Last week I got word that a friend of mine died at 92. His
name was Tom and I hadn’t seen him in more than 20 years, but I have thought
about him frequently over the years. It’s funny how you remember a person by something
they said or something they did long ago. It’s like a snapshot frozen in time.
More than 30 years ago Tom was in a class I was teaching
called the Bethel Bible Series. It was the two-year teacher’s course designed
to equip lay people to teach a one-year course of study that covered the entire
Bible. It was rigorous. Not only was there homework, there were TESTS!
So one night in the first semester I asked the students what
Genesis 49 was all about. Tom raised his hand and said, “That’s the chapter
where Jacob gathers all of his dozen sons together to tell them what’s wrong
with them.” And while he’s mostly right, there’s much more to Jacob’s words
than that.
Listen to what he says when he gets to his fourth son:
“Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be
on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you…the
specter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his
feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has
washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes.”
Do you know what he’s talking about? Palm Sunday! Imagine,
1700 years before Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the back of that donkey colt,
Judah’s father prophesied what He would ride to die! It’s the end of His race. He’s
run faithfully. He is destined for the throne. He’s on His way to a week of eternal
suffering and He initiates it all.
This week we are in Hebrews 12 where the preacher picks up a
Pauline theme – life is a race. Five times in Paul’s writings he analogizes
living the Christian life to running a race. And here in the penultimate
chapter of Hebrews the preacher borrows the same metaphor. But he does more –
he uses an additional metaphor for life - being parented by our Heavenly
Father.
There is so much here for us to see and absorb. Remember the
question? If God loves me, why is life so hard? Remember the answer? “Life’s a
journey, and the only way to get home unscathed is to fix our eyes on Jesus.
What the preacher explains in 12:1-13 is imperative for us all to dissect and
so this Palm Sunday we do!
In preparation you may wish to consider the following:
- What is wrong with most interpretations of verse 1?
- Who are these witnesses and what can they see?
- Look up the Greek word for “race”. What can we learn about the Christian life from that one word?
- Why would a good God bring suffering and pain into our lives?
- How do the “witnesses” help us in our trouble?
- Why does the preacher shift his metaphors in verse 5?
- What is the Greek word for “discipline”? What does it tell us about God and us?
- What does George MacDonald mean when he says, “Everything difficult points to something our theory of life has yet to embrace”?
- How is suffering God’s way of getting His greatness and His glory deep into our souls?
- What did John Stott mean when he famously said, “How can you ever believe in a God that doesn’t suffer?”
- What lessons does the preacher give us in verse 12 and 13 to complete our race?
- What does Hosanna mean?
