1. "Creative and generous thinking by private business leaders should be noted and honored and imitated."

2. "In a room like this filled with so many people who are not yet even in their 30s, for many of you, you still feel like this race is a sprint. You've not figured out that you need the discipline of a spiritual marathoner to keep going."

3. "Sleep is good, yes, but not while you're driving. And Christian, while you're in this life, spiritually speaking, you're still driving. It's not a good time for being spiritually dull and unresponsive."

4. "Don't misunderstand the way of Christ as a way of ultimate self-denial, some kind of Buddhism. It's not that at all. No, it's lesser denials for a greater good."

5. "There's no weariness that you know in following Christ that will ever really be ended by submitting to sin. If you've got a sin that's calling to you right now, promising you rest and joy and pleasure, I promise you it's lying."

6. "Be very careful about practicing positive thinking. It might make you turn a deaf ear to the Lord's discipline."

7. "The rough spots aren't in the way of God's plan. They're part of God's plan. They're part of the way that God will work His holiness in you."

8. "If they're just meaningless hardships, they can go on year after year forever without purpose or progress. Well, that's a kind of pointless, malevolent torture. But if they're in fact purposive actions of our heavenly Father, then what we will experience is very different than what we're experiencing now."

9. "Imagine a time when there's no need for anything like this. Teaching, sitting there, enduring, or me preparing. There's just no need to do that anymore. School's done."

10. "We Christians know that our blood is not ours. It's been purchased by Christ."

Observation Questions

1. According to Hebrews 12:1, what two things are believers called to "lay aside" as they run the race set before them?

2. In Hebrews 12:2, what motivated Jesus to endure the cross and despise its shame, and where is He now positioned?

3. What does Hebrews 12:4 say about how far these believers had gone in their struggle against sin compared to Christ's example?

4. According to Hebrews 12:5-6 (quoting Proverbs 3:11-12), what two responses to the Lord's discipline are believers warned against, and what does the Lord's discipline demonstrate about His relationship to them?

5. In Hebrews 12:10, what contrast does the author draw between how earthly fathers disciplined and how God disciplines His children?

6. According to Hebrews 12:11, what does discipline seem like "for the moment," and what does it yield "later" to those who have been trained by it?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does the author describe the faithful figures from Hebrews 11 as "witnesses" rather than simply as spectators or fans, and how does this understanding shape how we should view their example?

2. How does the phrase "for the joy set before Him" in verse 2 help us understand that following Christ is not ultimate self-denial but rather lesser denials for a greater good?

3. Why does the author argue in verses 7-8 that the presence of discipline actually confirms rather than calls into question our relationship with God as His children?

4. What is the significance of the author's shift from the athletic imagery of running a race (verses 1-4) to the family imagery of a father disciplining his children (verses 5-11)?

5. How does understanding God's purpose in discipline—"that we may share His holiness" (verse 10)—change the way a believer should interpret and respond to hardships in the Christian life?

Application Questions

1. The sermon asked, "What are you needing to lay aside?"—identifying both sins and neutral things that hinder your spiritual race. What specific "weight" or "entangling sin" do you need to address this week, and what practical step will you take to lay it aside?

2. When you face hostility, discouragement, or weariness in following Christ, what habits or practices help you "look to Jesus" and "consider Him" as the passage commands? How might you strengthen these practices?

3. Think of a current hardship or trial in your life. How does viewing it as purposeful fatherly discipline rather than meaningless suffering change your attitude toward it and your response to God?

4. The sermon mentioned that anticipation of future joy is a powerful motivator. What specific ways can you cultivate a greater desire for eternal joy with God this week—through Scripture, worship, fellowship, or other means?

5. The passage calls believers to "lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees" and to "make straight paths for your feet" (verses 12-13). Who in your community of faith appears weary or struggling, and how might you come alongside them this week to encourage their endurance?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Hebrews 11:32-40 — This passage immediately precedes the sermon text and presents the "cloud of witnesses" whose faith through suffering provides the foundation for the exhortation to endure in chapter 12.

2. Proverbs 3:11-12 — This Old Testament passage is directly quoted in Hebrews 12:5-6 and establishes the principle that God's discipline is an expression of His fatherly love.

3. Isaiah 40:28-31 — The sermon referenced this passage to show that those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, directly addressing the weariness believers experience in their spiritual race.

4. Romans 8:28-39 — This passage reinforces the sermon's teaching that God works all things—including hardships and hostility—for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

5. 1 Peter 4:12-19 — This passage, referenced through the story of Sharif, addresses how believers should respond to fiery trials and entrust themselves to a faithful Creator while doing good.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Facing Adversity: An Introduction Through Community Example

II. Follow Christ's Example (Hebrews 12:1-4)

III. Understand God's Love (Hebrews 12:5-13)

IV. Encouragement to Persevere Through Trials

Detailed Sermon Outline

What challenges or adversities are you facing in your life these days? At school?

Or in your family?

Or at work? Maybe in your community?

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, the Metropolitan Police Department Sixth District Substation was opened just over the Sousa Bridge, 2701 Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast. At the time, crime in the neighborhood was high and the police had gone through a multi-year amalgamation of stations, closing most substations in the city. But this exceptional opening of a new substation in Southeast DC was desired by the community and was the result of a tragedy which was met by creativity and generosity. The National Capital Bank, a bank which started here on the Hill only 11 years after our church began meeting here on this corner, this bank had built the building at 2701 Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast as their branch office. Two miles away from their main building just across the Anacostia.

They operated it for 40 years until a tragic killing there in 1995 caused the branch to close. George Didden, CEO of the bank at the time, along with a couple of police chiefs, one current, one former, and a leading D.C. philanthropist, came up with the idea of refurbishing the bank building as a police substation, and letting the police rent it for ten years for $1 a year, after which it would go to the normal market rate there, and the rent would then go into the National Capital Bank Foundation, which would then use the money raised to help residents in the neighborhood. In the last two decades, that foundation has donated more than $2 million to local charities. Creative and generous thinking by private business leaders should be noted and honored and imitated. As a congregation with many members in Southeast DC, because remember, Southeast starts just right across East Capitol Street.

We want to thank the bank, which has been a great bank for our church for decades more than I've been here, and which is represented here today by Jimmy Ditton. As part of the family who has led that bank for decades now and is currently serving as one of the bank's managers. He's here with us this morning, Jimmy, you want to stand up for a moment? Jimmy, thank you for serving our church for decades.

Now that's me using this anniversary, 25th anniversary, and Jimmy's visit, which just happened to line up. With those together as an opportunity to remember an important action in our community and to note it, draw attention to it as an example of creative, positive action to change and encourage, and also for us to consider it as an example about facing adversity. A terrible killing had occurred. What would be done? And I'm using that simply to introduce the topic that the writer to the Hebrews has us in this morning, which is facing adversity.

If you look to Hebrews chapter 12, take your Bibles, you'll remember the situation the letter was addressed to. It was Christians in adversity. Jewish Christians in first century Jerusalem were facing hostility. He's detailed it a number of times in the letter. They were wondering if they should be less Christian and more Jewish.

The letter from its first verse, really, the chapter 10 verse 18, crucially held up parts of the Levitical priesthood and their practices and worship in the temple, and they compared them to Jesus Christ. They made comparisons of Jesus to Moses, even to the angels, all of whom were mere servants of God, whereas Jesus he reminded them, is God's Son. The priests of the old covenant were temporary and numerous and ineffective because they died. Jesus' priesthood, by contrast, is eternal and effective and unique. You see his climactic conclusion in chapter 10.

That's found on page 1006 in the Bible's provided. Chapter 10. Let me begin reading with verse 10.

And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet. For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying, 'This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days,' declares the Lord, 'I will put My laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.' Then He adds, 'I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.' Where there is forgiveness of these, There's no longer any offering for sin.

You see there with the back wave of his hand, as it were, he just wipes away the temple and it's competing worship in a world where Christ, the real sacrifice, has come and has been offered. But apparently something was motivating these early Christians to turn back from following Christ to take a more attractive and easier way. It seemed Some had stopped coming to church. In 10:32 he referred to a time when they faced a hard struggle with sufferings, quote, in verse 33, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, sometimes being partners with those so treated. Their property was plundered, their friends were imprisoned.

It's in that context then that the author produces that inspiring catalog in chapter 11. Of all of those people who had lived according to faith, had been witnesses of God's faithfulness through the most difficult of circumstances. And we as those who have seen the Messiah come and be crucified and then raised and exalted are the ones who have been privileged to see more than any generation before God's faithful keeping of His promises. Therefore, When we face trials and tribulations, what should we do? That's my basic question this morning.

When we face trials and tribulations, what should we do? I think in our passage this morning, our preacher holds out two simple but profound actions. Number one, follow Christ's example.

That's verses 1 to 4. And number 2, understand God's love. That's verses 5 to 13. See if you can hear those instructions as I read the passage. So you'll be held to field.

Look in a book, grab a Bible, open it up, find Hebrews. You'll find the passage that I'm reading on page 1008 in the copies that are provided. The chapter numbers are the large numbers, the verse numbers are the small numbers. As Preston said earlier, if you don't have a copy of the Bible that you can read yourself, just take that copy as for your very own, a gift from us to you to help you read the Bible. Hebrews chapter 12 beginning at verse 1.

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, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin, you've not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Besides us, we've had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share His holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

So, number one, follow Christ's example, verses 1 to 4. Number two, understand God's love, verses 5 to 13. I pray that each one here this morning, especially those of you who've been facing hostility for being a Christian or who are weary and fainthearted, struggling, feeling weak, I pray that God will use this time together to help you follow Christ's example. And to help you better understand God's love. First the writer says, Follow Christ's example and deny ourselves.

Look again at the first four verses there in chapter 12. 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, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin, you've not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. You'll notice the writer speaks inclusively with we and us in those first couple of verses.

He says in verse 1, Let's lay aside sin and run with endurance, taking Jesus as our our example who's already completed the race. And then he intensifies the language switching to the second person plural youl in verse 3. Consider Christ's endurance so that you will endure. You haven't yet shed your blood in the contest. The image is, of course, that of a foot race.

But then by verses 3 and 4 the image has been dropped and Christ's example in facing even violent opposition is held out to them directly to encourage them and to put strength in their steps. My Christian brothers and sisters, I wonder how you feel you're doing in the race that the writer describes here. In a room like this filled with so many people who are not yet even in their 30s, for many of you, you still feel like this race is a sprint. You've not figured out that you need the discipline of a spiritual marathoner to keep going. That's why God put passages like this in His Word, for you to read and be informed and alerted and warned that you need to come up with sustainable disciplines.

In order to continue in the race. Passages like this are meant to help you. Others of you in your 40s and 50s may have been walking with the Lord for 20 or 30 years, and you may be being tempted to compromise with sin and to slacken your pace. Like Christian in Vanity Fair, you may get distracted, or what Jesus called tribulation and persecution has come, or the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things. For you I pray that this passage will come like a sharp alarm.

Wake up, snap out of it. Sleep is good, yes, but not while you're driving. And Christian, while you're in this life, spiritually speaking, you're still driving. It's not a good time for being spiritually dull and unresponsive.

And older saints in your 60s and 70s and 80s for us, we need to remember that while we are in this life, we are still in this race. We are not finally home until God calls us to come home to be with Him forever. And if you are hearing this sermon, that is not yet you.

In fact, all of us are supposed to add our names to the glorious host we just considered up in chapter 11. You see how this passage begins, chapter 12, verse 1, with, Therefore, he's looking at all the things we've just seen in chapter 11, all that host of people, all this is the conclusion to be drawn from chapter 11. This great cloud of witnesses that the author has summoned together there in our mind's eye is not so much an audience of mere fans in some heavenly stands cheering us on in the contest. No, these are previous contestants, examples who are telling us that the race is worth running and can be won. This is a group of witnesses like in a law court bearing testimony to the truth of God's claim to use all things for the redemption of His own people.

And of course the supreme example of that is Jesus, where the most tragic circumstances of all led to Christ's exaltation. And ultimately our salvation.

So to those of us, along with the writer himself who are in this race, he calls us in verse 1 to lay aside everything unnecessary that would clutter and confuse us and distract us and mislead us. They needed to lay all that aside. For them now it was those Levitical practices down at the temple that looked so temptingly religious. So wonderfully contained, so socially respected, so historically ancient, so deeply familiar. For us, of course, it's all those closely clinging sins.

But, you know, He does say before He mentions sins, He says, Every weight and that image I think is meant to be a bit broader than sins, even to include things that are not in themselves inherently sinful. It's whatever is getting in the way of your running the race that you need to run. That's what we must, he says here, lay aside. So friends, what are you needing to lay aside?

What fear or discouragement?

Is it sensuality that is tripping you up? That's considered just an unquestioned good in our day when actually everybody's life shows examples of how that's not true.

Can you face up to the fact that that relationship is bad or that friendship is spiritually unhelpful to you?

Don't let foolish commitments or draining addictions continue sucking the spiritual life from you.

They are what threaten to prevent you from running the race with endurance as he calls you to here. Maybe this is worth you giving some time over lunch to talking about with each other. What would be some weights, sins that entangle those may be a little more easy to discern, but how about those things that in themselves seem morally neutral, but in your experience seem to be hindering you right now in the week that the Lord has called you to?

Endurance is a determined persevering patience. In Greek it's the word from which we get our word agony referring to the level of effort that these long-distance runners would exert. Paul used the same image when he wrote to the Christians in Corinth. He said, Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Of course, of all the folks cited up in chapter 11, they were all just leading to the climax of Jesus here in chapter 12, verse 2.

And when he calls us here to resist to the point of shedding our blood and look to Jesus who endured the cross, he's really echoing those words that Jesus himself spoke in Mark 8 when Jesus said, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. He said that not simply to form a spiritual elite and to call out the religiously indifferent, No, He said that because that was the way Jesus was going, to the cross. And if you would follow Him, you will have to go that way because that's where He went.

There's no way around the endurance that will be needed to survive being tempted to feel ashamed in this world. And we may even be called to give our own lives. As fellow Jewish believers of Jesus, Stephen and James and so many others that they knew had already done.

But don't misunderstand the way of Christ as a way of ultimate self-denial, some kind of Buddhism. It's not that at all. No, it's lesser denials for a greater good. Jesus Himself is the example of that here in verse 2. He despised the shame, he endured the cross, it says in verse 2, for the joy set before him.

Friends, what a powerful motivator is anticipation. Think of all of the things that you have studied for, or prepared for, or trained for, practiced for.

What can you do to sharpen your taste, to heighten your desire for this greatest of all joys, being with God forever? One way we try to do that regularly here is just by singing together. Here we are, a bunch of adults, and on a beautiful fall morning, now afternoon, we just spent a lot of it just singing together. Ah, but what we were singing about. Did you hear those things we were saying to each other in song?

We were meaning to incite each other to a growing anticipation of what God has for us in Christ. The crowds in Jerusalem that had opposed Jesus, our author in verse 3 simply summarizes them as the sinners, their disobedience and opposition to God is a sadly sufficient summary of them. But friend, there's no weariness that you know in following Christ that will ever really be ended by submitting to sin. If you've got a sin that's calling to you right now, promising you rest and joy and pleasure, I promise you it's lying.

It will fulfill its promises only in the most passing cursory, finally illusory way. It's not telling you the truth. Sin never does. Now, friends, if you're feeling weary and you're following Christ, you can't fix that by giving into sin. No, you fix that weariness by turning to the Lord.

You know that famous passage in Isaiah chapter 40?

Where the Lord says, chapter 40, verse 28, have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint. There's the verse you're looking for. That's Isaiah 40:29. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.

But they who wait for the Lord, those who anticipate God, and His presence and promises shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. That's why I go looking through the old hymnals to find hymns on heaven that no one sings anymore so that we can sing them, so that we will have this wind under our wings to help us and keep us going on our way. So friends, when you are weary or fainthearted, as the writer to Hebrews says here, look to Jesus. Consider him.

Just think what causes you to grow weary or faint hearted in your following Christ. Think back to a time when you've actually faced hostility for being a Christian. It's those times, the writer says, that you should look to Jesus. If you are weary and worn in the race this morning, the truest strength is going to be found in going back to Jesus and considering him. Truth about Christ generates our faith.

That's why we do what we do here every Sunday. We begin every week with this two-hour double-barreled singing, praying, reading, and then studying in order to give us strength for the week. Because we know that the truth about God being our Holy Creator, having made us to be like Him, to know Him, to love Him, but our having alienated ourselves from Him by our sin. And then His sending His only Son in love to live a perfect life and die on the cross in our place as our substitute, and then raising Him from the dead and accepting that sacrifice, calling us then to repent of our sins and turn and trust in Him. That message, that good news, it's good news for each one of us today.

Is our only way of being able to continue this race, to run in this direction even through the week that the Lord has ahead of us. Follow the example of Christ. Deny yourself. You'll be helped to follow Christ if you also, though, number two, understand God's love. Understand God's love, because if you understand God's love, you will submit to his providence.

Look there at verses 5 and following.

What he's basically saying here, verse 5, Understand the Lord and His discipline rightly. And he addresses this, you'll see, he says in verse 5, that addresses you as sons. By sons he doesn't mean and not daughters. Sons is inclusive, means sons and daughters. So he addresses us and he says, the Lord disciplines you out of love because you're His son, His child.

Whoever heard of a child, verse 7, that isn't disciplined? Verse 8, if you're not disciplined by your father, it suggests that you're not really His. So therefore, what's the conclusion there in verse 9? So let's submit to our heavenly Father like we have to our earthly dads. Verse 10, God's discipline is always to make us holy.

Verse 11, painful discipline produces righteousness. Verses 12 and 13, just kind of keep going. Let's listen to these verses again, verses 5 to 13. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.

Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us—the earthly fathers—for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later, later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. He gets right to it there in verse 5.

He warns his readers not to regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. My grandmother was Christian Science and she put a very strong gene in me of just ignoring everything negative. Be very careful about practicing positive thinking. It might make you turn a deaf ear to the Lord's discipline. What was it C.S.

Lewis called pain? God's megaphone. It's not that what the opponents of these Christians were doing was right as they expressed hostility to these Jewish Christians for following Christ. It wasn't right. Their hostility was wrong.

Undoubtedly they did it for ill reasons and with ill purposes. These people who were insulting these early Christians wanted to discourage them and shame them and they wanted to turn them nevertheless. Behind whatever ill will they may have had, the God who works all things for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, as we see in Romans 8:28, as we heard in that sermon from John Piper last month, this very same God had a good purpose to accomplish in the lives of these early Christians and He would do it through these smaller crosses, even as He had accomplished His good purpose in Christ through the cross. It is the Lord who is at work in the hardships that we face as Christians. Then our writer quotes from Proverbs 3:11-12.

That's what's going on there in verses 5 and 6. Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord; nor be weary when reproved by Him; for the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. This is his perspective on our struggles along the way as Christians. And then in verse 7 he makes it clear that their trials don't raise questions about their relationship with God, they confirm it.

He tells them they're to understand these trials as parental correction and discipline. And he's saying, When you understand it like this, it makes it so much easier to endure. I remember when our kids were very young, each of them around the age of a year and a half had to have some surgery. That's a very difficult age for a child to have to have surgery because you can't really communicate with them that well, and they're about to undergo this painful process. Now as the kids grew, we could explain to them that through this or that, Even if it might be painful, it would be good for them, and they could trust us and know that.

Friends, that's what we're to be like with God. We're to be not like the infant who doesn't know enough to trust, but we should be like the one who has seen and understood God's faithfulness in our lives supremely in Christ. Verse 7 is very clear. He's saying God is treating you in these hardships as son because every son is disciplined by his father. So if every son is disciplined by his father, then you should expect that if you've been adopted as God's son, you will be disciplined by him and that you should be patient and persevering during that trial.

Friends, the rough spots aren't in the way of God's plan. They're part of God's plan. They're part of the way that God will work His holiness in you. That's what he seems to be saying here in verse 10. This passage is full of contrast, far more than we have time to bring out this morning.

Over lunch you might want to try to find some more of them, like the creatures that the artist hides in the tree and is drawing. See if you can see them. So let me just point out one here in verse 11. The writer gives us this contrast between the immediate experience of discipline, which is hard, and the eventual product of it. Verse 11, For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

This discipline you understand is far more than simply a corporal punishment of a disobedient three-year-old. Now, this is the training that sends you to school, to college. This is the complete relationship where you want the younger one to learn and be informed and shaped by and helped by, instructed, and so given knowledge how to live, how to walk, how to conduct his life. That's what this discipline is. So include with negative correction but it's far more than that.

But the discipline that's the structure, whether it's a punishment or a learning, yeah, discipline by its very nature is usually not pleasant. Whether it's going to the gym, getting a spanking, or learning to conjugate the verbs in some other language. That discipline is hard. But it produces good effects. So the writer here contrasts for the moment, later, now and then, very different times, when you're considering something hard, when you're considering it as discipline.

If they're just meaningless hardships, they can go on year after year forever without purpose or progress. Well, that's a kind of pointless, malevolent torture. But if they're in fact purposive actions of our heavenly Father, then what we will experience is very different than what we're experiencing now, and what we will be is very different than what we are now. So now is marked by discipline, and it's attended unpleasantness and even painfulness. It's no fun, and we don't need to pretend that it is.

Is also marked by an immature goodness, by an inconsistent peace in our lives, by an uncertainty even in our trust of God. That's now. But then, then later, then we'll be marked by this discipline being done and our being able to take pleasure in the goodness and perhaps even finding our lives easy and peaceful with God and others, at least in the particular area that God and His wisdom has been working on, the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Righteousness, he calls it. What a great image.

Have you seen how God can use hardships to make you notice things that need to change, things that are wrong? Look there in verses 12 and 13. What a wonderful image. He's picking back up the runner image and he's saying, Listen, we want to make the path one and we want to run on it in such a way that we won't be further mangled, but that even the wounded can be healed and restored. What an image of hope.

Ultimately, well, we can barely think of ultimately when all discipline is done, when school will be out, when all will be pleasure and rest and enjoyment and goodness and peace in our maturity as we come to fully share in God's own holiness. Imagine a time when there's no need for anything like this. Teaching, sitting there, enduring, or me preparing. There's just no need to do that anymore. School's done.

I love that image that Adoniram Judson gave in the letter that I've quoted. About every third sermon it feels like sometimes. Where Adnai Judson was the translator of the Bible into Burmese 200 years ago. He's from America. He's writing about a time when he was trying to complete the dictionary in Burmese.

He's writing to a friend and he said, I do not believe I'm going to die. I should like to complete the dictionary. Then after all the plans that we've formed, oh, I feel like if I were only just beginning to be prepared for usefulness. It's not because I shrink from death that I wish to live. Neither is it because the ties that bind me here, though some of them are very sweet, bear any comparison with the drawings I at times feel towards heaven.

But a few years would not be missed from my eternity of bliss, and I can well afford to spare them, both for your sake and for the sake of the poor Burmans. I'm not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world. Yet, when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from his school.

Praise the Lord. I mean, that's what we're all aiming at. So as you encounter trials this week, understand, my Christian friend, understand God's discipline as fatherly love, and go with it. Submit to Him and trust. We should conclude because we have a number of baptisms.

Do you take the troubles in your Christian life as a sign that you should give up or encouragements to keep going? Each one of us has to figure that out.

Our passage today began with that therefore pointing back to the Hall of Faithful Martyrs in chapter 11. Of course, you realize every day of the year is filled with memories of Christian martyrs. I mean, if you follow me on Twitter, you'll know so many times I'll just say today, 250 years ago today, and I'll just let you know one of the things that happened. Every day is filled with memories of Christian martyrs who have borne witness to the faithfulness of God to His promises with their lives. Sometimes they've borne witness through the violent taking of their lives.

Many of you will know that today, October 16th, is the anniversary of the burnings of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer in Oxford, England. If you don't know those stories or if you've forgotten them, you could reread them this afternoon. Their faithfulness have inspired generations. I'll tell you another thing associated with today's date. When I lived in Cambridge, England, where Ridley and Latimer were trained and taught, a number of times I had the privilege of speaking to groups in the Henry Martin Hall.

It was a hall dedicated to Henry Martin at the church he had been at in Cambridge for a few years. Martin himself had been a young legal scholar at Cambridge when at age 21 in 1802 he happened to hear Charles Simeon speaking about all the good that just one man, William Carey, had done in India. And he also read the biography of David Brainerd and his work among the Native American Indians up in New England. Ah, missionary biographies. They'll do it every time.

Within a couple of years, Martin had left the law and had become Simeon's assistant at Holy Trinity Church there in Cambridge. And by 1806, Martin was himself in India. There he translated the New Testament into Urdu. Then he went on to Persia where he translated the New Testament into Persian. And today, October 16th, is the 210th anniversary of Henry Martin's death as he was traveling from Persia to Constantinople.

As a 31-year-old man, he fell ill and died. But had not his life been well spent? Go read of all the challenges Henry Martin encountered for following Christ and making his gospel known. Friends, such challenges are not only the stuff of missionary biographies and the pages of church history. Here in Hebrews 12 verse 4, the writer mentions to these Christians, you, blood.

And yet we Christians know that our blood is not ours. It's been purchased by Christ. As Paul said to the Corinthians, you, are not your own, for you were bought with a price.

So what is Christ's ownership of your life looking like?

You remember a few weeks ago I told you of Sharif in Zanzibar? Sharif is practically in hiding. As his life is being threatened again and again. Pray for him. His trials have continued.

I got this word from him through a mutual friend just on Friday. I quote his text, so far I'm in a hidden place. I was advised not to go around during the daytime because this is Zanzibar authority for once again starting to put pressure on immigration Tanzania. And asking why they released my passport. Muslim society group went in my apartment days before yesterday and broke the door and they were looking for me.

However they used acid and throw away all around the apartment. By the grace of God I'm in and then he says where he is. And no one knows where I am. Brother attacks against me become very huge. All society they condemn me because I became a Christian and I preached about Jesus to university students.

The Commissioner of Immigration advised me not to talk to no one, even my friends, just for a moment, because many of them, they are arrested so that they may be used by the authority to arrest me. But today I was reading the book of 1 Peter, 1 Peter 4:19, Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. This very encouraged me a lot.

Friends, pray for Sharif. Pray that he be faithful. Pray that even if his life is taken for Christ, Christ be glorified. Remember what Jesus told His disciples just before He was arrested in John 16, I have said these things to you that you may have peace in Me. In the world you will have tribulation.

But take heart, I have overcome the world. Friends, pray that we will keep following Christ and that we will understand God's love even in our trials. Let's pray together.

Lord God, we thank youk for every way youy have provided for us in Christ. We pray for each one again here today who is weary or fainthearted. We pray that we will consider Christ. Consider how He endured the cross for the joy set before Him, and that yout will help us to do the same. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.