Hebrews 12:1-2 Why seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight… I. THE JOY OF OBEDIENCE. Can we understand this — a joy in doing another's will, not our own? Yes — and no. As we naturally are we cannot take such a thing in — we want to do what we please — we fret at having any restraint put on us. And yet in proportion as we learn to love God through Jesus Christ, we learn to know what it is to be quite at God's bidding, and yet to be in perfect freedom. II. THE JOY OF LOVE. If it be asked, whom He so dearly loved that it was an intense joy to show His love to them, the answer is sinners; for them He came into the world: unlovely objects — lovers of their own will — sheep who had strayed out of a safe fold into a waste howling wilderness; yet in our unloveliness, and wandering, and wilfulness, though He grieved at it, He loved us. III. THE JOY OF HELP. He knew that His own would not receive Him, yet to feel that His help was open to " whosoever will" — that He was coming to bring pardon and deliverance and life even to the unthankful — was a joy that outwent the cold manger and the homeless wanderings and the spiteful conspiracies and the bitter Cross — the intense joy of helping the helpless. IV. THE JOY OF VICTORY. He knew how He should meet the unconquered foe, Death, and by yielding awhile before him, turn and rout him all the more gloriously. He knew that for those sinners whom He so dearly loved, there would henceforth be but a crippled foe to be bruised under their feet shortly; and the chains of bondage struck off, that henceforth we should not be slaves to sin. He foresaw all this, and He heard by anticipation the notes, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates," and the still more distant ones, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ," and He girded Himself for the struggle as already a conqueror. (John Kempthorne, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, |
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