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Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. ~ Hebrews 12:3
Today, we continue our study of Hebrews 12 where the writer of Hebrews continues to give us an idea of what a life of faith in the God of the Bible looks like. There are those who place the focus on the amount of our faith, however, the most important aspect of our faith is the object of our faith. The object of our faith is made most evident when life gets most difficult. It was J.R.R. Tolkien who once said, "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
One of the most remarkable capacities of the human mind is the capacity to direct its own attention to something it chooses. Due to those capabilities, we have the ability to focus our attention on anything we choose. The Bible calls us again and again to use this remarkable gift to pursue God in such a way that we get to know Him personally and intimately. Our tendency is to grow weary and to become despondent and choose to get out of the race. This is the problem these young Hebrew Christians to whom the writer of Hebrews wrote this letter had. And, of course, this is the problem we face in our lives today.
When we run the race of faith, we access the joy of the Lord which is what helped Him endure the torment of the wrath of God. Of course, running the race is our pursuit of Him. This race is not the pursuit of a better self or a sanctimonious faith that somehow sets us apart from others. This is a pursuit of the One who made it possible for us to place our faith in Him in the first place. Our challenge is to contemplate the unfailing endurance of the Lord Jesus as He went through the experience of the suffering and death of the cross. And, when we grow weary, we must look intently to His overwhelming steadfastness in the face of extreme suffering. This will enable us to realize that we, even under extreme duress, have not endured anything like He did, therefore we will be enabled to take heart and persevere in our pursuit of Him.
The Lord Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be made full." We share in His joy because He has made us to sit also at the right hand of the Father. In the Lord Jesus believers are enthroned with Him as joint heirs of all that is His and His Father's. This is all possible because the Lord Jesus laid hold of us after He laid hold of the prize of conquering sin and death at the cross.
In today's verse we read, "Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."
The word translated "consider" occurs only in this place throughout the entire New Testament. It means "to analyze." If we think deeply about who the Lord Jesus is and all He went through for us and all that He has accomplished for us, we will be able to endure this race of pursuing Him. In the process of all of this, personal relationship with Him will occur. You see, it is not that we analyze to the point of gaining information about Him; it is that we analyze Him so much that we experience transformation from Him. And, this transformation will always render a deeper personal walk with Him.
The Lord Jesus was and is God, and, at any moment He could have rendered total annihilation on those who opposed Him and put Him on that cross, but He didn't. He didn't because He has a God-sized patience for the ignorance of sinners. The good news is He took the burden of our sins and placed them on Himself at the cross. Then He rose from the dead and sat at the right hand of God interceding on our behalf so that we continue in the faith. As a result, we will be energized to endure all this world will throw at us because He is the One who defines us. As we consider Him "who endured such opposition from sinners," we will gain the ability to see as others do not.
In the book of Ephesians there is a phrase that is used repeatedly. The phrase is "in heavenly places." When we pursue the Lord Jesus, we gain the perspective of this life from the vantage point of the heavenly places. When this happens, we are enabled to see our lives from His vantage point. We will access His wisdom in and through our pain and troubles and we will not grow weary and lose heart. It is at these very important moments in life that we are enabled to recognize that the events of our lives are controlled by a loving God who desires for us His best. So, when we encounter frustrations and disappointments, we will be enabled to recognize that He either has caused them or He has allowed them. And, He always has purposes that can only be seen from the vantage point of the "heavenly places."
The word "gospel" means "good news that is announced." When we pursue the Lord Jesus personally and daily, we discover that the good news is that even though we are lost and broken in this fallen world, God has come to find and save us. To do that He became a man who lived an ordinary human life, distinguished only by the startling fact that He never did anything wrong. He kept all of God’s laws, both internally and externally, and having done so, He transferred all the credit for that obedience to those who trust in Him. Having entered into a personal relationship with Him, we are granted the privilege of really knowing Him. And, as we get to know Him, He orders our lives and we find ourselves defined by Him as we apply His way of living to our lives. This is why we are exhorted to consider Him, to analyze Him for it is out of this growing relationship with Him that we realize His eternal life.
