Real Faith
Sean Flanagan · Tidal Church Miramichi · September 6, 2026 · Heroes of the Faith series
Sean Flanagan closes the Heroes of the Faith series in Hebrews 11:32 to 12:3, showing how to run the Christian race without growing weary: lean on the witnesses around us, lay aside what hinders, and fix our eyes on Jesus, our Savior.
More from Sean Flanagan · The Heroes of the Faith series
Topics: Faith, Grace, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:01] Heroes of the faith. This is it. This is the final week. We've been going through one chapter of the Bible all summer. Hebrews 11, we've just been working our way through these heroes, right? We talked about Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Deborah, Barak, Sarah. Am I missing anyone? There's a lot. There's been a lot. We've heard these stories from the Old Testament, these Heroes of the faith, and we're finally, finally getting to the end. So read with me. If you've got your Bibles, you can turn to Hebrews 11. We're gonna be starting in verse 32. It should also be up on the screen if you want to follow along. So Hebrews 11, verse 32. And what more shall I say?
[0:49] I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refused to be released, so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and logging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning. They were sodden too. They were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated.
[1:38] The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith. Yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect. And then now we're gonna read the first few verses in chapter 12, so keep going. And what the author is gonna do is he's gonna say, okay, given all this, given all these stories, all these great heroes, all the people that we've heard about, what does it mean for you and me? What does it mean for our faith today? And so he's gonna move from the stories to you and me, and this is what he says in chapter 12, therefore, therefore, given all these great stories, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
[3:13] That's what I want to talk about this morning, is how is it that we cannot grow weary and lose heart? I don't know if some of you are weary this morning, you know, with the rain out there, the kind of long weekend. I've got a child who's a month old, so I'm a little weary, right? It's possible, you know, thinking about our lives of faith, it's easy to grow weary and tired as Christians. Life is long, and you know, I think that if you went out into town and you asked people, you know, do you want to follow God? Like, do you believe in God? And do you want to please God?
[3:59] I actually think most people would say, yeah, yeah, I believe in God. I want to do the right thing. I want to do what God is asking me to do. But so many people have grown tired and weary, and they've stopped running the race. And maybe some of you are feeling that, you're feeling tired and weary, and there's just so much in this life. I mean, maybe it's, you know, being hurt by a church or a pastor, by Christians, maybe it's from unanswered prayers, maybe just the discouragements of life, they can weary us so that we stop running this race. So I want to ask this question, how is it? How can we run this race? How can we follow God and give our life to Him and go the distance?
[4:47] How can we go for our whole lives? Because being a Christian, it's a marathon, right? It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. It's a long distance run. How can we do this? And I think in this passage, we see three things, three ways that we can run this race without growing tired and weary, three things. The first that we see in chapter 12, verse 1, it says, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, that we need to be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. That's the first thing we need. We need this cloud of witnesses. And I've heard this phrase, cloud of witnesses, or a great cloud of witnesses. I've heard this for years and thought, what does this mean?
[5:35] What a strange kind of saying. What does it mean to have a cloud of witness? And I think in my head what I had thought was like, okay, being a Christian, that's like running a race. So I'm running the race. I'm living without my faith. And there's the cloud of witnesses in the sky, right? There's Noah, and Moses, and Abraham. And they're looking down in the sky, and they're smiling, and they're cheering me on, right? They're bullhorn, and Moses has got the big hand that they have at sports games, and they're cheering us on, right? Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, some people do think that's what it is, right? They think that there's cloud of witnesses looking at us, right?
[6:23] Cheering us on. But a witness, a witness in the Bible is not someone that witnesses us. It's someone who witnesses to God. They don't witness us. They're witnesses to God. That's what a witness is. You know, back in the day, this was before my time, I just know this from movies and stuff, but preachers would get up on the platform, and they'd be preaching just passionately and sweating, and they'd say, I believe that God has the power to heal. Can I get a witness? Amen, right? And somebody would say amen, right? And then he would be bearing witness to the fact that God can heal, right? I believe that God has the power to save.
[7:16] Can I get a witness? Amen. Yes, all right. We got a witness, right? And so now you're not witnessing me do anything. You're witnessing God and what He's done, right? You're witnessing His faithfulness and His goodness. So if I'm running the race, and I'm growing tired and weary, and I want to be a good Christian, I want to obey God. And I think, you know, maybe I've been so discouraged in life. And I think, is God even happy with me? Is God pleased with me? Is He just scowling when He looks at me? And I say, can I get a witness that God is pleased with me? And Abel, Abel stands up. We learned about Abel in Hebrews 11, right? And we saw that Abel gave an offering to God, and God was pleased with him. God was commended him.
[8:11] He smiled on Abel. So I say, I'm discouraged. I feel like God is against me. Can I get a witness that God is for me, that He's pleased with me? And Abel says, Oh, yeah, I'll be a witness to that, that God can be pleased with you, that He's happy with you. Or maybe you say, I'm running this race, and I don't know where I'm going. I'm getting discouraged. I'm getting tired. I don't know where God's leading me. Is He leading me somewhere good? Can I get a witness that God is leading me somewhere good? And Abraham said, Oh, yeah, brother, I can be a witness. God called me from my family. I didn't know where I was going. I was called into an unknown land, but I trusted God and I obeyed Him. And in the end, He blessed me.
[9:00] He blessed me. So Abraham is a witness to God's faithfulness and persevering in the midst of confusion and uncertainty. Or maybe you're running the race and you just feel like you're not even worthy of God. You feel like you've messed up too much. You feel like I'm the wrong sort of person. God wouldn't want me. I've made too many mistakes. I'm not the type of person God would want. Can I get a witness that God wants me? And Rahab. We heard about Rahab. She stands up. She says, yeah, I can bear witness. I can bear witness. Rahab was a foreigner. She was a prostitute. She was a pagan.
[9:46] And but she had faith in God and God welcomed her into his family. So she can bear witness that it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what you've done, Rahab can witness to the fact that God accepts anybody, accepts right? So we're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. And so maybe another way to think of it is, you know, have you ever got a job? You're hired for a new job and you show up on the first day and you're like, okay, what do I do? How do I do this job? Can somebody be a witness to me of how I'm supposed to do this? And depending on, you know, your employer, sometimes you'll have somebody who's like, yes, okay, here's how you do it. And then you do this.
[10:35] And if you do it like this, good things will happen, right? And it's such a blessing when you go to a job and you can have someone to bear witness for you. It's helpful. Or, you know, with my wife Esther and I, we've got this new little baby James and it's difficult and it's tiring and it can be discouraging. And so often my wife Esther is calling on mothers and saying, you know, what did you do? How did you get through? When he woke up in the middle of the night and wouldn't go back to sleep, what would you do, right? And the mothers, they bear witness to what to do. So these witnesses, they're not just in the clouds, you know, clapping and cheering us on.
[11:21] They're witnesses to who God is, his faithfulness. And they're examples. They're examples for us to follow after, right? That we see what they've done. We see their faithfulness and we start to live our lives like that. We need examples. We need witnesses. And we need them, you know, in the Bible, in these stories and scripture. But we also need them around us too, right? We need alive witnesses. We need a community around us who can encourage us and give us examples. If you want to run the race, set before you. If you don't want to grow tired and weary, we need witnesses. We need this, we need scripture. We need these stories and we need one another to encourage us.
[12:10] The second thing we need, it's in the second part of verse one here. If you go in your Bibles, chapter 12 verse 1, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders in the sin that so easily entangles. So the second thing we need to do is throw off everything that hinders in the sin that so easily entangles, right? And you just think about this. If you were running a race and you had all these things kind of entangling you, it's going to slow you down. It's going to be a burden. It's going to affect your ability to run in the long term. And you know, it's easy to kind of think about sin sometimes. It's like, eh, wow, it's a personal choice or I'm just kind of doing this thing.
[12:58] Eh, it's not that big of a deal. It's going to wear you down. It's going to hold you back. It's going to frustrate you and eventually, eventually you'll grow tired and weary. But I want you to notice that it doesn't just, it's not just talking about sin. It says everything that hinders. Everything that hinders. So maybe there are certain things that are hindering you that aren't sinful. There might be things in your life that, you know, they're fine. Maybe they're fine in moderation or maybe they'd be fine for somebody else or in certain circumstances they might be fine, but they actually hinder you. And I think that this is very relevant for us as Canadians in the 21st century because we're so busy.
[13:46] We're so busy all the time. It's like, you know, a lot of us have jobs. Some of us have two jobs and we got family and we got friends and we got hobbies. We got sports. We got instruments. We got video games. We got to play. We got TV shows. We got to watch. We got social media. We got to scroll on and then you're supposed to exercise and be healthy and get eight hours of sleep. Right? It's like there's a lot of things that can hinder you. There's a lot of things and, you know, those things are fine. Right? You got to have you got to work. You got to have a job. It's fine to have hobbies, but eventually if you just keep on saying yes to things or if you just don't don't get rid of things you could be quite burdened. Right? And eventually God is kind of just getting the leftovers of your time.
[14:37] Right? You won't really have that much time for him anymore. And, you know, do you know what the the most the most ineffective way to convince somebody to stop doing something is? To say stop it. Stop doing that. Right? Just don't do it anymore. And that's basically what I've done so far is just say you know all those things stopping you from, you know, God and stuff. Stop it. Stop doing that. Right? That's been basically been my my point so far. So I'm gonna I'm gonna try to persuade you that this makes sense and that this is in your best interest. So I want us to do just a little bit of an illustration here where I want you to imagine that I'm a marathon runner and that you're my coach.
[15:25] Okay? And you've been coaching me for a year or something. We've been training and practicing and today is the big day of the race. Right? And I'm really ready and I really want to run this race. I really want to do well. Okay? So it's the day of the race. I show up to the to the track and you're there. I start to think, well, the weather outside it's a bit cold. It's a bit rainy. I think what I actually need is just one second. I gotta get ready for my marathon. Okay. Good. I think I'm ready now for my marathon.
[16:14] I think I'm set. And you kind of look at me funny and I say, well, what? You know, I don't want to be cold. I don't want to get wet. I need a jacket. And before the race starts, I think, well, no. Actually, you know what? I might want some books halfway through through my marathon here. So I'm just gonna get my backpack on. And you know what? I might want a snack halfway through. So I'm gonna get my lunch bag. Put my lunch bag on here. And you know, I might need a change of clothes halfway through because I'm probably, I'm getting kind of sweaty now. And so I'm just gonna get my gym bag here. Okay. Now you're my coach and I'm about to run this race.
[17:05] What advice do you have for me? Go home because there's no chance. There's no chance I'm gonna win this race. There's no chance I'm gonna finish the race. Right. I'll get 10 miles in and I'm gonna be exhausted. I'm gonna be sweating. I'm so burdened down with things. I just can't do it. Now there's nothing wrong with a jacket. There's nothing wrong with a backpack. And there's nothing immoral with these things. It's just if I'm running a race, I need to be prepared for that race. I need to be equipped with the right things for that race. And so now as your pastor, I'm kind of like your coach.
[17:51] Right. And I would just say, are there some things in your life that are hindering you? That are maybe okay. They're not immoral. They're not bad. But they just might be weighing you down. Right. It could be the amount of work you're doing. Maybe you're a really good worker and you need to know that, hey, 40 hours a week is enough. You don't need to work 50 hours a week. You don't need to work 60 hours a week. Or maybe you just really love sports. Right. And you're just really into sports and it's like, that's great. It's good. It's good to have a hobby. It's good to have sports. But, you know, maybe pick one sport to watch. Maybe don't watch them all.
[18:36] Right. Because maybe it's a bit too much. Maybe it's holding you back. You're trying to run a race here. Right. You can't be burdened with all this stuff. And I know what you're thinking. Is he going to preach the rest of this sermon? Wearing all this stuff? No, I won't. I've made my point. I hope I've convinced you that if you want to run the race, if you don't want to grow tired and weary, consider. Consider the things in your life that might be hindering you, that might be holding you back, the things that might be making you tired or weary. What might those things be in your life? So, we want to run the race.
[19:26] We don't want to grow tired or weary. We need examples. We need witnesses. We need people who can show us what it means to run faithfully. Right. We look to the cloud of witnesses. We look to one another. We get rid of the sin in our lives, the things that hold us back, so we can run with endurance. But there's one more thing. One more thing. We have to fix our eyes on Jesus. We've got to fix our eyes on Jesus. And read this again with me here. The end of verse one. It says, let us run with with perseverance, the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
[20:19] Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. We've got to fix our eyes on Jesus. We've got to keep him the center, the center of our vision in this life. We can't get distracted with other things. We've got to be looking at him. You know, Noah and Abraham and Moses, they were all great witnesses, right? They were all great examples. But Jesus is the perfect witness. He's the perfect example. They all had their flaws, but we can look to Jesus, and he's the perfect example of what it means to live a faithful life in obedience to God through suffering, in that in the end, if we live faithfully, if we persevere through suffering, that God will bless us, that he'll keep his promises. And it says that Jesus was lifted up, that he was raised to the right hand of God.
[21:14] And that's an example for us, that if you endure, if you persevere, just like Jesus did, that you will be lifted up, that you will be raised to the heavenlies. God will keep his promises, and he will bless you. Jesus is the ultimate example of that. And there's nothing, nothing in this life that you could be going through that Jesus doesn't understand, that he can't empathize with. He understands, if you're going through physical suffering, maybe in sickness or disease, some problem that you have physically, Jesus knows. He knows what it's like to endure through physical pain. He endured the cross. He understands, so you can look to him and say, you know what, if Jesus could get through that, if he could persevere, I can persevere. I can get through it.
[22:08] If you feel maybe shame, and if you've been made to feel worthless, like your scum, you don't matter, right? Maybe people in the church have made you feel that, or people in the world have, or maybe your parents or a pastor has just made you feel like you're nothing. You can look to Jesus and see that he went through the same thing, that the cross, it says he scorned its shame. It was a shameful thing. It was not just a painful way to die, but it was basically a way to make you feel like you had no worth, that you were valueless, that you were less than dirt. So if you ever feel like you're worthless and you're trying to persevere, you can look to Jesus and see that he's the ultimate example of perseverance, and that image of him on the cross can encourage you, if Jesus could go through that shame, I can persevere through this shame.
[23:15] Or if you have felt opposition, if you've felt maybe the hypocrisy of people in church, or betrayed by a pastor, betrayed by people of faith, Jesus can empathize. It says he faced opposition from sinners, but who were those sinners? Who were the sinners? I mean, it was the Roman army, but it was the religious people. It was religious people. It was the religious authority that opposed Jesus. So one of the most discouraging things in this world for people is when they come into the church and they're met with just meanness and nastiness and hypocrisy and just all that sort of thing.
[24:01] That could be the most discouraging thing in the world for people's faith, right? But you can look to Jesus and say, Jesus went through the exact same thing. He went through the exact same thing. He just faced so much opposition from religious people, and if Jesus can persevere, if he can go through that, I can go through that. If he did that, I'm going to follow after him, and I'm going to persevere like Jesus persevered. He can understand whatever it is you're going through, and we can look to him as an example, as a witness to God's faithfulness and an example of how to persevere. There's one problem with that.
[24:47] There's only just one problem. Jesus was perfect. Jesus was flawless. He never made a mistake. He never sinned once, and if I said to you, imitate him, be just like Jesus, you might think, how am I going to pull that off? I don't know that I could do that really, and you might start to feel the burden of that and the pressure of trying to be a good person, right? And a lot of people say, Jesus is a good example. He's a good example for you to follow, and that's true. He is a good example, but he's a whole lot more than just a good example.
[25:34] He's our Savior, right? And we have to keep our eyes on Jesus, not just as an example, but as our Savior. And so I want to illustrate this for you so you understand. Has anyone ever heard of the the runner Sebastian Solway? Sebastian Solway. I hadn't heard of him either. He's basically the best marathon runner in the world, and he's from Kenya, and just this last April, he broke a record. He was the first person ever recorded in a qualifying race to run a marathon in less than two hours. A marathon in less than two hours. He did it in one hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds.
[26:22] One hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds. It was perfect. Like it's never been done before, right? He's just an incredible, just like a running machine, right? He's just built and designed to run, and he's practiced and trained and done all these things. And if I said, I want you to imitate Sebastian, I want you to do what he's done, you might start to feel a little bit of pressure. You might start to feel like, oh my goodness, how am I supposed to do that? I mean, I can run, I guess, but I'm never, never going to be able to be like Sebastian. I can't run a marathon in an hour and 59 minutes and 30 seconds. I can't do it. If I practiced for the rest of my life to run a marathon at best, like four hours, maybe, maybe probably more like four and a half hours or five, like it just is not going to happen.
[27:17] I would be crushed. I'd be crushed. I would just feel that pressure of performing. And a lot of athletes do. A lot of athletes feel that pressure. They think, I can never be the best. I can never do that. I can't be perfect. I can't get the Olympic gold. And I think a lot of people in church feel crushed. They feel that burden and that pressure of wanting to be perfect. Of all, I got to be like Jesus. I got to be like Jesus. I got to be perfect. I got to be good. I got to be like this. I got to be like Noah. I got to be like Abraham. I got to follow these examples. And they just feel this burden. They feel this burden, this pressure. Like I can't imitate them. I just can't do it. I'm not good enough. So what's the solution to that? What is the solution?
[28:04] It's fixing our eyes on Jesus, not just as an example, although he is an example, but he's our Savior, right? It says he's the pioneer and perfecter of faith. It doesn't just say he's a good example, another example to follow. He's just one other great guy that you should try to be like. He's the pioneer of faith. He's the perfecter of faith. He's the one who made a way into God's presence. That if you put your faith in him, you can be counted as perfect. You can be brought into the Holy of Holies with Jesus. So let me explain it to you this way. We said that being a Christian is like running a marathon. It's running a race. And maybe you got started a little late, right?
[28:52] You didn't get off when they fire the gun. You didn't really start early. And so you're already behind time, right? You've already made a lot of mistakes. And then you're running, you're running, and you know you're following Jesus. You're trying to be faithful, but man, you know you've made a lot of sins and errors. And maybe at some points you've really messed up and you've even got off the track and you've ignored Jesus. But then you repent and you're running. And you got the cloud of witnesses. They're in front of you. And so you're trying to follow their example. You got your church with you. You're running. You're keeping Jesus in your focus. You're getting rid of sin, right? You're doing your best. But you know, as you cross the finish line, there's no way I'm under two hours.
[29:40] There's no way. I probably got in at like six hours. All the sins I've made. All the mistakes I've made. Like this is not going to be pretty, right? And so you cross the finish line. You die and you go to the throne room. And you're before the judge. The judge who's going to give you your score, right? And God is there. And he says, well, I see that you were following after Jesus. You kept him in your in your vision. I see you made some mistakes. See that you sinned. But you were following after him. I've got your time here, God would say to you. I see how long it took you to finish the race.
[30:26] Would you like to know what your time is? You think, yeah, okay. You know, tell me, did I get in under six hours? And God will say, you got in at one hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds. You had a perfect score. Me? Are you looking at somebody else's? He says, no, no, no. I see you. You followed after Jesus. You kept him as your focus. You broke the world record. One hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds. You broke the record. You were perfect. Because when you put your faith in Jesus, he's not just an example. His righteousness gets applied to you.
[31:12] His perfect record gets applied to you. So when God sees you, he sees the perfection of Jesus. Because you're perfect. That was absolutely perfect. All your sins and mistakes, those have been wiped away. And his righteousness is applied to you. And that's where the relief comes from. That's where we can run this race and not grow tired or weary. Because we know we have a Savior. A Savior, an immersible God, who forgives us and looks on us as being perfect. And so we don't have to be stressed. We don't have to worry about the mistakes that we've made, the sins that we've made. Say, you know what? I put my faith in Jesus. I trust him. And when I trust him, his record is applied to me.
[31:58] I'm going to invite the worship team up now. And I just want to give us a couple moments to respond to this. And I want us to think about, are there some sins or some things hindering you? Are there some things that you kind of need to to get off of you? Or maybe you feel like, you know, I actually just need to make that decision to keep my eyes on Jesus. I just haven't done it. I haven't been focusing on him. I've been focusing on my own performance. I've been trying to be a good person. And I just want to give you the opportunity this morning to pray, to say, God forgive me. I trust in Jesus. And I'm committing.
[32:45] I'm committing to following him, keeping my eyes on him. So bow your heads with me and please pray. Father, we thank you that you are a good and gracious father. We thank you that you are abounding in compassion and mercy. To a thousand generations, you abound in love and grace. And in response, Father, I just want us to take a moment to think of some things that might be hindering our relationships with you. Father, I'm asking for wisdom to know what are those things that we need to get rid of? Would you give us wisdom, Father? And for those of us here who just haven't made that commitment before, you can just say this prayer alongside me. Just quietly in your heart to say, God, I admit I've sinned.
[33:41] I've made mistakes. I'm asking for your forgiveness. I'm trusting in the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins. And I'm committing to follow him for the rest of my life. Pray this now in Jesus' name. Amen.