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Yes I Will
Come, Ye Thankful People, Come
All Creatures of Our God and King
Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set out for him he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Think of him who endured such opposition against himself by sinners, so that you may not grow weary in your souls and give up. You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin. And have you forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons? “My son, do not scorn the Lord’s discipline or give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son he accepts. Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you do not experience discipline, something …”

Exordium.
You can tell a lot about a person based on the kind of baggage they carry.

[Examples: Book, neck pillow, baby wipes]

Now let’s get real. you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of emotional and spiritual baggage they carry around.

Especially when it comes to our relationship with God.

And believe it or not it effects the way we read scripture....

Narratio
If you’ve been here through the series, if you’ve been keeping up with the book, you hopefully have the background of Hebrews tucked away, but let’s set the stage again for today’s passage

The book of Hebrews is a Sermon that was preached to Jewish Christians in the first century, some time before 70 AD.

The problem their going through is that they keep wanting to go back to the old covenant. They keep wanting to go back to the Temple system, the priestly system, the sacrificial system.

They initially had a strong faith in Christ, but now they’re thinking to themselves, you know what, what if the work Christ did isn’t enough.
What if we need to have Faith in Christ PLUS the temple sacrifices.
What if we were able to have one foot in each world?
And the argument that gets made is that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the old stuff.
You got the law from angels on mount sinai, well Jesus is better than angels, he’s the son of God
You followed Moses, who was great in the house of the Lord, well the house of the Lord is Jesus’ house
You used to Go to the priests to have your sins forgiven? those guys can’t forgive sins. They can only temporarily atone for sins, but they have their own sins to deal with
Jesus is the high priest forever.

But the Hebrew church kept wanting to slip back. They were sluggish in their hearing, they were in danger of Falling back to their old ways

And the author of Hebrews makes his case and says, hey you can approach God boldly. Hold on to your faith. Meet together in Community.
Because you’re not like those who shrink back. You’re like the heroes of the Old testament, like noah and abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. Who lived by faith.
Keep your eyes fixed on Christ, have endurance, live by faith.

And as we get into our passage today, I want us to ask ourselves the question. Why. Why were they shrinking back?
Nobody just walks away from a good thing. People have reasons for why they do what they do.

And here’s where we have have to do our best to first consider what they were going through. Set our own baggage aside for just a moment, and look at what THEY were doing.
Hebrews 10:32-34
Hebrews 10:32–34 NET 2nd ed.
But remember the former days when you endured a harsh conflict of suffering after you were enlightened. At times you were publicly exposed to abuse and afflictions, and at other times you came to share with others who were treated in that way. For in fact you shared the sufferings of those in prison, and you accepted the confiscation of your belongings with joy, because you knew that you certainly had a better and lasting possession.
They were going through persecution.

They weren’t being martyred for their faith, yet.

Hebrews 12:3–4 NET 2nd ed.
Think of him who endured such opposition against himself by sinners, so that you may not grow weary in your souls and give up. You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin.

Here’s a little bit of cultural background for you.
The Christian Church began on the day of pentacost. But it wasn’t called the “Christian Church” on the day of Pentacost. Not right away.
It wasn’t called any “church”
The early church in the first century was, for lack of a better terms, a sect of Judaism. It was a “denomination” of Judaism.

They called themselves the followers of the Way.

They didn’t view themselves as “not jewish” The romans didn’t view them as “not jewish” The other jews didn’t think of them as “not jewish”

They were just a different group of Jews, like the pharisees, the Sadducee, and the zealots.

And in the first century, the Jewish people had a special relationship with Rome.

One of the things that the Romans would do, when they rolled in and conquered your nation, they would mesh together your gods into their gods.

In fact all of the roman gods were just greek gods who got renamed and given a new backstory.

They’d be like, oh, that’s a nice statue of zeus you have there. By the way his name is Jupiter now, and he’s roman.
Poseidon…the god of the sea…yeah his name is actually Neptune now.

But the jewish people only had one God.
And more than that, they didn’t even have any statues of him.
And more than that, they had all of these weird rules and laws, and they could only eat certain foods, and they weren’t allowed to sacrifice in other temples.
Apparently they have a history, and their leaders have told us, they would rather die than mesh their religion with the Roman religion.

And they romans basically said, you know what? It’s not worth our time. We don’t want to deal with insurrections. We don’t want to have to deal with an angry mob on our hands.

You go ahead and do your thing. Your people can be exempt from having to participate in the state sponsored religion

And part of the reason they were willing to allow the Jewish people to be exempt was that they admired the rich history of the Jewish people.

Judaism is an Old faith, that went way back. The romans had a thing for tradition, they liked old stuff. They didn’t understand it. They didn’t like the Jewish faith.
but they respected it, so they Grandfathered it in.

Now. From rome’s perspective, there came about this sect of Judaism who started doing things differently. And at first they didn’t care.
But eventually what happened was this sect of Judaism started to look very not-jewish.
They stated allowing Gentile to Join.
They stopped requiring people to be circumcized
They stopped requiring people to celebrate the sabbath
they stopped requiring people to offer sacrifices at the Temple.

When rome went to the Jews, and they were like, who are these people, are they with you? And the jewish rulers were like nope. They’re not doing circumcision, food laws, sabbath laws…we don’t claim them.

So the romans go to the Christians and they’re like hey, um, listen. About this exemption you guys have, because you’re jewish.

I just talked to them, and they don’t want to claim you. So I’m going to need you to either go back to being Jewish, and doing whatever it is that y’all do, or I’m going to need you to start doing your required Roman religious sacrifices.

This is the background, this is what the original audience was going through. This was probably what prompted a lot of them to want to return back to Judaism. Because they thought, between the two, they’d rather go back to what they knew. And wouldn’t it just be easier that way?
Partitio
As we get into our text, I want us to have that picture in our mind, and I want us to do our very best to set our baggage over here, and try to read this from that perspective. Confirmatio.
Confirmatio

The plea to these believers:
Hebrews 12:3 NET 2nd ed.
Think of him who endured such opposition against himself by sinners, so that you may not grow weary in your souls and give up.
Keep the faith. Don’t give up.
Hebrews 12:4 NET 2nd ed.
You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin.
And I think the emphasis here is on the word, YET. It’s coming

And then he gives an example. An illustration. Hebrews as a sermon by the way, is so beautiful. I wish I could come up with Sermon illustrations as good as hebrews does.

Hebrews 12:5–6 NET 2nd ed.
And have you forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons? “My son, do not scorn the Lord’s discipline or give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son he accepts.
This is from Proverbs 3.
Hebrews 12:7-11
Hebrews 12:7–11 NET 2nd ed.
Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you do not experience discipline, something all sons have shared in, then you are illegitimate and are not sons. Besides, we have experienced discipline from our earthly fathers and we respected them; shall we not submit ourselves all the more to the Father of spirits and receive life? For they disciplined us for a little while as seemed good to them, but he does so for our benefit, that we may share his holiness. Now all discipline seems painful at the time, not joyful. But later it produces the fruit of peace and righteousness for those trained by it.
Here comes our Baggage.
I want to dive into application of this passage. But we owe it to our selves to identify our baggage first.
Depending on how you read and understand this passage, it can sometimes reveal more about yourself than it can about God.
And I think we read it with clouded lenses.

Let’s identify our baggage.
Baggage point number one: We can read this passage without a clear picture of what discipline looks like.
When we hear the word “discipline” I think the word discipline, what comes to mind for us is “I did something naughty, and now I’m being punished”
I was bad. And I deserved to be disciplined
That’s how we experience discipline. A lot of us at least.
As children, when we are disciplined, that’s how a lot of us might have grown up understanding it.
Even the way we talk about justice, not just with kids, but with everyone
They need to have a taste of their own medicine
They need to get what’s coming to them.
And I think that carries over into how we view God’s discipline
God’s just punishing me
god’s just giving me what I deserve. why? well because I was bad, and so God wants something bad to happen to me.
I’m being disciplined
If we read the Bible, and how God disciplines his people, the amazing thing is, that more often than not God doesn’t give his people what they deserve
More often than not, he says you deserve X, but I’m not going to punish you
I’m going to show you mercy
I’m going to give you a second chance. And a third chance. And a fourth chance
If the standard by which we judge God’s discipline is “How much are we getting what we deserve” Well then God’s not really a disciplinarian at all.
At least if that’s how we understand the role of discipline.
Baggage point number 2: We don’t have a clear view of the Culture
Here’s the reality. In our modern 21st century we don’t understand the ancient world, and how awful of a place it was to live
We live in the richest, freesest, safest, most prosperous, time and place in all of human history
We live in the most equitable time and place—as in men and women, people of all different races and cultures are viewed as equal, having equal rights.
The time and place with the most upward mobility… rags to riches stories are not just probable, they happen all the time
The first century Roman empire was just not like that
There was no such thing as upward mobility.
Only down. You couldn’t work your way from being a slave to being a business owner
You could go the other way. But you could not work your way up the ladder
The justice system was not nice.
If you committed a crime, and went to jail, there was no “if you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you”
There was no “Jury of your peers”
There was no appeals process.
If you messed up in life, and went to jail, you more often than not just sat there and rotted until some governor decided to either set you free or have you executed.
Not to mention, the first century roman empire heavily revolved around honor and shame
if you did something that was dishonorable to Rome, or dishonorable to your family… it was not a good outcome for you
And just to be clear, we’re not talking about the kind of honor and shame where “oh, you did something embarrassing at the church pot luck”
Oh no. Your status, the honor you brought or the shame you brought, was a big deal.
And the shame you brought upon Rome or your family was practically permanent.
So how do you raise a child in that type of environment?
Well, to be completely frank, discipline was very harsh in that type of environment, because it had to be if you wanted your kid to survive.
Because our culture is so merciful and gracious, we can afford to be merciful and gracious in the way we parent our kids
We can afford to allow our kids to make mistakes, learn slowly
Because when our kids make mistakes, we can be like, oh they’ll grow out of it.
If you couldn’t figure out how to be an adult, and to provide, and to everything you needed to do to survive by the time you were 14 years, it was a matter of life and death.
I say all that to say this:
Discipline, in the minds of the original audience, wasn’t preferential
It was survival
The word paideo, literally means training
You are training your child up to survive in a hostile environment.
And if they don’t learn fast, they’re never going to make it
And in some respects, I think we can imagine this, we experience this with our kids, just maybe to a lesser degree
If your kid steals a pack of gum from the convenience store, you discipline them, because you know that if they get in the habit of stealing now, it’s only going to get worse
and the real world is going to be much less forgiving than you are
you don’t want them to end up in Jail, you don’t want them to end up in a worse off place.
That’s the way it was in rome, except in rome, the punishment for theft was flogging or a lifetime of slavery.
Which leads me back to this point, in verse 4
Hebrews 12:4 NET 2nd ed.
You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin.
The persecution they were experiencing for Christ was going to get much much worse
It was coming.
And the discipline, the training they were receiving, had a lot more to do with preparing them for even worse persecution, and a lot less to do with “oh, I did something bad, and now God is punishing me”
So if you read this text, and you think to yourself
Oh yeah, this is like what’s going on in my life, because something bad is happening to me, and so I’m being disciplined by God because I did something wrong, so that I will learn my lesson.
No, that’s not it. That’s not thepicture they had in their mind.
The picture they had was of being trained to stand for Christ, so that we might share in God’s righteousness, and be able to stand firm when the going gets even more tough.
One last point of Baggage, I think we need to clear up: The illustration he uses for discipline is that of a father disciplining his children
This one I think the elephant in the room here is not all of us had great fathers.
To be completely frank, I think most people, more often than not, when the word “Father” is used to describe God, it’s not a good picture for people.
When we add in the fact that God is like a father disciplining his children, and the picture for a lot of folks gets even more bleak
You might hear “God is like a father” and think, “oh, well my dad used to get drunk and hit my mom”
Oh, my dad had a temper, he’d lose it on us kids for no reason
Or maybe its. My dad disciplined me by telling me he doesn’t love me.
Or maybe it’s oh. My dad disciplined me by leaving. Packing up. Because there was something wrong with me, and I was such a problem that he decided he’d be better off without me.
That’s our baggage. that’s what we bring to the Bible. whether we like it or not, whether we realize it or not, it’s what we bring to our relationship with God.
And as difficult as it is, we need to do our best to clear away our baggage, and approach God as father the way he describes it. The way He truly is, not the way we see him when we’re carrying all of our own baggage.
Refutatio (Optional)
Matthew 6:8 NET 2nd ed.
Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Matthew 7:9–10 NET 2nd ed.
Is there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
Matthew 7:11 NET 2nd ed.
If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Luke 6:36 NET 2nd ed.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Luke 15. A man had two sons. And one of them told his dad, “give me the inheritance money. You’re dead to me.
He wasted it all. Ended up living in filth and poverty. And said you know what, I know what I deserve. I deserve to be a slave in my fathers household
I think I might go home and beg to be made a slave, because that’s what I deserve after I treated my dad that way

I’m not even worthy to be called a son.
Luke 15:20-24
Luke 15:20–24 NET 2nd ed.
So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way from home his father saw him, and his heart went out to him; he ran and hugged his son and kissed him. Then his son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Hurry! Bring the best robe, and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Bring the fattened calf and kill it! Let us eat and celebrate, because this son of mine was dead, and is alive again—he was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate.

Peroratio

So what is the end goal. of all of it.

The plea to endure our suffering as discipline, just as a father discipline’s his child

What’s the goal.
Hebrews 12:12–13 NET 2nd ed.
Therefore, strengthen your listless hands and your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but be healed.
The message in Hebrews is not one of an abusive father. It’s not a message of God’s punishment because we did something wrong

It’s not a message of a God who wants you to get what you deserve

It’s a message of a God who wants you to be strong. To be able to withstand trials and temptations, to be able to be firm in your faith now, and when things get worse

Because he knows what the alternative looks like for you.

Make straight the paths for your feet. He knows that there’s forces out there much worse than whatever it is you’re going through now that’s likely to pull you off course.
And he knows you need that training to walk on the straight and narrow because he loves you

Like a father.
Not like any earthly father you’ve ever had, not like the flawed broken human fathers we have here on earth

But one who’s perfect. And merciful. And loves you.

pray
- - Hebrews 12:3–4GS-NETBIBLE
- - Hebrews 12:3GS-NETBIBLE
- - Hebrews 12:4GS-NETBIBLE
- - Hebrews 12:5–6GS-NETBIBLE
- - Hebrews 12:4GS-NETBIBLE
- - Matthew 6:8GS-NETBIBLE
- - Matthew 7:9–10GS-NETBIBLE
- - Matthew 7:11GS-NETBIBLE
- - Luke 6:36GS-NETBIBLE
- - Hebrews 12:12–13GS-NETBIBLE
Give thanks
Goodness of God
All Creatures of Our God and King

Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12:3–4GS-NETBIBLE

Hebrews 12:3GS-NETBIBLE

Hebrews 12:4GS-NETBIBLE

Hebrews 12:5–6GS-NETBIBLE

Hebrews 12:4GS-NETBIBLE

Matthew 6:8GS-NETBIBLE

Matthew 7:9–10GS-NETBIBLE

Matthew 7:11GS-NETBIBLE

Luke 6:36GS-NETBIBLE

Hebrews 12:12–13GS-NETBIBLE