Hebrews 12:1. 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,
Or «entangle us.»
Hebrews 12:1-3. And let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
The Lord does not wish his people's hands to hang down, and their knees to become weak, so in this passage, as in many others, he administers gracious remedies. Among the rest, he bids us consider his own dear Son. Shall we faint under our small afflictions when he endured so well under his heavy burdens? Come, be strengthened, my weak heart.
«HIS way was much rougher and darker than thine;
Did Christ thy Lord suffer, and wilt thou repine?»
Hebrews 12:4. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
It has hardly come to blows and bruises yet certainly not to bloody strokes. Ye have not lost blood yet for Christ.
Hebrews 12:5. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
Neither think too little of it, nor too much of it too little of it by despising it and not listening to the voice of the rod, nor too much of it by fainting when thou art rebuked of him.
Hebrews 12:6. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
Oh! what comfort there is here! Whenever we are under the scourging hand of God, how we ought to be cheered with the thought that this is a part of the heritage of the children. There are Elis who spoil their children. God is not one of them. He spares not the rod, and the more he loves, often the more he corrects. A tree of common fruit may be let alone so long as there is some little fruit on it, but the very best fruit gets the sharpest pruning; and I have noticed that in those countries where the best wine is made, the vine-dressers cut the shoots right close in, and in the winter you cannot tell that there is a vine there at all unless you watch very carefully. They must cut them back sharp to get sweet clusters. The Lord does thus with his beloved. It is not anger. Afflictions are not always anger. There are often tokens of great love.
This exposition consisted of readings from Isaiah 35:1; Hebrews 12:1-6.