Let Us Run.

What an honor and joy it is to be with you today. I cannot begin to tell you how deeply encouraged I have been by your Pastor Search Committee, your pastor emeritus, Pastor David, your interim pastors, Pastors Jamie and Bo, and everyone one of you with whom I have had the honor of spending time with over the past 3 days. Every step of this journey has been marked with God’s fingerprints, so I give all praise, glory, and honor to Him. 

I never want to miss the opportunity to tell the world how much I love my incredible wife and best friend, Cole Gilbert, whom I have been blessed in marriage to for the past 17 years. During those years, the Lord has blessed us with 5 children, the first of whom we lost in a miscarriage and the next four who are with us here today. They are incredible - I love coming home each day to be with them. I love to read books, play legos, watch Disney+, lose on Xbox and watch the Saints with my boys, Grayson and Brogan. I love to go on daddy-daughter dates with my oldest daughter Ava. And I love to watch the many performances of my youngest daughter Livy.  

Of the past 16 years, we have lived in New Orleans 14 years, 10 of which I pastored Edgewater Baptist Church, whom I love and will forever be indebted to for graciously allowing me to grow while leading as a minister of the Gospel. We walked through Hurricane Katrina with Edgewater, then with Trinity Baptist Church in Lake Charles through Hurricanes Laura and Delta, and with that said, I want to put you on notice that major hurricanes seem to follow our moves, so take time to review your homeowners and flood insurance policies this winter. In all seriousness, would you please join me in praying for all of Louisiana as we together recover from a devastating Hurricane season?

When I preached in view of a call at Edgewater Baptist Church 12 years ago, I preached Hebrews 12:1-3. Two years ago, which I preached in view of a call at Trinity Baptist Church, again preached Hebrews 12:1-3. And today, I am convinced that it is God’s good plan to again return to this life orienting passage as we continue this journey of faith together.

You see, God has opened my eyes unlike ever before to see that this moment of transition in my life is not a matter of changing purpose - my purpose is and shall ever be to glorify God by making disciples of all nations. But I want to share my heart with you today from this passage and how the Lord has graciously opened my eyes to see this text with greater clarity than I had previously known. You see, the main idea of Hebrews 12:1-3 is the exhortation to run with endurance the race that lies before us. The Greek word from run is treck-oh, and in this context, it means “to make an effort to advance spiritually.” To “exert oneself to the limit of one’s powers in an attempt to go forward.” The writer of Hebrews is using the imagery of an ancient foot race in a stadium as a means capturing our attention and illustrating the Christian life. To advance spiritually shall require our greatest effort. But we must not error as to think that we know best how to strive on our own. If our salvation is a gift of God’s grace, then we ought to expect that striving towards Christ in the Christian life will no less be a gift of God’s grace. And I have wonderful news - today Scripture communicates the grace of God so that we might not run and strive in vain, but might know the will of God as it pertains to the call to run with endurance the race that lies before us. 

In the late 1920s and into the early 1930s, a young Italian-American boy terrorized the small community of Torrance, CA. Stealing freshly baked pies from kitchens, treats from the local grocer and anything else that was not bolted down on someone’s property. This kid could be seen running all over town. Running from angry neighbors, running from angry kids, running from the police, and even running away from home. But all that changed in 1933 when UCLA hosted a Cross Country 2-mile race in which Louie, now a 16-year-old high school student, competed. Rather than having trained for the 2-mile race, young Louie Zamperini had previously only competed in the 1-mile rune. His running career was early, and truth be told, what would happen that day in 1933 at UCLA would change the course of Louie’s life because he realized something very profound about himself. You see, Louie won the race that day, but not simply a nose ahead of second place. No, when Louie crossed the finish line, second place was more than a quarter of a mile behind him. He had essentially lapped a college athlete as a novice high school runner. And what Louie realized that day was this - he was born to run.

Just like Louie Zamperini, we were born-again to run. 

You see, Louie had been running all his life, but not running the race, and certainly not running to win the race. When he finally ran the race and ran it to win, he ran as he had never run before - and he was only getting started.

 I am convinced that I am in a room full of runners today, but are we running the race? And if so, are we running the race to win. 

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:24, “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.”

In Philippians 3:14, Paul says, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” 

Paul knew that he was born-again to run the race, running to win. 

Today in Hebrews 12, 1-3, we will see that we, as the people of God, are instructed to run with perseverance the race that lies before us. You and I are born-again runners. But you will not really believe it - have that breakthrough moment like Louie Zamperini did in 1933 - until you run the race to win. 

Just running doesn’t mean you are running a race. In New Orleans, The only difference between Mardi Gras and the Cresent City Classis 10K is everyone is running the same direction through the French Quarter. Brothers and sisters, we are called to be sober-minded, so let us run in the same direction, together, and let us run in accordance with the Scriptures as to obtain the prize. 

I invite you to stand in honor of God’s Word as we give our greatest attention to the Lord in His Word from Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3. 

God’s Word here in Hebrews 12 is clear that if we are to run with endurance the race that lies before us, then we must:

Run Inspired by the Word

The first word of Hebrews chapter 12 is “therefore.” A good question to ask when you see the word “therefore” is to ask, “what is it there for?” 

In this passage, the "therefore" is one of the most masterful journeys through the Old Testament recorded in the New Testament. Central to chapter 11 is the call to faith - which is trust and belief in the Word of God.

I want to read all of chapter 11 so that you experience the movement of this passage. Beginning in verse 1 of chapter 11. 

The writer knows that we need the reminder of how the faithful have always persevered, how they have always fought valiantly, how they have always sacrificed, how they have always considered the promise of God of greater worth than the things of this earth. But notice how the writer of Hebrews grips our attention and endeavors to inspire us today to run with perseverance the race that lies before us - he brought us into the Word of God. Hebrews 11 is a survey of the entire Old Testament. 

We are all gripped by stories. We are all inspired by the testimonies of those who share how God has worked in a specific way. The story I began to share about Louis Zamperini is ultimately a story of God’s grace - how Louis fought in WW2, was shot down in the Pacific Ocean, survived for two months adrift in the Pacific only to be captured by the Japanese and then tortured until the end of the war. Following the war, the trauma of his experience threatened to destroy his marriage and leave him an alcoholic - but God, through the evangelistic preaching ministry of Billy Graham, opened Louis’ heart to Christ and brought healing and salvation to his soul. 

Reading Louis’ story in the Laura Hillenbrand biography called Unbroken was inspiring, but Laura Hillenbrand certainly errored in her book at times. You see, when any biographer studies the life of a person, inevitably interpretive decisions must be made. A writer will emphasize some aspects and influences of a person’s life while minimizing others. A writer will piece together a context but may miss a contextual force that might have influenced the person much more than realized. In short, any biography or history you purchase today will be imperfect. 

But,

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.  - Psalm 19:7-11

We must never allow ourselves to substitute - to replace - the inspired Word of God for Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul. God preserved His Word for thousands and thousands of years for our benefit today in the faith. Each of these in chapter 11 grants us a gift of a man or woman who trusted God - and their stories are meant to encourage and inspire us to do the same. 

What is significant about Hebrews is that it is essentially a sermon about the Old Testament. The writer talks about the law of Moses, the prophets, the sacrificial system, the priesthood, and the temple. It is almost as if he expects that we will be reading the Old Testament. Yet statistics reveal that here in the West, very few believers ever read the Bible. The result - so few confessing Christians are inspired to run with perseverance the race that lies before us. 

But I have some good news - Faith Life conducted a study and determined that believers who read the Bible 4 or more days a week are most often a growing Christian, an identity marked by greater levels of joy, forgiveness, self-control, love, and peace. I don't know any Christian who says, “I have all the joy, self-control, love, and peace I need.” So one of the first challenges I desire to issue in the life of First Baptist New Orleans is that we will be people of the book - people of His Word - people who are reading His Word a minimum of 4 days per week. 

Let me be very practical by saying start where you are - if you have not been in the habit of reading the Bible, then for the remainder of this year, I want to challenge you to start in the Gospel of Luke. Maybe read a paragraph at a time or a unit with a subtitle at a time. I desire each of you that you will be men and women, boys and girls of faith, who run with endurance the race that lies before you. Therefore, we must be inspired by the Word, and that will only take place as we center our lives in His Word. 

Run Instructed by the Word.

In the text, we read, “let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us.” 

The organization, which was the governing body for professional cycling in Great Britain, had recently hired Dave Brailsford as its new performance director. At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had endured nearly one hundred years of mediocrity. Since 1908, British riders had won only a single gold medal at the Olympic Games, and they had fared even worse in cycling’s biggest race, the Tour de France. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the event. 

In fact, British riders' performance had been so underwhelming that one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear.

Brailsford had been hired to put British Cycling on a new trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. Brailsford said, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip. They asked riders to wear electrically heated over shorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete responded to a particular workout. The team tested various fabrics in a wind tunnel and had their outdoor riders switch to indoor racing suits, which proved lighter and more aerodynamic. 

But they didn’t stop there. Brailsford and his team continued to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas. They tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery. They hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold. They determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider and always traveled with each athlete's preferred mattress and pillow to maintain optimal sleep. They even painted the inside of the team truck white, which helped them spot little bits of dust that would normally slip by unnoticed but could degrade the finely tuned bikes' performance. 

As these and hundreds of other small improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined.

Just five years after Brailsford took over, the British Cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where they won an astounding 60 percent of the gold medals available.  Four years later, when the Olympic Games came to London, the Brits raised the bar as they set nine Olympic records and seven world records.

That same year, Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. The next year, his teammate Chris Froome won the race, and he would win again in 2015, 2016, and 2017, giving the British team five Tour de France victories in six years.

During the ten-year span from 2007 to 2017, British cyclists won 178 world championships and 66 Olympic or Paralympic gold medals. They captured 5 Tour de France victories in what is widely regarded as the most successful run in cycling history.

 God’s Word says in Hebrews 12:1, “let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us.”

Does the text identify what every hindrance is or the sin that so easily and ensnared us? No, it does not. Scholars and faithful readers can certainly make educated guesses at what is implied, but such is unnecessary. The text says “every” hindrance.

What if First Baptist New Orleans embraced Coach Dave Brailsford's approach to improving everything by 1%. And here is where being in the Word regularly becomes so key. As you read through the Scriptures, you naturally will come to all areas of life - marriage, parenting, work, sexuality, wealth, relationships, church, and so on. You see, as I read through Ephesians 6, as a husband, I am challenged to love Cole as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. As a result of reading Ephesians 6, Husbands, what if you tried to love your wife 1% better? “Chad, how do I measure that?” Brother, I’m pretty sure your wife will let you know! Wives, as a result of reading Ephesians 6, what if you tried to honor and respect your husband 1% better? We are all children, though most of us are adult children, God’s command to honor your father and mother does not say, “Until you move out or grow up,” which means every one of us could seek to improve honoring our father and mother by 1%, a question that naturally surfaces in both the Old Testament and New Testament in multiple passages in each. What if we all tried to honor God with our bodies 1% better due to reading 1 Corinthians 6. What if we tried to read our Bibles 1% better as a result of reading Hebrews 11? What if we tried to be 1% more generous to the church due to reading Acts 2 or 2 Corinthians 8? What if we volunteered 1% better to help serve the church and our community due to reading Romans 12? What if we sought to improve 1% in prayer due to reading 1 Thessalonians 5 or 1 Timothy 2?

You see, I am hopeful that when an entire church decides to get 1% better at everything - then when it comes to being a witness for Christ and a disciple who makes disciples, the men, women, boys, and girls who constantly seeks to honor Christ 1% more with their entire lives will be the men, women, boys or girls who will speak 1% more boldly of Christ - they will be 1% more effective as sharing the Gospel - they will be 1% better as making disciples who make disciples. They will invite friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors 1% more than they otherwise would have done. They will be 1% bolder. I love the definition of boldness that my friend dr Preston nix once shared with me - boldness is going one step beyond my comfort level. 

You see, at the end of the day, perhaps the greatest hindrance that needs to be laid aside, and the sin that so easily ensnares is not striving - not trying at all - not even trying to improve by 1%. 

We all have our comfort levels - we all have a pace we are comfortable running - but now is the time, First Baptist New Orleans, to run 1% better as we are instructed in all of God’s Word. 

 So we are to run with perseverance the race that lies before us inspired by the Word and instructed by the Word.

Run Intensely Focused on the Word

Let’s see it in the text: 

“Let us run with perseverance the race that lies before us, our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up.”

Now someone hearing me today might push back and say, “Chad, the text calls us to fix our eyes on Jesus, not on the Bible.” I will immediately acknowledge that the text says we are to be fixing our eyes on Jesus but would counter with a question: how do we know we are supposed to fix our eyes on Jesus? The question has an obvious answer - because that is what the Word of God says. I would not know to fix my eyes on Jesus unless the Word explicitly communicated this focus. The reality then becomes that only by focusing on the Word will I rightly know that it is the will of God to focus on Jesus. In fact, I will even go so far as to say we will not rightly see and focus on Jesus apart from the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, the only way I can fully and faithfully call us towards obedience to the instruction to fix your eyes on Jesus is to simultaneously call us to focus your eyes on the Word of God. The two are not at odds, but I am convinced that we cannot see Jesus without rightly looking to Him through the Word of God.

Only in the Word do we discover and delight to see the One who alone perfectly displayed faith - a perfect trust in the will of the Father. Only Jesus uttered the words, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Every example of faith and faithfulness in Hebrews chapter 11 stops short of perfection. Each person mentioned having commendable moments of faith and corresponding moments of doubt, distrust, and disobedience. But not Jesus. Jesus is THE source and perfector of our faith. In other words, He is the greatest demonstration of faith, the ultimate example, and the only complete model. 

Yet we come again to the reality that apart from an intense focus on the Word of God, we will not hear Jesus say, “Not my will, but yours be done.” 

Apart from an intense focus on the Word of God, we will not see our Savior endure the cross, despising the shame. 

Apart from an intense focus on the Word of God, we will not behold our King seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Apart from an intense focus on the Word of God, we cannot consider Jesus, who endured such hostility from sinners against himself so that we won’t grow weary and give up. 

Apart from an intense focus on the Word of God, we will not fix our eyes on Jesus, and if we do not fix our eyes on Jesus, then we will not run with endurance the race that lies before us. 

Therefore, First Baptist New Orleans, let us run 

Inspired by the Word

Instructed by the Word

And finally, let us run Intensely Focused on the Word.

But this is a race you must qualify to run in. You see, all of the great races, like the New York Marathon and the Boston Marathon - are races you must qualify to run in. In other words, not just anyone can run in those races - only those who qualify can run. Well, what are the qualifications to run this race in Hebrews 12? Simple - perfection. To qualify to run this race, you must have perfect endurance, perfect focus, perfect completion. The bad news for all of us here today is that none of us is perfect - we don’t have perfect endurance, don’t have perfect focus, and don’t have perfect completion. But the good news for every one of us here today is there is one - one and only one - who was perfect! And He, because of His incredible kindness, is willing to give you his qualification status as a gift. His perfect record becomes yours. His endurance becomes yours. His focus becomes yours. His completion becomes yours. And all this is not because of anything you have done - it is His grace, grace received through faith in Jesus alone. 

Will you trust Him today. Then I invite you to leave the starting blocks of your seat today and run to Jesus today, in faith, trusting His Word, and giving your life to Him. 

Father, I pray that we all will set our hearts to run the race with endurance that lies before us and do so in Your Word alone. Please, Lord, grant us a passion for Your Word! Please, Lord, open our eyes to see Jesus in Your Word! And please, Lord, open the eyes of someone here today for the very first time to see Jesus whom you sent and gave to die to save them from sin and to give them new life. 

If that is you today, then while we are all in prayer, I invite you to come forward in this moment to share what God is doing in your heart right now. Know this, every person in this room is praying for you in this moment as you trust Jesus and give your life to Him.