COOPERATING WITH THE HEAVENLY MINISTRY OF THE ASCENDED CHRIST
Message Eight
Cooperating with Christ in His Heavenly Ministry by Running with Endurance the Race Set before Us, Looking Away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of Our Faith
Scripture Reading: Heb. 11:1, 6; 12:1-2; Rom. 10:17
I. "Therefore let us also, having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, put away every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and run with endurance the race which is set before us"—Heb. 12:1:
A. The cloud is for leading people to follow the Lord (Num. 9:15-22), and the Lord is in the cloud to be with the people (Exo. 13:21-22); in Greek witnesses implies the sense of martyrs (Acts 1:8):
1. With the people of faith, we can have the Lord's presence and His leading; all the people of faith, the church people, are the cloud; the best way to seek the Lord's presence is to come to the church.
2. If anyone is seeking the Lord's leading, he must follow the cloud, the church; the Lord is in the cloud, meaning that He is with the people of faith.
3. Since we are the people of faith, we are today's cloud, and people can follow the Lord by following us; those who seek Him can find His presence with us—cf. 1 Cor. 14:24-25; Psa. 36:8-9; 16:11.
B. The Christian life is a race; every saved Christian must run the race to win the prize (1 Cor. 9:24), not salvation in the common sense (Eph. 2:8; 1 Cor. 3:15) but a reward in a special sense (Heb. 10:35; 1 Cor. 3:14); the apostle Paul ran the race and won the prize (9:26-27; Phil. 3:13-14; 2 Tim. 4:7-8):
1. An encumbrance is a weight, burden, or impediment; the runners of the race strip off every unnecessary weight, every encumbering burden, that nothing may impede them from winning the race.
2. The unique entangling sin in this context was the willful sin of forsaking the assembling together with the saints, of giving up the new covenant way in God's economy, and of going back to Judaism (Heb. 10:26); both the encumbering weight and the entangling sin would have frustrated the Hebrew believers and restrained them from running the heavenly race in the new covenant way of following Jesus.
C. We need to run with endurance, asking the Lord to direct our hearts into the love of God and into the endurance of Christ—2 Thes. 3:5:
1. This is our love toward God, issuing from the love of God (1 John 4:19), which has been poured out in our hearts (Rom. 5:5).
2. This is to endure with the endurance of Christ that we have enjoyed and experienced—cf. Rev. 1:9.
II. "Looking away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, who forthe joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God"—Heb. 12:2:
A. We need to look away unto Jesus with undivided attention by turning away from every other object; Jesus is the Author of faith, the Originator, the Inaugurator, the source, and the cause of faith:
1. The wonderful Jesus, who is enthroned in heaven and crowned with glory and honor (2:9), is the greatest attraction in the universe.
2. He is like an immense magnet drawing all His seekers to Him—S. S. 1:4; Hosea 11:4; Jer. 31:3:
a. It is by being attracted by His charming beauty (loveliness, pleasantness, delightfulness) that we look away from all things other than Him—Psa. 27:4.
b. Without such a charming object, how could we look away from so many distracting things on earth?
B. The faith of the believers is actually not their own faith but Christ entering into them to be their faith—Rom. 3:22 and footnote 1; Gal. 2:16 and footnote 1:
1. Our believing is our appreciation of Christ as a reaction to His attraction—Rom. 10:17.
2. In our natural man we have no believing ability; we do not have faith by ourselves.
3. The faith by which we are saved is the precious faith that we have received from the Lord, the God-allotted faith—2 Pet. 1:1; Col. 1:12.
4. When we look away unto Jesus, He as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) transfuses us with Himself, His believing element.
5. This faith is not of ourselves but of Him who imparts Himself as the believing element into us that He may believe for us.
6. Hence, Christ Himself is our faith; we live by Him as our faith, that is, by His faith (Gal. 2:20), not our own.
C. Faith is a substantiating ability, a sixth sense, the sense by which we substantiate, give substance to, the things unseen or hoped for—Heb. 11:1:
1. Substantiating is the ability that enables us to realize a substance.
2. The function of our five senses is to substantiate the things of the outside world, transferring all the objective items into us to become our subjective experience.
3. As the eye is to seeing, the ear to hearing, and the nose to smelling, so faith, our spirit of faith, is the organ whereby we substantiate everything in the unseen spiritual world into us—2 Cor. 4:13:
a. We must exercise our spirit of faith, our mingled spirit, to believe and to speak the things we have experienced of the Lord.
b. Faith is in our spirit, which is mingled with the Holy Spirit, not in our mind; doubts are in our mind.
4. We do not regard, look at, the things which are seen but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal—v. 18:
a. The Christian life is a life of things unseen—Rom. 8:24-25; Heb. 11:27; 1 Pet. 1:8; Gal. 6:10.
b. The degradation of the church is the degradation from unseen things to seen things.
c. The Lord's recovery is to recover His church from things seen to things unseen.
5. Faith assures us of the things not seen, convincing us of what we do not see; therefore, it is the evidence, the proof, of things unseen.
D. Faith is to believe that God is:
1. Without faith it is impossible to please God, to make God happy—Heb. 11:6a.
2. "He who comes forward to God must believe that He is"—v. 6b; cf. Gen. 5:22-24:
a. To believe that God is, is to believe that He is everything to us and that we are nothing—John 8:58; Eccl. 1:2.
b. To believe that God is implies that we are not; He must be the only One, the unique One, in everything, and we must be nothing in everything—Heb. 11:5.
c. To believe that God is, is to deny our self; in the whole universe He is, and all of us are nothing—Luke 9:23.
d. I should not be anything; I should not exist; only He should exist—"It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ"—Gal. 2:20.
e. At his conversion the Lord told Saul of Tarsus, "I am Jesus"—Acts 9:5:
1) The Lord was saying, "I am the great I Am; I am the One who is; you must believe that I am and you are not."
2) Eventually, Saul was over, and Paul came up—13:9.
f. This is faith—"O the joy of having nothing and being nothing, seeing nothing but a living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here" (J. N. Darby).
E. Jesus is the Perfecter, the Finisher, the Completer, of our faith—Heb. 12:2a:
1. As we look away unto Him continually, He will finish and complete the faith that we need for the running of the heavenly race—v. 1.
2. We all have the same faith in quality, but the quantity of faith we have depends upon how much we contact the living God so that we may have Him increased in us—Rom. 12:3:
a. Faith in the progressing stage comes through our contacting the Triune God, who is faith in us—1 Thes. 5:17.
b. The way to receive such a faith is to contact its source, the Lord, the processed and consummated God, by calling on Him, praying to Him, and pray-reading His word—Heb. 4:16; Rom. 10:12; 2 Tim. 2:22; Eph. 6:17-18; Heb. 4:2.
c. When we contact Him, He is overflowing within us, and there is a mutuality of faith among us; we are encouraged through the faith that is in one another—Rom. 1:12; Philem. 6.
3. Our regenerated spirit, our spirit of faith, is the victory that overcomes the Satan-organized-and-usurped world—1 John 5:4; John 3:6; 2 Cor. 4:13; 1 John 5:18.
4. The great irrepressible and unlimited power of faith motivates thousandsto suffer for the Lord, risk their lives, and become overcoming sent ones and martyrs for the carrying out of God's eternal economy, which is in faith—Luke 18:8; Phil. 2:20; Rom. 16:3-4; Acts 20:24; 1 Tim. 1:4; Heb. 12:3; cf. Judg. 8:4.
F. According to Hebrews 12:2, for the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God:
1. The Lord Jesus knew that through His death He would be glorified in resurrection (Luke 24:25-26) and that His divine life would be released to produce many brothers for His expression (John 12:23-24; Rom. 8:29); for the joy set before Him (John 16:20-22), He despised the shame and volunteered to be delivered to the Satan-usurped leaders of the Jews and Gentiles and condemned by them to death.
2. Therefore, God highly exalted Him to the heavens, seated Him at His right hand (Mark 16:19; Acts 2:33-35), gave Him the name above every name (Phil. 2:9-10), made Him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36), and crowned Him with glory and honor (Heb. 2:9).
3. If we look away unto Him as such a wonderful and all-inclusive One, He will minister heaven, life, and strength to us, transfusing and infusing us with all that He is, that we may be able to run the heavenly race and live the heavenly life on earth; in this way He will carry us through all the lifelong pathway and lead and bring us into glory—v. 10; 2 Cor. 3:16, 18; 1 Pet. 5:4; 2 Tim. 4:8.