Enduring Faith
Hebrews 10:35-36 (KJV) Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. 36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
(ESV) Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised
Hebrews 12:1 (KJV) Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
(ESV) Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
Intro
Florence Chadwick was the daughter of a San Diego police officer. She grew up on the beach and fell in love with the water. Very early in her life it became evident that Chadwick excelled at endurance swimming. Although she started competitive swimming at age 6, her first victory was in a 2 ½ mile rough water swim at the age of ten, where she placed 4th. A year later she won first place in a six mile rough water race.
Endurance swimming is a unique kind of competition, requiring special abilities and a mental and physical perseverance far beyond what is required of shorter distance swimmers. It requires athletes to keep good form, technique, and concentration for many hours. Most marathon swimmers swim between 60 and 70 strokes a minute. Therefore, a 10-hour swim would require 42,000 strokes, and a 14-hour swim would require 58,000 strokes, which is an incredible feat. There are also hazards unique to open-water, long-distance ocean swimming, the swimmer must navigate through a pitch black night, often dealing with thick fog, enduring swarms of jellyfish and be constantly vigilant about the possible presence of sharks.
Chadwick first made history in her crossing of the English Channel. The Channel swim was considered to be the greatest challenge available to swimmers in her day. The fact that less than seven percent [of those] who attempt to swim across the English Channel complete the 23 mile trip is a testament to the difficulty of the task. On August 8, 1950, after training for two years, Chadwick set a world record for the crossing, swimming from France to England in 13 hours and 20 minutes. On September 11, 1951, Chadwick made a historic return trip and swam back. Despite dense fog and strong headwinds, she prevailed through a 16 hour and 22 minute ordeal and became the first woman to swim the Channel both ways-from France to England as well as from England to France.
Almost a year later she attempted to set another record by becoming the first woman to swim 21 miles across the Catalina Channel on the California coast. She made her first attempt on July 4th, 1952. The weather was dreadful that day. The ocean was ice cold, the fog was so thick that she could hardly see the support boats that followed her, and sharks prowled the water around her. Several times, her support crew used rifles to drive away the sharks. While Americans watched on television, she swam for hours, pressing on and on through the fog. Her mother and her trainer, who were in one of the support boats, encouraged her to keep going. However, after 15 hours and 55 minutes, still unable to see any significant distance through the fog, she succumbed to the circumstances and ended the attempt, asking her support crew to pull her from the water.
What she didn’t realize, when she finally tossed in the towel, was that she was less than a mile from the other shore. She was incredibly close to completing the task but, because she couldn’t see through the dense fog, she had no idea how close she was. After the failed attempt, she told a reporter that, if only she could have seen the other shore, she could have completed the swim. But, while pressing through the fog, unable to see the goal, she became overwhelmed by the sense that she wasn’t making any progress at all. The final goal was out of sight, but the thick fog, the rough seas and the prowling sharks were very evident. In an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, she allowed that which was seen to overwhelm that which was, as of yet, unseen – losing sight of the goal, she surrendered to her circumstances. With over 20 rough miles behind her, she gave up with only a half mile left to go.
Endurance Needed
When Paul wrote his letter to the Hebrews, he did so in an effort to confront those that were abandoning Christianity to return to the ordinances of Judaism. The volume that resulted from that endeavor is, undeniably, one of the most richly profound books in the New Testament. Paul, recognizing his audience as being well established in the law, presented an argument drawn from the prevalent themes that run throughout the whole of scripture.
These Hebrew believers had, in many ways, the same problem that Florence Chadwick had. They started out well, but over time their faith began to waiver as they were tempted to give up before they completed the course. Their problem was that they found it easier to embrace the ordinances of a faith that they could see and touch. The tabernacle, in all of its glory and splendor, was still standing. The ordinances of the Old Covenant were still in place and they represented a very real and tangible approach to God. The things that they could see were so much more real to them than the things that they could not see. This New Covenant contains a better promise, a better tabernacle, a better high priest, and a better reward, but all of that remains unseen. None of it is physical and tangible, it is a promise that is not of this world, a reward that is eternal, and a faith that operates in the realm of the unseen. This was the heart of their struggle.
The writer of Hebrews admonishes the Hebrews not to return to the Old Covenant but to hold fast to the New and Better Covenant. He presents an extraordinary argument through the course of the book that is just as applicable to us, today, as it was to the Hebrews then. Our struggles may be different, our temptations to turn back are not the same, we don’t have the Old Tabernacle to contend with, but the truth remains that there exists today the same temptation to allow the very real obstacles and stumbling blocks of this life to overwhelm our faith and cause us to stop short of the promise of God.
Faith
The heart of Paul’s argument is a dissertation on faith. The best-known portion of the book of Hebrews is the often-quoted chapter on faith. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews presents the premise that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. The purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate that faith operates in the realm of that which is hoped for, that which is, as of yet, still unseen. This is in direct conflict with our very real tendency to place our faith in things that we can see and touch. So, through the record of Hebrews 11 the writer demonstrates how the heroes of Hebrew history possessed a faith that was not founded in the present but was constantly reaching for that which was not seen.
