salvation. He has not concealed a loving kindness. Well, that's a negative statement. Certainly Jesus did not conceal God's loving kindness. He revealed it. He opened it up and he has been the subject of the Lord's compassion and he's been preserved by God's faithfulness and truth and when evils beyond number encompassed him with the cross and when iniquities had overtaken him, it says, my iniquities have overtaken me so that I'm not able to see. Have you ever been in that situation? Well, if you haven't been, you probably haven't understood the conviction of sin, righteousness and judgement. But Christ of course had no iniquities of himself to bear, but he bore the iniquities of the world. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And as he bore those iniquities, they became as his. He who knew no sin was made sin on our behalf, so in a sense they could say they are my iniquities. He was owning them, not because he had committed them, but he was standing with us and for us under them and they had overtaken him on the cross, more numerous than the hairs of his head. Unbelievable weight of sin that he bears on the cross and the Lord delivers him and those who stand by at the cross say, ah ha, ah ha, looking for Jesus are looking for God to save you, are you? Well let's see if you can come down from the cross. And they are the ones who are put to shame. So Psalm 40 is a great expression of what it means to live by faith. But because Psalm 40 has already been quoted in Hebrews chapter 10 as applying to Jesus Christ, we can take Psalm 40 as the great exemplar of a man who lives by faith and say this is the way Christ has had to live. As he lived his life on earth, as he went to the sacrifice of the cross, he was surrounded by joy. He was surrounded by the faithfulness of God and he delighted to do the Lord's will in those events and by faith he looked to God to give him that inheritance. And the writer of the Hebrews is saying, look to him. You look to him in both these ways. As you look to him, you see who God is and Christ becomes the author of faith in God. And as you look to him, you see who God is and Christ becomes the completer or the perfecter of your faith in God and he keeps you right up until that last day. But as you look to him, you don't see some abstract God a million light years away on a throne, you actually see the man Jesus who himself has had to walk every step of his human existence by faith and who at the right hand of God now as the great high priest still trusts God the Father to fulfil his promise which is I will give the nations as your inheritance, the ends of the earth as your possession." And so Christ stands among us today as the great preacher. I have not restrained my lips from declaring your righteousness, Christ says. I'll proclaim your name in the midst of the assembly, the great congregation, And as Christ stands in the midst of his church, this church here this morning, his people throughout the world, that flock for which he's died, that flock which he has gathered together so that there would be one sheep and one shepherd, one shepherd and one flock, Christ stands in the midst of them. All around the world he stands as the great preacher. And wherever you or I hear a word that has the witness of the Spirit in our hearts that says, Amen, and that rouses us out of ourselves and causes us to cast off the sin which so easily entangles, and causes us to run with endurance the race that's set before us, and to have our eyes fixed on Christ the author and perfecter, wherever that happens, Christ has done it. You can't do it. So you have to hear His voice. And today, if you're hearing his voice, don't harden your hearts. Today, if you're hearing his voice, don't get tangled up because there's an inheritance set before you that he's leading you to and he is the great exemplar of how you come to it. So consider him who endured the hostility of sinners. Consider him who conquered kingdoms by faith and who died by faith. Consider him who spiritually speaking shut the mouths of lions and consider him who spiritually speaking was sawn in two by a sword of judgement on the cross. Consider him and hear his voice. And let that voice rouse you out. Paul says in one place, Awake, O sleeper! Rise from the dead and the light of Christ will shine on you. And if you're trotting along and you think it's all too hard, Christ himself stands with you to bring you there. You might not remember because it's been so long since we started this series on Hebrews. But at the beginning I said this, we need to read the whole of Hebrews with Hebrews 1, 1-4 on one side of us and Hebrews 13, 20-21 on the other side of us. Because the whole of Hebrews is between those things. Hebrews 1, verses 1-4 is that passage which we've already alluded about him having made purifications, being seated at the right hand of the majesty on high in utter sovereignty over the whole of creation and the whole of creation now hinges on Jesus Christ as it always has but now as the incarnate son, Jesus. But Hebrews chapter 13 verses 20-21, you can just turn it to it if you like, is the great benediction Now the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do his will. How does he equip you to do his will? He works in us that which is pleasing in his sight. How does he work that in us? He does it through Jesus Christ to whom belongs the glory forever and ever and ever. When they conquered kingdoms, when they shut the mouths of lions, it was worked in them by God through Jesus Christ. When you are caused to pass through the deep waters, that is worked in you by God the Father through Jesus Christ. Jesus is not standing at the end of the runway saying, come on you guys, get the lead out, He's actually with us in it, through it. And we fix our eyes on Him, not just at the end, so to speak, as though we're travelling towards Him, but we fix our eyes on Him who's the Great Shepherd who travels with us in the exodus, who leads us and does not forsake us and who guides us through valleys of deep darkness, And when we see the hills, we say, from whence comes my help. We look at the shepherd who's standing with us and his rod and his staff. They comfort us. And there at that place, he spreads a table before us in the presence of our enemies and he anoints our head with oil along the way. You don't have to wait till you get there. When you get there, it all happens unrestrained and in fullness. But the spirit of the shepherd doesn't say to you, look you guys, I've been very patient but I'm running out. The Lord himself wants to anoint our heads with oil as we travel, to be filled as we go, to be shepherded as we make our way through the valley of deep darkness. So fix your eyes on him and today if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart. And if your mind and heart has been plotting and scheming in the kingdoms of this world to get legs up and push people aside and to make your way, sure, do it, but it's going to tangle you up, tumble you over and you go sprawling. Lay aside all the things that entangle and run with endurance because you've got a great cloud of witnesses and chief among them is Christ himself. and he's bearing testimony to the Father, and he's anointing your head with oil as you travel. And you may be facing a circumstance at the moment today and you say, I don't have strength for it. From weakness they were made strong. So where are you going to find that? Not in yourself, but in the faith which looks beyond itself, beyond your circumstances to God who is faithful. That's all we've got to say today. But you have to hear it. You actually have to hear it, beloved. You actually have to believe it. I have to. I'm preaching to myself. Why not? Why not be filled? Why not be anointed with oil in the presence of the enemies? Why not know the rod and staff right now? Why not right now decide, look, my life has been filled with all sorts of rubbish that are just tangling me over and tripping me up, so why not right now say, well, get rid of it? Why not? Don't fail to enter because of unbelief. We don't get rid of it. because we think unbelievingly that there's nothing to replace it and that's just a dreadful, dreadful lie of the world. When we have our trust in those things, it tells us that our eyes have shifted from the eternity that's before us to this and we think this is all there is and if I lose that, what have I got? Well, you might lose that and gain your soul and gain your life. You're hearing all of that, I'm sure, and may the Lord bring that to your heart as you need it and as I need it this morning.