Hebrews Lesson 200 June 2010
NKJ Proverbs
3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your
own understanding;
NKJ Proverbs
3:6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your
paths.
Open
your Bibles to Hebrews 12. One of the things I keep thinking about doing (or at
least I’ve been thinking about it for two weeks and I just run out of time at
the end of each class) is to have some opportunity maybe at the end of class
for a little question and answer. Sometimes questions come up or I’m not as
clear or you took a mental vacation for 3 seconds and missed something. A
little Q&A sometimes is good but it seems like every class I've thought
about that for the last three weeks I just run out of time and hardly squeeze
in everything I want to say. So maybe we’ll have a little time this evening.
We’re
in Hebrews 12. We covered the first 2 verses in the last couple of weeks. Now
let's go back to verse 1 and just kind of think our way through this verse
again because this is one of those verses that appears at sort of first glance
to be saying one thing; but when you stop and you really dig into the grammar
(especially in the Greek) and you understand the metaphor that’s being used
here; it’s actually saying something that is pretty familiar to all of us. But it's not saying what a lot of
people think that this verse is saying.
So we
have a conclusion with the “therefore.”
NKJ Hebrews
12:1 Therefore we also,
That
is as believers. The author includes himself in the exhortation here because it
applies to every one of us. There's nobody – there's no apostle, there's
no individual believer – that ever gets to a point in the spiritual life
where they are too mature to fail, to where they can’t fall prey to just the
most simple set of circumstances which cause them to fail. Whether it's a small
failure or large failure is not relevant, because when you are out of
fellowship you are out of fellowship. We all have to evaluate our own lives and
be thinking about it. That's really one of the main ideas that come across in
these verses from the word that is translated from the beginning of verse 2.
NKJ Hebrews
12:2 looking unto Jesus,
That
word is a word that emphasizes concentration and thought.
Then
again in verse 3:
NKJ Hebrews
12:3 For consider Him who endured
Again,
the word “consider” emphasizes careful thought and deliberation. So underneath this
the writer is challenging. And this exhortation and in terms of the structure
of the book this is the last exhortation in the book. It will end with a
warning in the last of 5 verses. But what the writer is saying here is that
what undergirds the Christian life is thought. Many times, I know you've heard
it said that the spiritual life is ultimately about thinking. That doesn't mean
it's simply a cerebral activity; but it is not without the action of thinking.
It is grounded in thought and reflection. It's not just about collecting Bible (you
know) notebooks and Bible doctrines. It’s not just about thinking about your
notes that you've taken in the class. But it's taking those notes as they
inform your thinking and then stopping to think about what you have learned in
terms of your own life and how the principles apply to you.
So
the writer here is setting forth a basic command which is in most English
translations set at the end of verse 1 which is to “let us run with endurance
the race that is set before us.”
So
the Christian life is viewed here as a race. The Apostle Paul used that same
metaphor in 1 Corinthians 7 and it’s used in other passages in Scripture that
we use a race to depict the Christian life because it's a contest. It’s a
struggle. It demands focus. It demands discipline. It demands training, and at
the end of the race there is a reward. There is the winner’s wreath.
That
applies directly to the spiritual life because it is a challenge. There's
opposition. That opposition comes from Satan, from the world system and from
our own sin nature. We have to somehow overpower or surmount those challenges.
We have to get passed the opposition and sometimes it's very difficult. Sometimes the opposition of our own
nasty little sin nature is just as bad as the opposition we may experience
overtly through persecution. Now we don't usually experience a lot of overt
persecution in the United States. But there are people who live in countries
and cultures all around the world that do experience a tremendous amount of
persecution or opposition or resentment or ridicule. If you live in certain
areas of this country and operate and live within certain subcultures in this
country, then you too will experience a lot of overt or covert opposition
because you're one of those strange Bible believing Christians and you need to
be relegated to the 19th or 18th century because you are
so backward you are not up to date with anybody. But we all face these kinds of
things that challenge the race that is set before us.
Now
as this sets up, you have the command: “let us run with endurance.” Then there
is the statement before that that is translated as if it is the same kind of
command.
KJ Hebrews
12:1 …let us lay aside every weight,
This
is one of those verses where it's very clear that you just have to go back to
the Greek. You just can't figure out what the writer is saying completely by
looking at the English text because English grammar doesn't function like Greek
grammar functions, in the same way that if you were studying any other piece of
literature written in another language you would want to make sure that you had
a professor that understood the original language. If you’re studying French
literature you, want to have professor that can read whatever it is you’re
studying in the original French. If you’re studying Russian literature, you
want somebody who can read Dostoevsky in the original Russian. If you’re
reading anything that originated in another language you know that it loses
something in translation. It doesn't mean you can’t understand a good bit of
it; the idea that some people get that we shouldn't sit down and read the Bible
in English because we might get confused. You know you can sit down and read
the morning Chronicle get more confused than reading the English translation of
the Bible. Yet people do that – or just watching the news. You can get
confused just waking up in the morning sometimes, right? So there's no excuse
for not reading the Scripture, but we have to also recognize that translations
have a certain limitation to them.
Then
there's another problem with some translations, and that is that they go beyond
simply the standards of the canon for translation. The translators actually
move over into the territory of interpretation. When you look at the range of
translations that are available today, it’s actually mind-boggling. Every
couple of years somebody comes out with the latest, greatest, newest, most
necessary, modern English American translation of the Bible that you just can't
live without. Some of them are
very close to one another. I don't know – it’s just a business. That's
sort of a negative and sad part about it. The positive part about it is that
because of capitalism there is competition, so you have competition for better
Bibles. If we didn't have that you wouldn’t have the competition and we’d all
probably still be reading the King James Version. So we have good modern translations.
Some are very good and some are not quite so good.
And
you have different theories of language that inform a translation. For example,
the New International Version is what's called the dynamic equivalence. That
really means that you don't necessarily translate word-for-word. You translate
phrase-for-phrase, idiom for idiom. It can get somewhat fairly loose, almost
like a paraphrase in places, like the Living Bible. The Living Bible which
started coming out of the late 50’s was written by a Dallas Seminary graduate
by the name of Ken Taylor. He was reading his Bible to his children and they
didn't understand the bombastic diction of the King James Bible. So he was
trying to just reword it for his children. So he wasn’t working from the Greek
or the original languages. He was just taking what was in the King James and he
was paraphrasing it or putting it in a simpler form of English. Now that's a
paraphrase. That’s not a translation.
You
have translations like the New International Version, Cotton Patch Gospel,
which is a more extreme form of dynamic equivalence, and then there are a few
others – "The Message" which is the sort of translation that I
love to hate. They try to get so down into the idiom of the street – and
I mean the street, the hood – way down into but very idiomatic slang
English where you can’t really understand what the original is all about.
Then
you have what they call formal equivalence, which is the New American Standard,
the English Standard translation, or ESV (English Standard Version), which just
came out in the last couple of years. There's a Holman translation that just
came out within the last year, the New King James version. These are more
formal equivalence.
The
problem we've got folks is that the more you move towards a good straight
formal equivalence, the higher the Bible is on your grade level for reading. You take a King James Bible and that’s
on about a 10th or 11th grade level for reading. You take
the New American Standard; that's on an 8th or 9th grade
reading level. You take the ESV; I think it's about 7th grade. I
think the NIV is down to about the 6th grade level. We have to have
produced a culture of people who are so functionally illiterate that they
really can't read and understand and repeat back to you in their own words most
of these translations even the ones that are down at a 5th or 6th
grade level. We're so impoverished in our education system that we’re just not
producing anybody who can read and think beyond a certain grade level for most
people or large masses of people in this country.
So
one of the things that I as a pastor wrestle with is that you can just look
around and see the congregation and see that we’re not attracting a lot of 20
and 30 something’s. This is a little over their head. That's a real struggle
that other pastors and I talk about is we have produced a couple of generations
now of people who don't think analytically like this. They weren’t ever taught
the first thing about grammar when they went through school or very little
– to a large degree. I’m speaking in a large generalization here, but
this is the trend of the culture. This is why if you go to churches that appeal
to entertainment and to emotion, they run in the thousands. But the more of the
pastor tries to really explain and teach and analyze the text, the fewer and
fewer people come.
The
other thing is that the older and older those congregations tend to be. This is
sort of a tension that we have to deal with, what do you do to be able to
communicate to a younger generation that is not prepared academically to really
get into the details of the Word of God. It doesn't have a simple
solution.
Of
course a common solution is that you compromise with what they want and give
them a lot of entertainment. But that's a very poor solution and really doesn't
accomplish anything. All of that is just an aside to point out why it's
important at times to get into the grammar. As I pointed out when we went
through this in the last class, you have this grammatical structure in Greek
where you have usually an aorist imperative and that's preceded by an aorist
participle. About 90% of it is that way. It's called a participle of attended
circumstance. What that basically means is that the action of the aorist
participle has to precede the fulfillment of the action of the command. When you
look at a passage like this normally what you see, and during the last week I
went back and read a lot of different commentaries and the emphasis is - they
graft….
They
don't really come right out and say, “You know there's a problem here with the
way this is structured.”
So
they'll either restrict the meaning of “laying aside every weight and the sin
that so easily ensnares us,” and they try to say, “Okay, that just applies to
the act of giving up your faith. That's it. That’s all that refers to. It
doesn’t refer to anything else.”
I
read one commentary today and it said both of these terms refer to the sin of
unbelief on the part of a believer, on the part of a Christian. But they’re not
grappling with the underlying grammar, which says you have to lay aside these
encumbrances before you can run the race. The pictures as I pointed out last
time are from the Olympics and the fact that your runners in the Greek Olympics
would come out and they would first strip off. They competed completely naked. They
competed in the buff and they took everything off so that they didn't have any
togas or any clothes or anything that could possibly trip them up or slow them
down. Now they have to take everything off before they can run. They're not
going to go to the starting blocks all wearing their togas and then when the
signal goes off as they start running, they start taking things off. That's how
most people conceive of this verse is that as we go through the Christian life
we need to be taking sin out of our life. That’s just the old concept of
spirituality by morality, pulling ourselves up by our moral boot straps and
that what we have to be doing is taking all, getting rid of all of these sins
in our life so that we can run the race with endurance. But that doesn't fit
the grammar or the metaphor.
I
took you two passages last time one in James, in James 1:21.
NKJ James
1:21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of
wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save
your souls.
Then
1 Peter 2:1-2:
NKJ 1
Peter 2:1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy,
envy, and all evil speaking,
NKJ 1
Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire
That’s
a command there.
the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
In
every one of those passages you have the same verb apotithemi meaning to take something off - remove it. Then it's
followed by a command that must take place after you remove these sins. The
sins in all these passages are different. I pointed out that the way that’s
normally taken is first of all you have to clean up your life. You have to
scrub out all the immorality and sin in your life before you can ever go
forward in the Christian life. Before you can take in the Word or desire the
Word or run the race with endurance you have to clean up your life. That’s just
spirituality by works. That’s spirituality by morality.
The
point that it makes (and we have to plug it into other passages of Scripture)
is this is referring to cleansing the life which comes only by confessing sins.
When we confess sin until we sin again the life is cleansed and we remove these
sins from our life experientially. The slate is wiped clean when we
confess. But the point is that if
we haven’t dealt with the experiential sin then we can’t go forward as long as
we're out of fellowship. So the command to run with endurance must be preceded
by a complete removal of the easily besetting sin, which is what occurs when we
confess our sins.
Now
the next verse as I pointed out last time gives us through the use of the
participle at the beginning there gives us the means. How do you run with
endurance? By looking at Jesus. The word that’s translated “looking” means to
put your gaze on Him, to focus on Him. So how do you run with endurance? You
run by thinking about Jesus. Not like you’re thinking about Jesus at that
moment. This relates to the believer who sits down at times in his life whether
it’s each day in a quiet time or weekly or while you’re driving, and takes the
time to reflect upon who Jesus is, what Jesus went through; to think about what
you've learned as we've gone through all these passages in Scripture. We’ve
talked about the passage earlier in Hebrews 2:10.
NKJ Hebrews
2:10 For it was fitting for Him,
That
is the Father.
for whom are all
things and by whom are all things, in
bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect
…or
complete.
through sufferings.
Now
that word perfect is really the standard word from the teleioo word group that indicates maturity. So we see that word
group even in this passage. Jesus is the author and the teleiotes (the completer or finisher) of our faith. He becomes the
ultimate end of doctrine. We see full spiritual maturity in the character of
Jesus. He becomes the pattern and the role model for the believer. So we don't
just sit around like some Christians do in terms of the popular culture and
just think in a vacuum about "what would Jesus do?"— put it on
a tee-shirt, tattoo it on your arm, or whatever. You have to have content to
that question. So when you think “what would Jesus do?” you know the Word well
enough to understand the thinking so that you can evaluate your circumstances
in terms of doctrine. It involves thinking it through not just in reading
through notes, but internalizing it so that you’ve given it a degree of
concentration beyond just the words that are taught by the pastor.
So
we’re to fix our days our gaze, our mental gaze, our mental focus on Jesus who
is viewed as the pioneer – same word used back in Hebrews 2:10.
NKJ Hebrews
12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
Then
in the next verse we read:
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.
There
it’s translated “for.” The preposition there is anti which in some cases means against or instead of as a
preposition of substitution. Here it means because; and in several places…
So
it gives the reason that Jesus was able to endure. He endures because of the joy that was set before Him.
That
word that is translated “set before Him” is a word that indicates the long-term
goal. So as you grow and mature as a believer, you begin to understand that God
is really taking you somewhere in the spiritual life. There is a destiny.
There's a direction and purpose and a plan.
Sometimes
when I use the phrase “God has a plan for you”, that plan is not necessarily a
day-by-day, moment-by-moment,
this-is-where-you're-going-to-be-and-what-you're-going-to-do plan. It is a
blueprint that God has for every one of us. He plugs us into that blueprint in
the same way. Now the details are going to be different because we're all different.
God is going to bring different circumstances into our lives. But the basic
principle in the spiritual life is to get to this point where we can look down
the road to where God is taking us, and then we make decisions today in light
of that future destiny.
That's
been the message all through Hebrews. We've been in this book for what - 5
years, 6 years. This is the 200th lesson in Hebrews tonight.
But
that is the major theme of Hebrews is living today in light of eternity. But it
takes time to develop that long-term foresight just as it did as you grew up in
your life. When I was 7 years old my mother used to tell me that I needed to
look beyond the end of my nose. That's the same principle. Your mother probably
told you the same thing.
It's
not until we get a little older into our later teen years or maybe into our
twenties that you begin to think that, “You know there really are consequences
to the decisions I make whether they are good consequences or bad consequences.
I need to start thinking in terms of the consequences and long term goals and
directions and plans that I have for my life and not just in terms of what
makes me feel good today and what seems to get me through the day as we go
forward.”
There's
an end game here that Jesus focused on which is the joy set before Him. Because
of that He endures the cross, which is a key word in this passage.
He
runs with endurance. That’s the noun hupomones.
Runs with endurance the race set before us.
Then
in the second verse we have:
for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
That’s
the verb form hupomeno.
despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of
the throne of God.
Then
verse 3 says:
NKJ Hebrews
12:3 For consider Him who endured
Here
we have a participial form.
such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become
weary and discouraged in your souls.
The
key idea that runs through the mandate the command of verse 1, the illustration
of verse 2, which is Jesus, and also again the illustration of Jesus in verse 3,
is the idea of endurance.
I
thought I would bring this chart out of mothballs tonight and we would go back
and review the basic plan and structure that God has for the spiritual
life. This comes about in three
basic stages as we look at things. First of all there's what we refer to a
phase one which is our salvation when we are justified, when you trust Christ
as savior. At that instant God imputes to you the righteousness of Christ,
declares you to be just, and regenerates you. At that point you are born again.
You're a new creature in Christ, and you now start a new game. You've gone from
outside the stadium (to use the race metaphor) to inside the stadium, and you
get to compete in the game. The competition in the game isn’t to be there.
Salvation gets you there, and then it comes after that. So we go through these
stages that James identifies as tests of doctrine.
Now
if you just hold your place there, I’m going to take you back and forth to
James a couple times tonight.
If
you look at James 1:2-3 (we’ll just look there), James says:
NKJ James
1:2 My brethren,
Then
we have our first command.
count it all joy when you fall into various trials,
NKJ James
1:3 knowing
That’s
really a causal adverbial participle there that should be understood as
“because you know” something. See you can’t “count it joy” unless you know this
principle. It's because you know this principle that you can have joy in the
midst of difficult circumstances.
that the testing of your faith produces patience.
That’s
an evaluation term there. The testing there isn't to see how you are going to
fail. It's to show, to give you an opportunity to show off what you’ve learned.
God’s tests here are designed to give you an opportunity to demonstrate what
you've learned in your study of the Word and not to reveal that you're a
failure. Of course if you haven't been paying attention and you're not learning
the Word then it’s going to have a negative evaluation.
that the testing of your faith produces patience.
It
is translated patience in the King James. Endurance in the New American
Standard is much better. It’s the word hupomone
again. But it's the testing of your faith. There it's the idea of not just testing
you to see if you believe, but testing what you believe; giving you an
opportunity to take what you say you believe and putting it into practice.
That's the same idea that we’ve have all the way through Hebrews 11 is to take
the promises and the principles that you learn from the Word of God and then to
believe them and live on the basis of them. God is going to give you tests
whether you like it or not.
Every
day in many different ways we get little spiritual pop quizzes to see if we're
learning and applying what we've been getting out of the Scripture. The key
issue then becomes volition. We have a choice to decide. And that's what makes
it a test because you have to make a decision. Sometimes these are little
things, and people are not volitionally conscious. They're not volitionally
aware. So some situation occurs and they just go into the habitual mode of
either getting depressed, getting angry, becoming grumpy, lying, stealing,
whatever it is, whatever the response is from the sin nature to handle certain
negative circumstances in life; that's their default response pattern.
The
issue of the Christian life is that we have to get rid of that natural sinful
habitual sin nature produced default response pattern and replace it with the
new response pattern. That involves volition.
Something
just happened. Am I going to think in terms of the circumstances as an
opportunity to glorify God? Or am I going to think of this set of circumstances
as just another irritation in my day and I'm not getting done what I wanted to
and so instead of getting done (operating on my agenda) I want to realize God
has another plan for me today and I need to get online with His agenda. That
violation thing comes in all the time. Phase two of the spiritual life involves
either walking by the Holy Spirit or operating under sin nature control.
So
we have these two options. According to Galatians 5:17, we either walk by means
of the Holy Spirit or we’re walking by the flesh, one or the other.
NKJ Galatians
5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill
Paul
uses this Greek construction, which means it's impossible to do something. Oume plus the subjunctive form of that
verb teleioo again meaning to bring
something to maturity or to completion.
the lust of the flesh.
So
we have these two options. Now when we looked at the first option. We can
either go in one direction. James says that it produces life.
NKJ James
1:3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
The
testing of your faith produces endurance.
NKJ James
1:4 But let patience have its
perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
We
go through that whole process, and we produce (when we apply the Word) the
evidence that God’s plan is good – Romans 12:1. It produces life, the
full abundant life. It produces divine good. It produces endurance and it leads
to the adult spiritual life.
If
we operate in disobedience and sin then it produces sin or human good. If we
stay there, it leads to temporal death or carnal death. We're not experiencing
the life that God has for us. This in turn produces weakness or instability in
our lives. This is what James is getting to in about the 6th verse.
NKJ James
1:6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who
doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
NKJ James
1:7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything
from the Lord;
He’s
a double-minded man. He’s weak and unstable. This in turn leads to spiritual
regression and produces a hardened heart. That is if we stay in that flesh
driven cycle.
Now
this in turn leads to when we die (phase 3), we go to Judgment Seat of Christ.
That is going to lead to either, rewards and inheritance, or it's going to lead
to the loss of rewards and temporary shame. That's the blueprint. Every one of
us follows that every day in almost every set of circumstances.
So
we need to recognize what is going on in terms of our life because God is
really directing things. I believe that He is bringing into our lives basically
the things that we need so that if we respond right and apply doctrine
correctly, that is what we need to make us more like Jesus Christ in terms of
our character. That's why some of us keep running into the same kinds of tests
over and over again, year after year, decade after decade. You just feel like
you're just never making it. You just never overcome. You just never seem to
get passed it. You really are in many ways moving forward. It's just that we tend
to look back and think that we're not making any progress. But we do, and I
believe in many cases we are. When we get to the end of our life we can look
back and see some of that progress that’s taking place.
So
when we look at this passage in Hebrews 12, it’s very much like what James was
saying in James. So the key is we run the race by looking at, by gazing at, by
thinking about Jesus who is the pioneer, the pattern, the role model for our
spiritual life. He endured the cross because He focused on the end-game which
was the joy set before him. That meant that He was able to reject or to ignore
the shame of the cross and the result was His glorification that He sits now at
the right hand of the throne of God.
Now
we're going to get a further explanation starting in verse 3. The writer of
Hebrews says:
NKJ Hebrews
12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners
against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
He
is focused on one area of application and that is the application of people who
are being rejected, who are being despised, who are being persecuted, who are
being ridiculed, and who are being ostracized from their community because
they're trusting in Jesus as Messiah. And that relates to these Jews who have
trusted in Christ and they are now becoming a minority.
Now
the interesting thing about the study of the early church in terms of history
(and there's very little to go on here) is that in the initial stages of the
church (from a roughly 33 AD up until about 45 AD) the makeup of the church is
about 98% Jewish, maybe even higher. Then after the death of Stephen and with
the salvation of Paul, Paul has to go back to Tarsus for a little growing up
training. When Saul returns to the church at Antioch and from that point
(chapter 8) he becomes known as Paul. From approximately the time of the first
missionary journey which is in the in the book of Acts – takes place
about the same time that you have Peter going to Cornelius, the Gentile Roman
Centurion in Caesarea – is when the early church had to really struggle
with this concept of what “we're all Jews and we're still following our traditions
from the Old Testament, but now we have all the Gentiles who are trusting in
Jesus. So how do they relate to the law?" They had this whole tension
problem in the early church as to what was required of the Gentiles in the
church.
So
we have the Jerusalem Council that followed in Acts 11 and you have the book of
Galatians that’s written at that time. But as you go through the next 40 years
or so or 30 years up to the fall of Jerusalem, the church becomes decreasingly
Jewish. The Christians in Israel – in Judea especially – become
more and more ostracized. When you get into The War of the Rebellion (the
Jewish War of the Rebellion) in 66 and especially after Titus had to back off
for a little while when Nero died, and they had to go back to the coast and
reorganize; it was at that point that all the Christians left Jerusalem because
they were thinking in terms of what Jesus had said in Luke 21 that when they
saw in Jerusalem surrounded they needed to leave. So they left. Now after the
defeat of the Jews, the destruction the Temple, the capture and destruction of
Jerusalem, the Jews who were not Christians did not have a real positive
attitude towards the Jews that had trusted in Jesus and left Jerusalem and
didn’t fight and didn't defend the city because they followed what the Lord
said. They left.
Then
as you go through the next 50 years or so up to the time of the second
rebellion (the Bar Kokhba rebellion), there's still a very strong presence of
Jewish believers (Jewish Christians) in the area of Judea and the Galilee. But
with that second revolt – and they did not want to follow Bar Kokhba
because that was a claim Rabbi Akiva said that he was the Messiah and then of
course they rejected that – that further ostracized them. So the book of
Hebrews is written in that period that's about 6 or 7 years before AD 70. It's
in that time when Jewish Christians are becoming more and more ostracized by
the mainstream Jewish community that was still following the teachings of the
rabbis and that rejected Jesus as Messiah.
So
they're becoming ostracized. They’re getting blamed for things. They are of
being ridiculed by family members and so the application here is you're going
through antagonism. Jesus also went through antagonism. Look at how He endured
and handled the antagonism and that is your pattern when you face opposition,
antagonism and hostility.
The
word there that is used at the beginning for “consider” is a Greek word, analogizomai. So it has a proposition
prefix ana that is tied to the verb logozomai. Logizomai is the word that is used in James 1:2.
NKJ James
1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various
trials,
It
goes back to an accounting term to add up in your mind the various elements and
put it together because you thought your way through the different elements of
something. It started off as an accounting term; and it comes to mean to concentrate,
to reason, to reflect upon.
Sometimes
you’ll hear some people say, “Well, I’m going to study on that for
awhile.”
Well,
that's the idea, to really think through what you have learned and put things
together – put the different elements together.
So
the writer of Hebrews says to think deeply and profoundly about how Jesus'
handled opposition, and how He endured. How He stayed in the circumstances, how
He endured such hostility from sinners against Himself lest you become weary
and discouraged in your soul.
There
are two end results. One is you can become overwhelmed by your circumstances
and the opposition. And you can become discouraged and tired in your spiritual
life. Or you can focus on Jesus and think through how He handled things, apply
what you have learned. Then you're not weary, and you're not discouraged by
those who oppose you and those who have rejected you. Those are the two options
that you have. What makes the difference is whether you are not just thinking
doctrine, not just reading over your notes, but where you truly internalize the
thought process (the mental attitude) and the focus so that when you do go
through that – and it’s not easy. Nobody likes rejection. Nobody likes it
when people who they wished respected them and liked them don't like them and
treat them harshly. Nobody likes that. Everybody feels badly about that. That's
a normal reaction. There's nothing wrong with that reaction. It’s when we let
that reaction control our behavior beyond the initial incident.
We
have to say, “Okay, fine.”
We
may have to tell ourselves that 15, 20, 30, 50, 100 times. But that's the
process. We keep going back to doctrine; repeating it and retraining our
thinking to think about circumstances the way God would have us to think about
things. That is all involved in that whole concept of analogizomai.
Now
the writer has an interesting way of playing on words here because he uses that
word analogizomai for “consider him
who endured such hostility.” The word he uses for hostility is antilogia, which has very similar
components. It sounds similar. It’s a preposition anti plus the word logia,
which also comes logos or word, which
is where you get analogizomai. These
are all somewhat related words: anti
has to do with opposition and logia
has to do with words. It came to mean opposition, those who are speaking
against you, those who are rebelling against you, the opposition has put
themselves in an adversarial position.
The
result is that lest you become weary and discouraged. Now here's an interesting
word here that we only find twice in the New Testament. That is this word
translated weary, the Greek word kamno.
It’s used here, and it’s used in James 5:15.
Now
I want to pay attention to this verse for a second. If we don't focus on Jesus
and you focus on the details of life (the circumstances and the people and the
rejection) the result is it gets tiresome. You get discouraged in your
spiritual life and you are weary. You get up and running the race isn't fun
anymore because of the hostility. This leads to where you're just defeated
spiritually. But it doesn't have anything to do with being physically ill.
Now
hold your place there are turn to James 5:15. Now I've gone through this
passage in detail before so I'm not going to do that tonight. But this is one
of those passages that people always stumble over when they read through James
or they read through the New Testament and they think that this passage has
something to do with getting healed physically. It doesn’t have anything to do
with getting healed physically. He’s not even talking about that. It’s not even talking psychosomatic
illness. Everybody wants to somehow try to rationalize this passage into
getting something physical in here. And it's not there! Forget about it!
Nothing works. It's not about physical problems at all. It's about a spiritual
problem. At the end of this epistle where James is challenging people to
endure, the flipside of endurance again is the same thing we see in Hebrews 12.
If you don’t endure you’re going to be weary, discouraged, defeated in your
spiritual life. So he begins with a question: is anyone among you suffering?
That's the idea if you encounter various trials. What’s the solution? Prayer.
Is anyone cheerful? Well, great! Sing songs. It’s great to be cheerful and
joyful over your circumstances and to express that.
Then
the third question:
NKJ James
5:14 Is anyone among you sick?
The
word there that translated sick is a Greek word that can mean either physical
sickness or spiritually weak. It’s used that way (as “spiritual weakness”) by
Jesus when He says that the soul is willing but the flesh is weak. It has that
idea of not sick but physically weak. Most of time in the Gospels though the
word means physically ill; but most of time in the epistles it means to be
spiritually weary. So it can go either way - physical or spiritual weariness;
context has to determine.
Now
if you look down to verse 15 we read in most English translations:
NKJ James
5:15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick…
In
English it’s the same word that you have in verse 14; but in Greek it’s not the
same word you have in verse 14. The word that you have in verse 15 is a smaller
(has a narrower range of meaning) than the word in verse 14 and is going to tell
you which way to go – physical or spiritual. Well, the word that’s used
for sick in verse 15 is that word we just saw in Hebrews komno. It means weary. If you retranslate “the prayer of faith will
save the weary” all of a sudden you realize that verse 15 doesn’t confirm the
fact that you’re talking about sick people. It confirms the fact that you’re
talking about weary people. You’re
talking about people who are getting worn out in their spiritual life because
they're not enduring. So the prayer of faith will save.
And
save doesn't always mean justification. In many cases it’s used to refer to
being delivered from a set of circumstances and thus refers to phase 2 of the
spiritual life. So the prayer of faith will save the weary and the Lord will
lift him up (that’s a better term there – lift him up). In other words
you're spiritually refreshed via the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. If there
are sins that are associated with this then you'll be forgiven because
sometimes sin enters in and that’s the reason you feel beat up and defeated and
overrun in the spiritual life is because of guilt or because your sins aren’t
forgiven. There is spiritual failure there.
NKJ Hebrews
12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners
against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
If
you don’t want to be weary and discouraged, the solution isn't to go to
counseling. It’s not to go listen to one these guys like Bradshaw on PBS. It’s
not to find the latest greatest technique in psychology. It's to focus on the
Word of God. The solution is simple. It’s the Word of God and focusing on the
Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to not be weary and discouraged in your souls
(and that's how it’s translated there), and it refers to that same weakness of
soul that James gets at when he uses that word of being a double minded. It's
literally dipsuchos or being
two-souled.
NKJ Hebrews
12:4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against
sin.
The
point is Jesus resisted the bloodshed and He didn’t fail. He didn’t fade out.
Jesus resisted to the point of death. So what he's telling his audience is,
“You only think you've handled this; but you haven’t.”
NKJ Hebrews
12:5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you
as to sons:
Then
he's going to quote from Proverbs 3:11-12.
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor
be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
NKJ Hebrews
12:6 For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son
whom He receives."
Now
the key word I think that we find in this particular quotation that really
helps us to understand it goes back to the Hebrew.
We’re
almost out of time so I’m just going to touch this tonight, come back the next
time where we read in Proverbs 3:11:
NKJ Proverbs
3:11 My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor
detest His correction;
It’s
chastening in Hebrews 12:5, but in the Hebrew it’s discipline. It comes from a
Hebrew word musar. What’s interesting
about this is the root meaning of that word is to bind or to restrict. When
somebody was thrown into irons and put into prison that’s the word that is
used. Now a lot of people think that’s exactly what discipline is. It just
restricts them too much and they can’t have any fun any longer. But the idea of
discipline is to channel - to control our sin nature so we can channel our
abilities to produce for God. That is the idea. It's training. The word that we
find in the second part of verse 5 is translated:
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor
be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
That
word is translated is a translation of a Greek word paideia. Paideia refers
to the parental training of a child so that when they are mature they can
successfully face the challenges of life. That's what divine discipline is.
It's not just getting a spanking from Jesus. Divine discipline is the Lord
training us in terms of this whole plan and procedure so that the end result of
our life produces something that is rewardable and part of our inheritance at
the Judgment Seat of Christ.
You
didn't know this, but when you trusted Christ as savior they just told you that
you were going to get eternal life. Then didn't say you're getting ready to go
to spiritual boot camp in the Marine Corps. And God is a better drill sergeant
than any Marine drill sergeant. He knows exactly how to take you through all
the drills you need to go through in order to learn to trust Him so that when
you come out the other end (which is when we’re glorified and we're going to
serve and rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ) then we have matured and
we’re responsible and we know how to lead and we know how to carry out the
responsibilities that we're going to be given. So from the day you were saved
until the day you die, I hate to tell you this but you're just on Paris Island
that whole time. You’re going through the Marine Corps boot camp spiritually
speaking. Every one of us is.
And
that's what paideia is. And that's
what chastening is. It’s training. It’s discipline. It is teaching us to
restrict (control) the lust of the flesh, our sin natures and to focus on
responding to what God has for us in the spiritual life.
So
now I said I’m going to start having question and answer. I don’t know if
anybody has any questions.
Calvin?
In
your series on dispensations you teach that nothing the unbeliever can do can
be part of the spiritual life.
Right.
Could
you explain? The example you use
is morality.
Morality
– you’ve got a lot of very fine moral people out there. The spiritual
life isn’t morality – morality being able, the ability to observe a code
of ethics or code of conduct. You had for example in Galatians with the
Judiazers. The Judiazers came in.
They
said, “Well, Paul kind of got the gospel right but it's missing something. And
what it's missing is, if you’re going to really experience everything God has
for you (and that's kind of phrase we run into modern times) then you have to
apply the law. Men have to be circumcised. You have to go through all of the
Jewish ritual as well. Then you're really going to be living the super
spiritual life.”
That's
a focus on just morality. That's why Paul says in Galatians 3:3:
NKJ Galatians
3:3 …Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect
by the flesh?
“The
Holy Spirit regenerated you. Are you going to continue?”
He
uses the same word teleios or teleioo. Are you going to continue in the
flesh, mature in the flesh? So while the spiritual life is not anti-morality. It’s
not antinomianism or lawlessness or immorality. Morality isn’t enough. You’ve
got to be in fellowship and walking by the Spirit. That's what makes the
difference between the unbeliever who goes to a religious service and who is
moral (and it doesn't count anything for God); and a believer who is out of
fellowship and he does the same thing. He reads his Bible. He witnesses. He
prays.
But
as David said:
NKJ Psalm
66:18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear.
It's
all morality; but it's not getting him anywhere in terms of the spiritual life
because he's doing it in the power of the flesh. And that's where you get the
whole idea that the flesh can produce good things. That's where Paul really
drives in Galatians. He raises that issue in Galatians 3:3 using all of that
key terminology: the Spirit, the flesh and the verb teleioo for reaching maturity. He doesn't come back to that
terminology until Galatians 5:17 where he makes it clear that you're either one
way or you’re the other way. It’s either the work of the flesh or the work of
the Holy Spirit.
In
Romans 7 Paul realized that no matter how much he tried to be spiritually
mature and right by just obeying the law, ultimately what it exposed was that
there was arrogance behind it. Arrogance always leads (eventually) to the works
of the flesh. So you have disunity, all the sins that are listed there in verse
19.
Does
that answer your question?
Let’s
close in prayer. We had time for one question.