Exhortation and instruction in the light of the previous chapter
12
📚Therefore since we also are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses 📖, let us lay aside every weight 📖, and the sin that so easily adheres to us, and let us run with patient endurance 📖 the race 📖 that is set before us,Keep the eyes looking at Jesus and consider Him
2 📚looking to Jesus 📖 the author 📖 and finisher 📖 of our faith. For the joy 📖 that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame 📖, and has sat down 📖 at the right hand of the throne of God.
12:1-2 Here we have a crowd of witnesses (the believers of chapter 11), hindrances to be avoided (sins, etc), a necessary principle of the race we are running (patient endurance), and a great model to study (Jesus). The writer implies that there will be a great prize at the end of the race.⚜
3 📚For consider him who endured such opposition 📖 from sinners against himself, or else you may grow weary and faint in your minds.
12:3 In the life of faith Jesus is the believer’s best example (1 Pet 2:21-23). Filling our minds with thoughts of Him gives great encouragement in the race believers must run. See also Heb 3:1; Col 3:12.⚜
4 📚You have not yet resisted to the shedding of your blood, fighting against sin.
12:4 The life of faith is not only like a race; it is a warfare (Eph 6:10-18; 2 Tim 2:3; 4:7). Sin is the enemy. It fights believers from within as well as from without (1 John 1:8; Rom 7:17-18). To give up the fight against it invites disaster.⚜
Patiently endure God’s discipline
5 📚And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to children,
My son, do not scorn the discipline of the Lord,
or become faint-hearted when
you are rebuked by him.
6 📚For whom the Lord loves he disciplines,
and whips every son whom he receives.
7 📚If you are patiently enduring discipline, God is dealing with you as with sons. For is there a son whom the father does not discipline? 8 📚But if you are not undergoing discipline, in which all sons have a share, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
12:7-8 True believers often seem to meet with more trials and difficulties than others (see Ps 73:2-14). Here is the reason for it. God is dealing with them as sons. A person who considers himself a Christian should not worry if God is disciplining him, only if God is not. God does not discipline Satan’s children. His anger rests on them, He punishes them, and will judge them one by one at the proper time.⚜
9 📚Moreover, we have had human fathers 📖 who disciplined us, and we showed them respect 📖. Much more then should we not be in subjection to the Father of spirits 📖, and live? 10 📚For they indeed disciplined us for a few days, as they thought best, but he disciplines us for our good 📖, so that we might share in his holiness 📖. 11 📚Now no discipline seems joyful at the time, but painful. However, afterwards it produces the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised by it 📖.
12:11 Here is a “harvest” all believers desire (Matt 5:6). Then they should welcome the means God uses to produce it – discipline, chastisement, punishment.⚜
12 📚Therefore 📖 📖 lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, 13 📚and make straight paths 📖 for your feet, so that the lame may not be turned aside, but healed 📖 instead.
12:5-13 Though they had not yet died for their faith (v 4), they had suffered in many ways (Heb 10:32-34). Unbelieving Jews would have told them that this was because God was displeased with them, that He was punishing them for abandoning the old ways. The writer wanted to encourage those believers. He wanted them to understand that troubles and hardships in the lives of believers were a sign of God’s love, not His displeasure. God was disciplining or chastising them because they were His children and He was seeking their highest good. We can learn here five truths about chastisement (training by discipline or punishment).
First, it is inescapable for believers. God disciplines “every son” He receives (v 6).
Second, the method God uses is painful. It is like a whipping. This results in pain, not pleasure (v 11).
“Uses a whip” – or “flogs” – this is the meaning of the Greek word. It is used in Matt 10:17; Mark 10:34; Luke 18:33. Of course, God Himself does not use a literal whip on us, but his chastisement and discipline may feel to our hearts and minds and spirits as a literal whip does to the body. And human beings may beat us with literal whips which God may use as a means of discipline for us.
Third, this discipline is a sign. It shows that those who receive it are God’s children. It is evidence that He is taking them into His special care. He loves them as an ideal father should, and therefore trains them (v 8). Some think “if God loved us He would not treat us like He does”. But He treats us like He does just because He loves us.
Fourth, God’s disciplining us has a wonderful purpose – our good, our holiness (v 10).
Fifth, it has a good result to those who patiently endure (v 7) and submit (v 9) and are exercised by it (v 11).
There are three possible ways to respond to God’s discipline or “whipping”. People may “scorn it” – disregard it or reject it; or become “faint-hearted” under it; or submit to God and be trained by it. The choice is either rejection, dejection, or subjection. The writer does not tell us what methods God uses to discipline us. But did he not have in mind such things as he had already listed in Heb 10:32-34; 11:35-38? See also 1 Cor 11:29-32; 2 Cor 12:7-10; 1 Pet 1:6-7. Compare Ps 66:10-12, and see Ps 73 where a man of God described his experiences while under discipline.⚜
Follow peace and holiness
14 📚Follow 📖 peace 📖 with everyone, and holiness 📖, without which no one will see the Lord 📖.
Do not miss the grace of God as Esau did
15 📚Watch carefully 📖 so that no one misses out on the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up to trouble you, and defiles many, 16 📚and that there may not be any sexually immoral or ungodly 📖 person like Esau 📖, who sold his birthright for one meal.
12:16 There are many things we must watch out for in the churches. Everywhere in the Bible we see dreadful possibilities of going in the wrong way.⚜
17 📚For you know that afterward 📖, when he wanted to receive the blessing, he was rejected. Though he earnestly sought it with tears, he found no place for a change of mind 📖.
Illustrating the difference between the Old Covenant and the New
18 📚For 📖 you have not come 📖 to the mountain 📖 that was touchable and that burned with fire, or to blackness and darkness and storm, 19 📚or to the sound of a trumpet and the sound of words (the sound was such that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them; 20 📚for they could not bear what was commanded: “And if even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned, or pierced with a spear”.
12:19-20 All this indicates that the giving of the Law was a fearful thing. See the notes on Exodus chapter 19.⚜
21 📚And the sight was so terrible that Moses said, “I am very afraid, and trembling”).
12:21 The words of Moses recorded here are not found anywhere else in the Bible. The Holy Spirit, who knew what Moses said, by some means revealed it to the writer of this letter.⚜
22 📚But you have come to Mount Zion 📖, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem 📖, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23 📚to the general assembly 📖 and church of the firstborn 📖, whose names are written in heaven 📖, and to God the Judge 📖 of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect 📖, 24 📚and to Jesus the mediator 📖 of the new covenant 📖, and to the blood of sprinkling 📖 that speaks of better things than that of Abel 📖.
FIFTH WARNING: Do not refuse to listen to God who has given the New Covenant
25 📚See that you do not refuse him who speaks. For if 📖 those who refused him who spoke on earth 📖 did not escape, it is much more certain that we will not escape, if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven 📖.
12:25 The one who speaks is God (Heb 1:1-2).⚜
26 📚His voice then shook the earth 📖, but now he has spoken this promise: Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but heaven 📖 also.
27 📚And this word, “Yet once more”, indicates the removal of those things that are shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
12:27 See Heb 1:10-12; Rev 6:12-14; 21:1. Sometime in the future the material creation will pass away, but God’s kingdom, the perfection that has come through the new covenant, the things listed in vs 22-24 – these cannot be shaken.⚜
28 📚Since, therefore, we are receiving a kingdom 📖 which cannot be shaken, let us have grace so that we can serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear 📖, 29 📚for our God is a consuming fire 📖.