Look Unto Jesus

00:02 Greet you this morning in the name of Jesus. Let the church say amen. It's a wonderful thing to be in the house of the Lord this morning. It's such a beautiful morning. And of course, for the child of God, every morning really is a beautiful morning, even if it's snowing or raining or dreary or whatever. But we turn our attention this morning to the Scriptures, 00:23 to the book of Hebrews, the 12th chapter. We are winding our way through Hebrews, and we have several more weeks to go. But we are in the practical section of the book. And what could be more practical than looking unto Jesus, the instruction that we are to look unto Jesus, 00:44 who has authored our faith and who will finish our faith? So we'll be looking at Hebrews 12:1-2 this morning, where it says, "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, 01:05 and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." Looking unto Jesus... say that with me. 01:12 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 has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. It's called the Ironman race. 01:32 You find it in various places in the world. One of the original ones, I believe, was in Hawaii. And there are different things that... distances that you go through in this race. But there are three things that you compete in. It's a triathlon. First of all, you swim 2.4 miles. 01:55 Then you get out of the water and jump on a bike, and you bike for 112 miles. Then you get off the bike if you can still move, and you run another 26 miles, I believe, or 22 miles. That's why it's called the Ironman race. 02:16 It is not for the faint of heart. It's for those who have endurance, for those who have trained, those who are strong, those who are ready to run, ready to swim, ready to ride. And you have about 17 hours in order to complete this. And of course, whoever comes in first wins the race. 02:35 I think that may be a little bit of an example of what we see here this morning in this passage of Scripture about racing, being surrounded by a crowd of witnesses, about laying aside the hindrances and the sins in our lives that cling to us so closely, and running with endurance. 02:56 The Old King James says patience. It can better be translated endurance, endurance, the race that is set before us or marked out for us. Every year, there are about 1,500 what are called through hikers. They set to walk the entire Appalachian Trail in a single season. 03:17 Only about 10% of those complete the 2,160 miles of challenging terrain stretching from Georgia to Maine. One of the reasons people drop out early is because they carry too much baggage. They have not learned to travel light. 03:35 The one who wrote this little illustration said a friend of his launched his through hike carrying a seriously overloaded backpack. He had an audio player loaded with bird calls, an air pistol to keep the varmints away, a camera, a radio, an alarm clock. And if it ran on batteries, he probably had it. 03:57 At the first stop, an inexperienced hiker helped him to see that he was way overpacked and decide what to keep and what to send home. And each item was placed on a gram scale with the question, "Is it worth it? Do you want to carry this for the next 2,000 miles?" That's a good question. 04:18 Whatever you're carrying this morning, do you want to carry this the next 2,000 miles, the next 3,000 miles, the rest of your life till you get to glory? His friend discovered that the biggest problem was an accumulation of little things. See, it's not just the big things that weigh us down. It's the little things. Most of his extra weight was in ounces, 04:39 not pounds. He learned how to take his first aid kit and only take that which was absolutely necessary, to give up that extra tube of toothpaste. His heavy knife was replaced with one weighing only a single ounce. A metal knife, fork, and spoon gave way to a plastic single spoon. 05:01 And he sent home 26 pounds of unnecessary weight just by getting back down to size and preparing to endure, to go the distance. The Scripture uses a race here to illustrate the Christian life, 05:21 a race that requires endurance, a marathon, not a sprint, an Ironman race, if you will. Now, you may be sitting there this morning feeling, "I don't feel much like an Ironman or an Ironwoman." Well, we know that this race is run and run with the strength of the Lord Jesus Christ. 05:43 And so it does not depend upon our own personal strength. But it does depend on us, in a sense, of laying aside the things which hinder us and the things which beset us, the besetting sins. And so the race this morning from our text means an assembly. It really means... 06:02 the word means an assembly to see a contest, a struggle, a battle. It is used for the Greek games in relation to running or boxing or wrestling or some means of contention, of contending, and of using an example here of overcoming the enemies, 06:23 not of the physical body, but the enemies of the soul, the enemies of salvation, the enemies of the spirit. We see in this passage of Scripture, one of the first things is that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, a great assembly watching, spectating, cheering, cheering us on. 06:45 You may ask, "Well, what is this cloud of witnesses?" I believe it's directly related to chapter 11. 06:50 The cloud of witnesses is those who have gone before, those who have gone before and won the race, those who experienced God's power and God's strength in response to their faith as they put their faith in God and they set out to obey what God said. And in some cases, 07:10 that turned out what we would say very well. You may have an Abraham and Isaac situation where it doesn't look good at the beginning, but it turns out very well. But then, as Brother Trevor preached two weeks ago, there were others who were stoned and sawn in two and tempted and slain with the sword. 07:29 They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. And these also died in faith. 07:40 And God may not have come through for them the way He did for somebody else, but He came through for them in the essence of giving them endurance to make it all the way to the end without giving up their faith and their trust in God. So we have a cloud full of... 07:57 a grand stand full of witnesses testifying to us that it can be done. You can win this race. You can do it. And it's not just a cheerleading, "Rah, rah, rah," but it is based upon their experience and based upon the power of God and faith in Jesus Christ to give us that which we stand in need of, 08:16 that we know we have a firm confidence that we can make it. You can overcome. You can get through not because of your own strength or because of your own smarts or your own wisdom or your own talents or your own good looks, but because of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit living and abiding in us. 08:37 There are hindrances that we need to lay aside. 08:40 Now, this is contrasted or compared with the next phrase about sin. So I think we can say that these hindrances are things that may not in and of themselves be sin or be sinful, but they weigh us down. 08:59 There's nothing wrong with taking an alarm clock or a battery-operated radio 09:10 in your backpack to hike the Appalachian Trail, but it will surely weigh you down. And so some of those things we need to shed, we need to get rid of, we need to pass off, we need to let them roll off, let them fall off. 09:28 Such things as fear and worry and habits and laziness and the cares of life, the burdens of life, unbelief, these types of things which so easily beset us. They're hindrances. Maybe it's something that somebody did to us. Maybe it's something we did to someone else, 09:48 and we've not taken care of it. Maybe it's an overconcern for family or friends or finances, and you just can't seem to rise above this because you're carrying all this baggage, all the baggage, all the baggage. 10:04 And it piles up, and you don't realize how much you're carrying until you start looking at what is absolutely necessary to win this race. And let's do that and only that and carry only that. And then he talks about the sins that so easily beset us, those besetting sins, what we call besetting sins, 10:25 that ensnare us, the sin that clings so closely to us. Another translation says, when it says ensnares us, it clings so closely. One of the devastating things about sin is that it clings and it attaches itself onto us. 10:41 And the only way to get rid of that sin is through the overcoming power of the Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of God and the aid of the Holy Spirit and repentance and forgiveness of sins. And so what we want to see people happen in people's lives is to get rid of the baggage, 11:02 get rid of the baggage, and get rid of self and lay self on the altar, lay sin on the altar, and lay our hindrances on the altar and get up and run, run this race that is set before us with the cheering on that you can make it. Others have gone before you. 11:21 They have done it. They have tried and been successful. And we also can as we lay hold of Jesus Christ. And we're going to look at this. The secret of this in verse 2 is the fact that we look unto Jesus, looking unto Jesus. 11:41 So the terrain... we can look at the terrain this morning. The terrain may be rough. It may be rugged. The sea may be choppy. The trail may be dangerous. The songwriter said it like this: "Though the path may be rugged and dangerous too, surely Jesus has promised to carry you through. 12:01 Hallelujah, 'tis done. I believe on the Son. I am saved by the blood of the crucified One." And so Paul had his own particular set of disturbances and disturbing situations. And we probably haven't even come close to what he did in chapter 11, verse 23 of 2 Corinthians, 12:21 where he said he had been in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often, received five times the 39 stripes from the Jewish elders, three times he was beaten with rods, once he was stoned, three times he was shipwrecked. A day and a night he had been in the deep, 12:43 in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils of the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst and fastings often, in cold and nakedness and beside the other things, 13:03 the care of the churches. Wow. How would we ever make it through when we think it's too hard to sit on a church bench for an hour on Sunday? Well, if we had benches, we might make things comfortable for you. We might make things comfortable for you. Well, I think you get the point. 13:23 Nothing wrong with being comfortable when it comes to running the race. We even have to lay aside our personal comforts at times in order to gear up for the fight, for the contest, for the battle, to go the distance. The distance is out there. 13:43 We sang about it this morning about heaven, appreciated those songs when Travis said, "We're going to sing about heaven this morning out of the heaven section." I thought, "Well, I wonder how that..." Oh, wait. It does apply to the message. That's the end. That's the goal. That's the finish line. That's where we're heading. That's where we're going. And it takes endurance to get there, 14:04 the quality that does not surrender to circumstances nor succumb to trials. Did you get that? Endurance is the quality that does not surrender to circumstances or to give in to trials, but it has a goal, and nothing shall deter us from that goal. 14:26 Are you with me this morning? And so he says we want to look unto Jesus, looking unto Jesus. How do you look unto Jesus? We'll be talking about that. It's a focus. It's to look at Him attentively, to look at Jesus attentively, to open our heart to Him, to be in His presence, 14:45 to allow His Spirit to fill us, and to focus upon Him as the primary person and need of our lives, to focus upon Jesus. We're spiritualized, not with physical... we know this is not a physical eye that we look at Him with, not at this time. 15:05 But we consider attentively the Lord Jesus Christ. George Warnock, in his great book, The Feast of Tabernacles, describes the believers in Jesus, members of the new creation, sons and daughters of the kingdom of God, as those who "see the invisible, hear the inaudible, 15:25 hold the intangible, declare the unspeakable, explore the unsearchable, and do the impossible." Many problems, you see, come into our lives when we look at something other than Jesus. We look at something other than Jesus. And I want to just go through some of these problems that we face this morning when we don't look at Jesus. 15:45 And then I want to contrast that with what happens in our lives when we do fix our eyes on Jesus. You see, Scripture talks about... Jesus talked about in Matthew 6 about the eye being key to what happens in the body. Verse 22 and 23 says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 16:08 If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?" In other words, if the light goes out and you start looking at something else beside the Lord Jesus Christ, you run the risk of walking in darkness. 16:27 Many problems that people have is because of a wrong focus. Scripture talks about the importance of vision. Isaiah 6 says, "I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple." And then he said, 16:47 "Woe is me, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King." And when he saw the King, it changed his life. He realized how sinful he was. And then out of that repentance and confession and cleansing, 17:08 he was able to answer the call to go forth in the name of the Lord. Eve, on the other hand, looked at something, looked at her temptation, looked at the fruit of that tree, and saw that it was good for food. It was a delight to the eyes and desired to make one wise. 17:27 And she took her bite of that fruit and ate and passed it on to her husband Adam and began to walk in darkness. And men have been walking in darkness ever since because she had an eye for the evil rather than an eye set on the Father God, set on the Lord God, saying, "God, where are you taking me? 17:49 What are your desires? What are your plans? What is your will? And what do you want to accomplish in my life?" Peter also, when he got out of the boat and started walking on the water, as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus, we've read that many times. 18:06 We sing that song, "Master the Tempest is Raging." And then he began to look around. And when he saw the wind and the waves boisterous, he began to sink with fear. David saw the beautiful bath, Sheba. Because he did not keep his eyes fixed on Christ and on the Lord God, 18:28 he allowed temptation to enter his heart through the eye gate. And you know the story. How did he sin and brought reproach upon the nation of Israel and upon the Lord his God? Sometimes we get distracted by others. 18:44 We look at others and we say, "Lord, what do you want this person to do?" I love the account there in John 21 when Jesus was talking with Peter. And Jesus had a message for Peter about his repentance and what was going to happen in his life. And Peter then began to be concerned about John. He said, "Now, Lord, you've given me your message. 19:03 What about this man? What do you want him to do?" And Jesus said, "That's between me and him. That's between me and him. You follow me." But you see, when we get our eyes on others, we then struggle with judgmental attitudes or we can struggle with pride or inferiority or a competitive spirit. 19:25 "I've got to keep up with John. I don't want John to have anything that I don't have." Or maybe I think I've got so much more than John that I'm more effective in God's kingdom than he is, rather than saying, "Lord, I want to fix my eyes on you and allow you to be my direction." Other times we look at ourselves. 19:46 It's not a good idea to look too much at yourself. Although we do need to do some self-evaluation at times, we need to evaluate our lives. We ask the Holy Spirit to turn on the searchlight of the Word of God and of His conviction in our lives. But to be overly introspective can cause problems. 20:05 Elijah, he began to look at his life and his ministry. He began to look at his weaknesses, even though he had just come off the mountaintop experience with the prophets of Baal and the great victory that God gave to him. 20:20 And he slumped into depression and self-pity because his eyes were on himself rather than on the God who had called him to serve. Sometimes we look at our ministries and we say, "Lord, if I really don't feel like I've done very much for you. Lord, Lord, what... 20:39 what... what... this hadn't... life has not been all that effective," maybe sometimes we see. And yet we need to look at the Lord and just do what He calls us to do. Sometimes people are guilty of looking at the world like Peter and the waves. They look at the worldliness around them and they either are drawn into it or they react from it. 21:00 They become unstable and insecure because their eyes are on the instability of the world. Some people look at the world and say, "Well, that's what I want to be like." Other people look at the world and say, "That's what I don't want to be like," rather than looking at Christ and saying, "I want to be like Him. 21:17 I want my focus to be on that which is true and just and honest and good report and virtuous and praiseworthy." Sometimes people focus on the evil realm. Some people focus on the evil realm. They have... maybe God gives them a particular calling to minister to people that are in spiritual bondage, 21:36 bondage to demonic forces in their lives, and demons in their lives. And so they get mesmerized by the power of the enemy. And I've known people... I've heard of people that have even, because of focusing on the darkness, have been sucked into the darkness because of its power and its pull. 21:57 Brothers and sisters, we don't need to focus on the darkness. We focus on the light. For if we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. Other people... and these are all temptations to focus on material possessions, material things. 22:17 I was reading this morning of that Old Testament prophet assistant, Gehazi. You remember Gehazi. Naaman came to Israel and asked Elisha, "What do I need to do to be healed from my leprosy?" And Elisha told him to go wash in the Jordan River, 22:35 that muddy Jordan River, seven times, dip seven times. And so he did that after some argument with himself and with God and with Elisha internally. He did that. Cleansed. He came back to Elisha and he said, "Elisha, I want to reward you. I want to give you some reward." You see, the Bible says that he had taken 10 talents of silver, 22:56 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 changes of clothing. He was going to give that to Elisha as an appreciation for giving his health back. Elisha said, "No, no, no, no. No, we won't take any of that. We are not beholden. We will not be beholden to you or to anyone else. God is the one who healed you, 23:16 not me." But Gehazi looked at that and he got mesmerized and enamored with the material possessions. And so he went back after Naaman and he said, "Oh, by the way, we have a couple of sons of the prophets who just showed up and they need some of those changes of clothes and some money." "Well, 23:35 here, Gehazi, take what you need." "Well, just a little bit. Just a little bit. We'll just take a couple of changes and a shekel or talent or so." And you know the end result of that story. How he was plagued with greed and sensuality, misplaced priorities, murder, jealousy, 23:55 those kinds of things happen because of a focus on materialism and leprosy. Leprosy was placed upon him, the leprosy of Naaman. Other people focus on money itself as Judas, which made him covetous, greedy, stingy. And ultimately, he sold his Savior for 30 shekels of silver. 24:16 Money will do that to you. You focus on money. You focus on material possessions. And then we think we need more and more and more and more rather than focusing on Christ. And if God gives the increase, then blessed be the name of the Lord. And we use it for His glory. And other people focus on position and power. 24:36 Simon the Sorcerer in the book of Acts. And he was in the bond of wickedness and the gall of wickedness and the bond of deception and in bondage. And to focus on position and power leads to rebellion and playing politics and bribery and corruption and compromise. 24:57 All you have to do is look at our government, our political system around us to see what power and position does to to to man. Someone has said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's very true. Or then maybe we're guilty of looking at the church, 25:17 looking at the church, and we become dissatisfied. We become... an unrest sets in and exclusiveness sets in or a denominationalism sets in or a spiritual pride sets in. Looking at the church can mostly seem to take you two different ways, two different ditches. 25:38 One side, you'd be contentious and dissatisfied and disruptive. And the other side is you become proud and arrogant and lifted up and think, "Everybody, that that that if anybody doesn't do it quite like we do, then then God isn't happy with them." I remember hearing about a pastor. He was an interim pastor years ago. 25:58 I probably shared this illustration before. But he got to a church where the church was being split about right down the middle between the charismatics and the non-charismatics. The charismatics sat on one side of the church and the non-charismatics sat on the other side of the church. And during worship time, they watched each other to see what the other side would do. 26:18 Bad news, bad news. Looking to Christ, looking to Jesus. He's the one we focus on. If you focus on your rights, you will become angry. You'll become bitter. Hatred can fill your heart. Racial tensions will fill your heart. 26:37 Self-centeredness will fill your heart because it's all about me. If you look at your marriage partner, focus on them. And we need to take care of the needs of our marriage partner, of our children and our parents. But we'll be disappointed. We'll make demands. We'll be dissatisfied. "Oh, if you can only be like her husband. 26:59 Oh, if you can only be like his wife. Oh, if I could only have parents like my friends. Or if I could only have kids like my friends." You know, we become dissatisfied and disrespectful and dishonoring and not full of gratitude and graciousness. The list could go on and on and on. 27:21 The point is, if you look at anything other than Jesus, we will be severely handicapped in this race. And we may even be tempted to give it up. We'll be hindered. But we look to Jesus. By the way, brothers and sisters, we don't even look to the race. 27:42 Don't focus on the race. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Don't focus on those who ran before. They're there to encourage. But fix your eyes on Jesus. Now, there is such a thing as peripheral vision where we learned about when I was training for driving school bus, why you have peripheral vision. 28:03 I mean, you're looking at the road, but you're looking at your mirrors back and forth and looking at the road at the same time. And if your peripheral vision is good, you can see in the back of the bus if something's out of order. And so if somebody gets up and moves seats, maybe you couldn't tell what it was exactly, but you knew something happened because your peripheral vision got it. 28:23 And now you can pay more attention to that, address that need, and keep on driving. Peripheral vision is not wrong. In fact, it's a gift from God. But you don't focus on the back of the bus, brothers and sisters. Or you'll wreck. You'll crash. You focus on Jesus and we will make it through. 28:42 I remember my dad teaching me how to plow, how to plow an 830 John Deere with a four-bottom disc or a four-bottom plow down through the muck and the... and the... we had about three different kinds of soil on our farm. And boy, it would... anyway, that's another subject for another day. 29:02 But to teach me how to plow, how to plant, how to work up the ground, Dad always said, "Now, when you..." of course, he claimed to be the greatest tractor driver in the world, but that was just a joke. 29:16 You had to know my dad. But anyway, he said, "If you don't ever look at what your tire's doing down here, look out there. Look out there." He said, "If you try to watch what your tire's doing out there, you're going to make a crooked row like crazy." But he said, 29:37 "What you do is you line up your... with a fence post or a tree or something out in the distance. And you set your eyes on that and then you go. You go towards that. And you'll plow a straight furrow. You'll plant a straight row. Don't look at your surroundings. Don't look back. Don't look side to side. 29:57 Don't look down. Look out. Fix your eyes on something besides your surroundings." God illustrated this in the Old Testament with the serpent. Israel was complaining. They were full of complaints and arguments and dissatisfaction with God and rebellion. 30:17 And God sent fiery servants to the people. And then the people were beginning to die and they were suffering. And they cried out to God. They cried out to Moses, "Help us. Help us. Help us." And God said, "What I want you to do, Moses, is I want you to take a bronze serpent, an image of a bronze serpent. I want you to put it on a pole and then instruct all the people to look to the pole. 30:40 And when they look to the pole, when they look to the bronze serpent, they will be saved." You don't look at the snakes. You don't look at the bite. You don't look at the people. You don't look at the past. You look at the pole. 30:55 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. And so we look at Jesus. We don't look at the snake bites. We look to Christ. We look to Him as the lighthouse, 31:17 the prize at the end, the guide for the weary traveler. Looking unto Jesus, and then peace comes. And then joy comes. And then endurance is built within us. Looking unto Jesus. Cori Tenboom said it like this. She said, "I looked on Jesus and the dove of peace entered my heart. 31:39 I looked at the dove of peace and off He went." You look at the Lord Jesus Christ. You fix your eyes on Him. The Bible says in Psalm 34:5, "They looked unto Him and were lightened." That literally means radiant. 31:57 "They looked unto Him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed." What are some of the effects of single vision set on Christ? What happens when we look to Jesus? The life of Christ gets lived through us. It gets implanted in us. 32:14 And what we look on and we open our spirit to is what we become. I don't know if you've actually seen people that have been married for so long that they start looking like each other. I have. I have. It must come from sitting across the table from each other and opening their heart to each other. 32:34 That's uncanny. You start... maybe it's the food you eat or maybe it's... no, it's the gaze. It's the gaze. It's the look. It's the look. I hope I become more looking like my wife and not her like me. But anyway, we'll be more pretty and presentable that way. What happens when we look to Jesus? The life of Christ gets implanted in us and lived through us. 32:55 And the Bible says in Isaiah 26:3, "Thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because He trusts in Thee." This is where faith starts and stops. This is where it begins and where it ends. He's Jesus, the author and finisher. 33:14 He is the founder and the source and the pioneer. Those are some of the ways that word can be translated. The author. 33:26 He's the source. He's the source of faith. He is the finisher of faith. He is the founder of faith. He is the pioneer of faith. And He is the perfector of faith. The word there finisher means to have our faith fully perfected and matured. How does that happen? It happens as we look unto Jesus. 33:46 We are filled with His life. We are filled with His light. We are filled with faith. We become holy. 33:53 Remember Isaiah 6:1 when we said that Isaiah looked and saw the Lord lifted up and hearing the seraphim and the cherubim crying, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord." You can't hear that time after time and see that in the face of Jesus Christ without it having 34:11 an effect upon you and creating holiness in your life. Joy, radiant joy, as we mentioned a moment ago, who for the joy that was set before Him. You see, to look at Jesus is to see His joy. Not joy in the midst of circumstances, but joy in spite of circumstances, 34:32 in spite of the shame and the cross and the pain and the... and and and not having God come through for us like we want Him to. In spite of that, we see joy. The Bible says, "Let a man count it all joy when he has experienced his diverse temptations. For the trying of your faith worketh patience. 34:54 But let patience have its perfect work. Working in you that it may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." So for the joy that was set before Christ and the joy in our trials, we can know that the testing of the faith produces that endurance, that patient endurance as it did in Christ. 35:16 What we're looking at here when we look at Jesus is the gospel. He puts the gospel in a nutshell here when he talks about Christ enduring the cross. The shame, the suffering, the resurrection is implied here and the ascension to the right hand of the throne of God. As we have seen over and over in the book of Hebrews, 35:37 that's where He is. That's where we look up. We look toward Him and He fills our life with His presence. I want you to go just over with me for a few minutes to John, John, the couple of verses in John. Because John, I think following up this analogy of the serpent on the pole, 35:59 John, which is in John 3. But in John 14, he says, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." So when you set your eyes on Jesus, when you look at Jesus, you're actually looking at the Father. You're seeing God in a whole new way. 36:21 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall what? See God." I used to think that meant somewhere off in the distant future in heaven. But I think that has application today. As we purify our hearts by looking at Jesus, we actually see a new vision of God. We look for His... 36:40 we look at Him for His example of service as they watched Him wash their feet. As He stooped over the basin down at their feet with the towel across His leg. And He washed their feet. 37:01 Then He says, "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you do it. You do it to one another." What they saw was to be reproduced in their lives, this life of serving. John 15, we see Jesus love. 37:21 The Father loved Me, verse 9. "I have loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love." How do we abide in the love of God? By looking to Jesus and seeing the love that the Father and the Son have for one another and He has for us. 37:42 And then we learn about obedience as we're abiding in His love. "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." There it is. There it is, brothers and sisters. As you see the obedience of Christ, it births within us obedience. As we see the fruitfulness of Christ, 38:06 it produces fruitfulness in us. "I am the vine. You're the branches. He who abides in Me and I in Him bears much fruit. For without Me, you can do nothing." We learn about fruitfulness, verse 16. "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain. 38:27 That whatever I ask My Father and Mine... you ask the Father My name, He may give you." And so we see it in Jesus. He produces it in us. Faithfulness in persecution, verse 20. "Remember the word I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they're going to persecute you. 38:48 That's okay. If they have kept My word, they'll keep your word also." And so we learn how to endure in persecution and testing and trials by looking to Jesus, the One who birthed our faith, the One who will perfect our faith. 39:05 Go over to John 17, verse 21. We see the unity that we duplicate. "That they all may be one as You, Father, are in Me and I in You. 39:19 That they also may be one in us that the world may believe that You sent Me." As the Father's in the Son and the Son is in the Father and we see that perfect unity between the Trinity, He said, "Now that will be birthed in you. It will be produced in you as you observe Me, as you fix your eyes upon Me." And then the glory, 39:39 the glory in 17:22. "And the glory which You gave Me," speaking to the Father, "I have given them that they may be one just as We are one." And then in verse 24, "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am. 39:57 That they may behold My glory which You have given Me." You see, the ultimate thing will be to behold the glory of the Lord face to face. "And we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is." In the meantime, we see through a glass darkly. 40:18 But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed into that same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord as we fix our eyes on Jesus. Oh, it may be a little cloudy. Maybe a little dark. Maybe we don't see Him just perfectly. 40:38 We certainly don't see Him in all of His multifaceted dimension of His glory. But we will. We will as we fix our eyes upon Him. We see in Him an example of suffering. Going back to our text, an example of suffering, an example of self-denial, 40:58 an example of dying to self. All these things become produced in us as we behold them in Him. And as we see Him serve us, we serve Him. There's a Bible scholar, N.T. Wright. I don't endorse a lot of what N.T. 41:18 Wright says, but he got this one right. He was asked what he would tell his children on his deathbed. He said, "My final words would be, look at Jesus. 41:31 Look at Jesus." The person who walks out of the pages of the gospels to meet us is just central and irreplaceable. He is always a surprise. We never have Jesus in our pockets. He's always coming at us from different angles. If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. 41:52 If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. And go on looking until you're not just a spectator, but part of the drama that has Him as the central character. I like that. 42:10 We take on the character of those who we hang around with. We take on their character. That's why Proverbs says, "Make no friendship with an angry man. Thus thou learn his ways and be like him and get a snare to thy soul." So you don't want to hang around angry people. Why don't you want to hang around angry people? Because you'll pick up on that anger. 42:30 Why do we tell our children, "Be careful who your friends are," because you'll pick up on their character and it will become a part of you. And generally, the negative influences more than the positive does in the short term. And so we're concerned about who our children hang with, who they hang around with, who they hang out with. 42:51 I guess that's the term that you use today. We're going to hang out. Who are you with? Oh, no, just people. What kind of people? Well, you know, young people. Well, what kind of young people? Well, young people from church. Well, which ones? 43:09 I would hope that all our young people would be worthy to hang out with. I think they are. Why? Because we become like who we associate with. You hang out with Jesus. Hang out with Jesus. Fix your eyes on Him. Fix your eyes on Him. Hang out with Jesus-like people, 43:30 people that are Christ-like. I want to hang out with holy people. I want to hang out with godly people. I want to hang out with people that challenge me. And I need to be one of those people. 43:48 You see, there's something that happens 43:52 when we fix our eyes on something and then open our spirit. Now, you can fix your eyes on something and close your spirit and be repulsed by it. We do that with the world. We don't fix our eyes on it. We shouldn't do that. But as we observe it, it's repulsive to us. And so we back away from it. 44:10 But when you see something and you fix your eyes on something and you focus on that and then you open your spirit, then there is a kind of an imparting of character or of... I'm not sure how it works quite. 44:25 But I think one of the best ways that I've come to illustrate it is by using the illustration of a camera, an old-time camera, you know, back in the old days when they actually didn't have digital stuff, but you actually had film. And the way that camera works and the digital is a... 44:45 it plays on that, but it's kind of a different process. It's more of an instant process. And you don't get the anticipation of the development. Wonder how they turned out. No, we just look at, "Oh, that one, that one, that one, that one, that one. Oh, I'll keep that one." Or, "I'll keep them all." But in a camera, when a camera works, 45:05 you focus on something. 45:11 And then 45:13 that button, I don't know what it's called, but opens... is it the aperture? The aperture is what you set the light, right, Brother Tom? Oh, you're digital. That's right. The lens. 45:30 And when you push the button, what happens is what you focus on, the light comes in. It opens the lens and the aperture and it lets a certain amount of light in. And when that light... when that light hits that film, somehow, 45:51 somehow that image gets burned onto the film. Brother Aaron here is a photographer from the old days. You know how it works. And then you got to take it somewhere to get it developed. 46:08 And when you have done your homework right and you focused well and you have the right amount of light and you get your pictures back from the developer and you go through them, and what do you see? The exact representation of what you took a picture of. Amazing. 46:29 I'd still like to know how it works. I believe that's a picture, brothers and sisters, of fixing our eyes on Jesus, looking unto Jesus. 46:37 For when we focus on Him, we focus on Him as He comes to us from different dimensions: His service, His love, His justice, His righteousness, His truth, His character, His virtue, all of those things. 46:56 And we focus on Him and we open our spirit to Him and let His light come in. And it happens. The image of Christ gets burned onto our spirit. Now, this is not a digital Christianity. In other words, 47:16 you can't just thumb through it all the pictures and see if it turned out right. No, we're going to the developer. We're going to the developer. And as we allow the process to unfold and we commit ourselves in the keeping of our soul to God, 47:37 when we see Him, we shall be like Him. And out of what comes of that development process will be an exact representation of Jesus Christ. 47:50 Looking unto Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, I pray if there would be someone here this morning who's burdened down with cares and strife and worry and fear. 48:07 Maybe their life is just, as it happens to so many of us so much of the time, where we just get cluttered. And we pick up so much stuff along the way that You never intended for us to carry. Rather, You intended for us to bring it to the cross and let You carry it for us. Lord, 48:26 there are times when we also pick up those sins along the way, those besetting sins that want to attach themselves to us. And they cling to us. 48:37 And the only way, Lord, that we can be free of those is to repent and allow the Lord Jesus Christ to deliver us and set us free by a touch from God in our hearts. And then, Lord, let us run with endurance the race that's set before us. 48:57 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, pay attention to Him, to open our hearts to Him, 49:05 and let the light of His Spirit burn the image of Christ onto us and in us. I pray, Father, that You would do that in us, in me, in me, first of all. And if there's somebody here this morning who would say, 49:27 "Brother Todd, God has revealed something to me this morning. He's convicted me of something." Maybe it's a besetting sin that you need to repent of and let go of. Maybe it's a hindrance, one of those things that you could justify all day long and say, "Well, that's not sin. It's not sin. It's not sin." But it's a hindrance. And you say, 49:47 "I want to obey God today and fix my eyes on Jesus. Lord, give me endurance. Lord, give me a fixed focus." And I'd like the church to pray for me this morning. Would you just slip your hand up and hold it up if that's you? 50:10 God bless you. God bless you over here. God bless you. 50:16 God bless you in the back. God bless you, sister. God bless you, sister over there. 50:26 Anyone else? God bless you. 50:30 Lord, You see those who have raised their hands this morning asking for a work to be done in their area of vision and endurance and discarding the unnecessary burdens that You never intended us to carry. 50:51 Bless us, Lord. Make us a blessing, especially in these days of evil around us. Let us duplicate the life of Jesus Christ as Your Spirit conforms us to the image of Jesus. In His name we pray. Amen.