September 17, 2017 Sermon - Fixed on Jesus
I want to talk today about fixing our eyes on Jesus. I want to talk today about fixing our eyes on Jesus because everything flows, everything good flows, from fixing our eyes on Jesus.
There is in life, I've discovered, nothing more beautiful, nothing more lovely, no one more faithful or trustworthy or true, than our Jesus.
And I love being with the body of of Christ, because normally, to the exclusion of everything else, I can fix my eyes on Jesus.
And what is fixing our eyes, the eyes of our hearts, the eyes of our imaginations, the eyes of our aspirations, on Jesus? It is about worship. It is about worshipping God as He is and as He has revealed Himself to be.
God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Godhead. In Jesus is all the fullness of the Godhead, the Bible says.
And so as we fix our eyes on Jesus in worship, we fix our eyes on the fullness of God.
James and Joel and I were driving around the city the other day and we were talking about this.
We were talking about how everything good flows from God, and that being worshippers - true worshippers, in Jesus words, who worship in spirit and in truth, is the most important thing about who we are. It is the part of us that lasts into eternity.
To the best of my knowledge I won’t be a pastor in eternity. I won’t be married to Barbara (one of THE best parts of my life here and now), I won’t be or do anything other than be a worshipper of God.
I’m sort of hoping that might involve being in a heavenly orchestra.
But I will be a worshipper of God. You, will be a worshipper of God, if you are a worshipper of God in Christ now. There aren’t any human words to effectively describe the sheer gorgeous beauty and reverence of our God that will be heaven, though the Bible does a great job of trying.
But even though that’s what eternity will be like (and if you think eternity in God’s presence, beholding His beauty and majesty, serving Him and worshipping Him in pure and exceeding joy...if that sounds somehow boring to you...there’s room in your heart and mind to grow in the knowledge of God).
Even though worship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in diverse and endlessly creative ways is what eternity will be like for those who follow Jesus now, we are still instructed, directed, encouraged to fix our eyes upon Jesus right here and now.
What good comes from fixing our eyes on Jesus in worship, in this place when we gather on Sundays, in our own personal devotions that we hopefully make time and space for most days?
What benefit to you and to me is there in worshipping Jesus?
The Cloud of witnesses behind us that we will join in glory
Freedom from sin and all that entangles
Power to run the race with perseverance
Now the chapter before our passage today in Hebrews talks about those who have gone before us.
Chapter 12, you may have noticed, begins with therefore. ‘Therefore’ means ‘in light of what I have just said”.
And what the writer of Hebrews 11 has been talking about is the record of men and women who lived by faith. What can be said about those people listed in chapter 11?
They led real, complicated lives, as real and complicated as we feel our lives to be. They led imperfect lives, but they lived by faith.
Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, Gideon, Deborah, Moses, Rahab and many more whose stories populate much of the OT, lived by faith in God. They lived by the promises of God.
When critics of the Bible or of any book written long ago see neat and tidy stories about perfect people, be it Caesar or Alexander or any great figure of the past - when they see whitewashed narratives about their lives, they view that with suspicion.
They, rightly I think, suppose that those stories are tales that can’t be relied upon. Why is that? Because if we’re human and we’re honest, the first thing we know about being human is that ALL of our stories are messy and there are a good number of embarrassing bits.
In the Bible though, you get a great deal of embarrassing narrative about even the key characters, the key people.
Moses, Abraham, Issac, Simon Peter, Paul the Apostle - the key people, the founders of our faith, have pretty negative and embarrassing things attached to the narrative, to the stories in the Bible about their lives. That is only because they are human, and because the Bible is true and completely trustworthy as the Word of god
Anyhow, the people listed in Hebrews 11 were real people leading complicated lives, BUT...they lived by faith.
And beginning in verse 13 we learn something really important.
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.
So our Scripture today, chapter 12 of the Book of Hebrews, starts with “Therefore...”. Therefore, in the light of what we have been reminded of regarding these people of faith who have gone before us, this great collective witness who lived their lives with faith in God, and influenced their generations for God even while knowing that they weren’t actually ‘home’ on earth.
Therefore, since we have these great witnesses to what it means to live a life of faith, a life of trusting God while being used by God to accomplish His good purposes, this cloud of witnesses that we will one day join in glory, let’s you and me start doing some throwing off.
“12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles”.
There’s another passage I love: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”. (Gal 5:1) Because Jesus wants us free, He wants us unchained, unhindered, unentangled.
The Bible commentator William Barclay said this: “In the Christian life we have a handicap. If we are encircled by the greatness of the past (the cloud of witnesses that we’ve just talked about). We are also encircled by the handicap of our own sin”.
Do we have any climbers here? Anyone who likes to climb or hike mountains or uneven terrains?
Can you, for a second, imagine climbing a great mountain? Think of Mount Everest or some such mountain.
Do you imagine that a climber would climb with a van full of lumber weighing him down? When determined to reach the summit of the mountain, would a climber bear ANY unnecessary weight?
Of course not. To step out trying to do so would be to guarantee failure. The truth is, if we want to travel far with Jesus, we must travel light.
There is in life an essential duty of discarding things - anything that is unnecessary and that works against the goal set before us.
What are some things that we have a duty to discard from our lives in order to travel light and reach our goal?
There may be habits that we have, pleasures that we indulge in, associations, relationships that hold us back.
When an athlete runs, no matter the weather, he or she sheds his track suit when they go to the starting-mark. So must we in our pursuit of God, in our desire for holiness. We need to throw off everything that hinders us.
And if we’ve been at this for more than 2 seconds, we know that we need help. We need help to do this. We need the power of Jesus to enable us to leave behind the sin that so easily entangles.
Sin entangles by feeding on our natures. Is it drugs or alcohol? That’s only a problem because our human natures feed off it, and because Satan uses it in his efforts to destroy us. Is it wrong to have a glass?
According to Scripture that records Jesus first miracle as turning water into wine, no it’s not wrong. The problem is, because of our fallen natures, soon enough, if we’re not careful and mindful and aware, the wine has us. In its claws.
Is it lust? Lust is a perversion and distortion of sexual desire that God placed in us to find expression, as Jesus said, in marriage between a man and a woman. Is sex wrong?
No, says the God who told humanity to go forth and multiply.
But if we’re not careful and if we don’t follow God’s intention for sex, we can soon be slaves to it in one form or another.
Whatever the sin that entangles is - gossip, anger (see list), we’re called to live free from everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us.
If we want to travel far in our relationship with God, in our walk with Jesus, we must travel light.
How does fixing our eyes on Jesus help in this? Jesus is the source of our power to live free. Jesus is the one who died so that sin would no longer be a barrier between us and God.
He died so that the chasm between God and us could be crossed by us through the cross, as Jesus deals with our sin and advocates to the father on our behalf. What’s that? Jesus advocates for us.
The Bible says that Jesus advocates for us, prays for us, intercedes for us.
Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Romans 8:34
Jesus is doing that right now for you. In fact, He started doing that when He was on this earth. In John chapter 17, Jesus prayed that we may be kept from sin (John 17:15). "I pray that thou shouldest keep them from evil."
We live in the world with endless opportunities to lose our focus; Jesus prays that we may not be infected with the contagious evil of the times.
Second, Jesus prayed that we would progress in holiness. "Sanctify them" (John 17:17). Let them have constant supplies of the Spirit, and be anointed with fresh oil.
Third, for our eternity: "Father, I will that those which thou hast given me, be with me where I am" (John 17:24). Christ is not content till the saints are in his arms.
This prayer, which he made on earth, is the copy and pattern of his prayer in heaven.
What a comfort is this; when Satan is tempting, Christ is praying! This works for good.
He is doing this right now.
Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Romans 8:34
Let’s stop for a second and consider this truth: that Jesus is interceding for us right now.
How does that hit you? How does that encourage you?
And God, by the Holy Spirit, gives us power by the name of Jesus and through his blood shed on the cross,
to overcome the sin that so easily in tangles us, that robs us of joy, that keeps us thinking only about ourselves, that complicates and compromises our witness to the world of the love and tender mercy of our God.
Being fixed on Jesus gives us power to run the race with perseverance
Jesus deals with our sin. We need to keep short accounts with God. Have you sinned, done something that offended God today?
Go to Jesus right away and confess your sin and He absolutely will be faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
Feel too ashamed? I’ve got news for you, and for me. When you confess to God, you are not bringing Him news. He knows you better than you know yourself.
When you confess, you are owning up to being imperfect, you are stating your need for Jesus, you are coming clean and then what’s happening?
Your conscience is cleared, and you are no longer encumbered by the weight of sin. You are free again to serve Him with joy.
Being fixed on Jesus gives us the power to run the race with perseverance. What is perseverance?
You keep going. You fall, you get up. You fall you get up. You fall...you get up. As long as you get up one more time than you fall, you are good to go.
We have in Jesus One who gives us the power to do as He did. Even more than that... Jesus said: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father”. John 14:12
By His Spirit, through His sacrifice, aided constantly by the cleansing flow of forgiveness and grace that God lavishes upon us, Jesus gives us the power...
not to drag ourselves along the course; not to walk impeded with a painful limp; not to crawl in humiliation and defeat, but to RUN THE RACE. With perseverance.
May you and I fix our eyes on Jesus. May we fix our lives on Jesus. May we walk in our identity as forgiven, called, Holy Spirit-filled followers of Jesus the Christ.
And may we bring Him honour and glory moment by moment, day by day, as we live for Him and live to bless others and invite them to follow Him.
