"So Great a Cloud of Witnesses" - Hebrews 11:17 - 12:3

<)) Listen to the sermon here and here.

[Hebrews 11:17 – 12:3] “…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, 2looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God…”

So Great a Cloud of Witnesses

I.

To sell a product successfully, you need to offer a product people like at a low enough price. In the days of Jeremiah the prophet, many other prophets were selling a message – a message people liked to hear and which came at little cost to them.

“They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” [Jeremiah 23:17]

These prophets did not stand in the council of the Lord. They did not hear or pay attention to God’s Word. They preached the message of their day. They were well received in the world, and their preaching was in step with the prevailing thinkers of their day and with the prevailing leaders.

As these prophets preached, they felt good about it – they felt a little elevated, up among the more enlightened thinkers of their day. Respected. And a respected message. It told the leading minds, the leaders, and the people, “You are right. Keep on course. ‘It shall be well with you.’ ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” 

In our day, the leading minds and the leaders might not always be the same crowd. But each crowd has their own preachers preaching them a message pleasing for them to hear and easy for them to buy – one which affirms for them what they want to hear.

But God’s preachers, including Jeremiah and all His prophets – and including that long list of people in our reading from Hebrews chapter eleven – they lived as “strangers and exiles on earth” [Hebrews 11:13] and believed and confessed the truth of God’s Word at great cost —

— “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release” – which they could’ve had by compromising the truth of God’s Word – “Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated” – men and women “of whom the world was not worthy” [Hebrews 11:35-38].

These remained true to God by faith, willing to suffer loss in this world because they believed His promise that they would “rise again to a better life” [Hebrews 11:35]. These are the “great cloud of witnesses” [Hebrews 12:1]. Their example is meant to strengthen us – because you and I are not immune to that desire to hear what we already want to believe or to be in step with this or that crowd in the world.

II.

The prophet Jeremiah, in chapter twenty-three, was living and preaching at the time when Judah – the southern kingdom of a divided Israel – was soon to be destroyed and taken captive by the new world power on the map, the growing Babylonian empire.

Jeremiah’s message was one of Law and Gospel. It was God’s Word. Jeremiah did stand in God’s council and “spoke from God” as he was “carried along by the Holy Spirit” [2 Peter 1:21].

Jeremiah proclaimed God’s warning to His people that this destruction and captivity would indeed fall upon them because they did not repent. The Judahites put their fear, love, and trust in the false idol Baal – in whom their leaders trusted – and lived in the immorality, lusts, and covetousness that such a faith permitted and celebrated.

(They were happy to know that those despised, northern kingdom Israelites from Samaria were destroyed and taken captive a century and a half prior for their own versions of the same sins – but they did not believe such punishment would fall upon them.)

Jeremiah preached the warning of God’s Law, that those who continued in their sins would not escape punishment — and also the promise of God’s Gospel, that the day would come when God would send a Savior who would bring the forgiveness of their sins and the renewal of their hearts to be an obedient people.

The message did not sell. The people bought the lie instead. And we are warned not to buy the easy lies of this world but to accept the greater truth of God’s Word – which corrects our wrongs and gives the forgiveness of our sins, from which we are called to repent.

That great cloud of witnesses – all of whom were also sinners, who struggled with their flesh in every way you do – and who also were tempted to seek acceptance in this world – that cloud of witnesses died in faith, choosing the truth of God’s Law and Gospel over this world’s favor —

— they believed that Savior would come who would forgive their wrongs and make them new people, even if it wouldn’t be until the resurrection of the body. They did not trade such a great promise for anything. They sought, in faith, to walk in the newness of life for which they waited.

III.

What that cloud of witnesses waited for the apostles and disciples of the New Testament saw – and we believe it by faith, not as something unknown, but as something which has happened – the death and resurrection of Jesus, our Savior.

The One for whom that great cloud of witnesses waited – at great cost, and only knowing Him from afar, never seeing Him – has come to you. With Him has come both Salvation and division: 

“For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” [Luke 12:52-53] —

— not divided over the usual family disagreements but divided over faith in Jesus Christ and the truth of His Word, both His Law and His Gospel.

What you might suffer in your day is the same as what that cloud of witnesses suffered in theirs. But you have this great advantage – that the fullness of that promised salvation has already come into the world and has come into your life, in fact, in a greater and fuller way than in theirs.

“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised (in their own day), since God had provided something better for us” — What they were waiting for you have more fully now because Jesus has come.

Jesus has now already given His life to atone for the sins of the world. He has now already come to His cross and endured. He has now already accomplished your redemption, the forgiveness of sins. His resurrection has now already happened. He has already poured out His Spirit on Pentecost.

And, Scripture says, you have already been buried into His death in your Baptism and are already being raised by His resurrection in your Baptism [Romans 6:3-5]. What your Savior has come and done is already yours and in you. You live in a greater time and have His greater work in you.

IV.

Because of this, let’s not sell what we’ve been given for some cheaper message, preached falsely in His name, for the sake of being in step with – or receiving the respect of – this world. Not for the lead thinkers nor for the leaders, whoever they ever are.

And lets never lose Jesus on account of those much more difficult divisions of family, if those we love are, for now, rejecting the name or truth of Jesus and God’s Word. It will not help them, nor you, if you give up on Christ and the Word. He remains the only hope for you and them.

If they will never believe, it still doesn’t help them for you to go their way. It only hurts you. And, in truth, “Lord” and, especially, “Savior” are greater to you than “Father and mother”, “son or daughter”, “wife or husband”. He is our Lord, Savior, and Creator.        

And let no sin or temptation become of greater value to you than your Savior from sin and temptation. There is nothing He’s not able to forgive. And there is nothing He won’t deliver you from. Even if some deliverance must wait until the resurrection, you are still now fully justified by faith in Him.

Finally, let’s always look to Jesus as our example and, especially, for our strength, since He Himself was rejected, suffered all our temptations, endured all our injuries, and overcame these all in our place and for our sake.

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter – the finisher – of our faith” [Hebrews 12:1-2]. Amen.