This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to our start of a look at
Hebrews chapter 12. Last week I told you that as great as Hebrews chapter 11 is,
I think this is my favorite chapter in the whole book of Hebrews because it
speaks to us so personally about how to live the kind of life that recognizes
that God's presence is a part of our everyday that recognizes how you and I can
live life out with a sense of growth and strength even in the midst of the
difficulties of life. After Hebrews 11, the faith chapter talking about all
these great people of faith that preceded us, Hebrews chapter 12 begins by
saying this in verses 1 to 4, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a
great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin
that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance, the race marked out
for us.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the
joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the
right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from
sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle
against sin, you've not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.

" Let me begin by telling you a story about endurance. It's from the Institute
of Medical Biological Problems, which was a secret semi-military branch in the
Soviet, former Soviet scientific community. They recruited a group of men they
called Cosmonauts Number Zero.

These were professional test subjects who, back in late 1967, a bunch of young
athletes and perfect health were gathered. They had all been through military
training. They were called in official documents mechanics, but in reality, they
were making their living by taking part in medical experiments that tested the
limits of human endurance.

The experiments pushed the subjects far beyond anything that the cosmonauts at
that time were having to go through, just to see how far people could go. Actual
cosmonauts in training, they might spend three days in a flotation tank. One
test subject spent 56 days in a flotation tank.

One of the remarkable things about these test subjects is they were happy. Even
in the midst of all they were going through, they felt a certain euphoria, the
kind that mountaineers experience when they get to great heights, when they've
achieved a great victory at the cost of a great endurance. One of them said, "We
were as if beyond life.

It was like a drug. " They had experience. They were experiencing what I would
call the joy of endurance.

It didn't last because it was just a temporary thing based on a temporary
circumstance. In today's verses, we're talking about the real thing, the joy of
endurance that lasts forever, the joy for the one who endures in faith, the joy
for the one who follows Jesus in his endurance. In these verses, we're told that
endurance comes from running well.

These are really verses about how to run with endurance, how to run the kind of
race that God wants us to run. I want to pick out of these verses four things,
two today and two tomorrow, that talk to us about how to run with endurance in
our everyday lives. Number one, what do you do if you're going to run well, if
you're going to run with endurance?

Number one, you have to be pure. You have to be pure. If you're going to run
with endurance, you have to ask yourself the question, "What am I throwing away
in order to run with purity?

" In fact, in these verses, there are two specific things to be very aware of,
things that hinder and sins that entangle. First, things that hinder. Things can
hinder.

That's what these verses tell us. There are things that can get in the way of
your faith. They hinder us.

They get in our way. They keep us from being and living all that we want to be
and live. Now, in that day, athletes like sometimes in our day, they would run
with training weights.

But when the race came, the weights would be set aside. And the writer of
Hebrews is saying here that one of the reasons we find it so hard to endure is
we haven't realized we're running the race now. You're not just in training,
you're in the race.

So you've got to set the weights aside. The race isn't later. The race isn't
when we get to heaven.

The race isn't when you've grown more as a Christian. The race is right now. So
set aside the things that are getting in the way of you running the race that
God has for you.

That might be material things. That might be goals that you've had. That might
be, "Well, there's a list of a hundred things I could make.

" They're in the way of you living a life of faith. Things that hinder, but also
watch out for sins that entangles. Sin entangles.

It trips us up. It trips us up. When you look back at Olympic history and you
look at some of the great falls in Olympic history, people who were tripped up,
a Jim Ryan or a Mary Decker who were tripped up in the 1,500 meters, and you
look at those videos and you see the pain, the piercing pain in their eyes that
they were tripped up in the midst of the greatest race that they'd ever run.

That's what sin does. That's what sin does. And looking at the pain in their
eyes should help us to recognize the pain that sin brings into our lives.

It's a long race, and we're going to trip up sometimes. But what does that mean
for us? That means that we need to reach out to Jesus and we need to get up and
keep running.

And if you see someone else take a fall, you reach out a hand to help them up.
You don't run on by thinking, "Maybe I can get a little ahead of them now and
feel better about myself. " No, you stop.

You help them to get up because we need each other to run this race. Being with
endurance means I have to become an expert at letting go, not just of the sins
that entangle me, but also of the more innocent-looking things that can get in
the way that can hinder me. I've got to be pure.

The second thing I've got to be to run this race is I've got to be ambitious.
The phrase the race that God marked out for us, the race that God marked out for
you, you have to be ambitious about that. Ambitious does not just mean selfish
advancement.

You can be ambitious about other things besides yourself. You can be ambitious
about God's goals for your life. Webster's defines ambition as having a desire
to achieve a particular goal.

It's all about desire. You can finish a short sprint without a lot of desire.
You may not come in first, but you can finish it.

But you're not going to finish a marathon without desire. And life is a
marathon. When you and I talk about our career sometimes, we're ambitious.

But we talk about our faith and we say, "Oh, we'll just let the Lord lead.
Whatever he wants, it'll be fine. No ambition at all.

" But God wants us to be ambitious about the race that he's marked out for us.
All of us should be ambitious about achieving God's plan for our lives. Not
selfish ambition, but selfless ambition, the kind of ambition that looks to what
does Jesus want to do in my life.

Those who have impacted the world the most have combined humility towards
themselves with ambition towards God's plan. There's something you can be sure
of. You have enough strength to run the race that God has planned for you.

One of the questions is, are you running the race that God's planned for you?
Are you running your race? Are you running another person's race?

Are you running God's race? Are you running your race, selfishly just doing what
you want? It might be good things, but you know it's not what God has for you.

Or are you running another's race, trying to copy someone else, comparing with
someone trying to run the way that they run, because you think that's going to
get me maybe the popularity that I want. That's going to get me maybe the
success that I want. You can only be successful running the race that God has
for you.

Truly successful. Are you running God's race? God's race is the race that he's
marked out for you.

You've got to run with ambition. And as you and I think about this, running with
ambition, one of the things about Christian ambition is the motivation that's
behind it. When you think about the driving force behind your life, what drives
you to run the race that God's marked out for you each day?

What's the motivator in your life? Is it compliance? Is it competition?

Is it comparison? Or is it commitment? Is it compliance?

Sometimes that's what motivates people, just fitting in, just doing what makes
somebody else happy. If that's your motivator, you're never going to run the
race that God has for you. Is it competition?

You would not believe how many people in our world today that this is their
driving force. You've got to beat the competition to win the game. But when you
reach the top, you realize you don't even like the game that you're playing.

Competition is not going to help you to run the race that God has for you. It's
just going to get you focused on beating somebody else. Or is it comparison?

Who's doing better? Who's doing worse? How do I match up?

People who get caught up in comparison worry about appearances a lot. And it
keeps you from running the race that God has set out for you. It draws you
towards running the race that somebody else is running.

It's not compliance or competition or comparison that's the driving force. It's
commitment. Commitment is the motivator, the right motivator.

It has to be commitment to the right thing, the right person. And when I
committed to Jesus Christ, to run the race that he has set out for me, that's
where godly ambition comes from in my life. To run with endurance, it means that
I realize God has a personal plan for my life and I commit my life to that plan.

Two things we've talked about today. Running with endurance means I realize
there's things in my life I've got to let go of. And I realize that there's a
godly plan for my life that I've got to grab on to.

When you put those two things together, you're running God's race. Let's talk to
him together. Jesus, we want to run the race that you've set out for us.

Not another person's race, not our selfish race. What do you have for us to do
today? So help us to run with commitment today.

Help me to run the race that you've set out for me today, I pray. And we pray
this together in Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look at two more
ways that you and I can run with endurance.