Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Dear Friends, John Paton was a Christian missionary to a place called New Hebrides. He soon discovered that the natives had words for house and tree and stone and the like, but they had no words for love and joy and peace. Worst of all they had no word for “believe.” One day as he sat in his hut frustrated with his ministry and more specifically his Bible translation skills, an old native entered and slumped down in a chair. Exhausted from a long journey, the man said, “I’m leaning my whole weight on this chair.” Dr. Paton asked him to repeat what he had just said. The man said, “I’m leaning my whole weight on this chair.” Immediately, the missionary latched onto that phrase to teach this native tribe what it meant to “believe in Jesus.” It meant that you lean your whole weight into Jesus. As you stare death in the face this morning, the very best word of encouragement I can give you is to lean your whole weight into Jesus Christ. That’s another way of saying go ahead and fix your eyes on Jesus and don’t stop fixing your eyes on Jesus ever. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. He is the one who fixed his eyes on Jerusalem and He set His face towards Jerusalem, and He didn’t stop until He had been arrested, slapped around, beaten up, ridiculed, mocked, and crucified until He was stone cold dead and buried. The reason He did all of that was ultimately that He had His eyes fixed on Sandra Boulais and every other human being ever conceived and born into this world. This is the Good News that supercedes every bit of bad news that is overwhelming your souls and dragging on your spirits today, the awful news that Sandra has suffered in her body, and even worse than that, she has suffered the wages of sin, which is death. The Good News is that Jesus Christ is where faith starts, and He is where it finishes. He is the one who looked past the shame of the cross, He scorned the shame of the cross, He despised the shame of the cross. He said to sin and shame, “bring it on!” He said “bring it on” because He saw in His own shame on the cross joy. He saw the joy of Sandra and all baptized believers spending eternity in heaven with Him. You see, in the waters of Baptism, Jesus Christ fixed His eyes on Sandra Sue Boulais, and He never took His eyes off her. Oh she may have felt like God was at a distance in certain chapters of life, but He was always near. He was always near in the preaching and teaching and remembering of His Word. He was always near in the bread and wine of His Holy Supper. He was near with His forgiveness, and wherever there is forgiveness there is life and salvation. Although Sandra may have felt that the life was overwhelming and that she was alone, in fact her Good Shepherd has followed her around with goodness and mercy in all the days of her life. In our text for today, God is encouraging every one of us to keep running the race called living the Christian life. This is done, in spite of the challenges and difficulties of life, by fixing your eyes, your focus, your faith on Jesus, your Lord and your Savior. We remember today that nothing that is valuable is achieved without effort. Fritz Kreisler, the famous violinist, testified to this point when he said, “Narrow is the road that leads to the life of a violinist. Hour after hour, day after day and week after week, for years, I lived with my violin. There were so many things that I wanted to do that I had to leave undone; there were so many places I wanted to go that I had to miss if I was to master the violin. The road that I traveled was a narrow road and the way was hard. So also in our text for today, we learn that the road of salvation is narrow, and the way is hard. The writer to the Hebrews warns us that if we are going to run the race that is our Christian life, we are going to have to run with perseverance. There’s going to be all kinds of sins that will easily entangle us, and if we don’t find a way to throw them off, they’re going to get the best of us. By nature, all of us sin and fall short of the glory of God, but praise be to God, it is in His nature to be a God of new beginnings and second chances. It is reality that a messed up world is going to mess with us in every one of our days, but the greater reality is that Jesus Christ led the perfect life not a one of us could even begin to live, He suffered all that we should have suffered, He died the death we needed Him to die, He rose up again on the third day, He spent 40 days appearing to all kinds of people and proving that in fact He was alive and well, He ascended on the 40th day, He poured out His Spirit in a new and spectacular way on the 50th day, and in every one of our days, He is sitting at the right hand of His Father, ruling all of heaven and earth for the sake of His precious and valuable people here on earth. What contact I did have with Sandra over the years was always pleasant, and almost always she was having health problems of one kind or another. Our conversations always had something to do first of all with her daughter and grandchildren, and secondly, since I’m a pastor kind of a person, they always had something to do with her Savior. It seemed as though she always had reasons to be weary and to lose heart, but there was never a doubt in my mind that she had fixed her eyes on Jesus as both author and finisher of her faith. I regret that I did not visit her in recent months, but my hunch is that she had the same kind of yearnings that so many Christian have when illnesses are taking over their bodies and ruling their days. The yearning for this life to be over. The yearning to depart and be with Christ. The yearning that looks past death to the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting. A story about my dad wanting to get out of the nursing home and be reunited with my mom…………ending with dad wheeling himself down the hallway of that nursing home and trying to kick his way out of there. I don’t know what Sandra’s last hours or days were like, but it may well be that she just wanted to get out of this life with all of its pain and suffering and be with her Savior in paradise. Praise be to God that because Jesus Christ lives, Sandra Boulais lives. Praise be to God that she is resting from her labors, and her works do follow her. My prayer is that you, Jennifer, and you Haley and Tyler and you who have loved and were loved by this decent and straight forward kind of a Christian woman would keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. My prayer is that you would spend every one of your days staying close to your Savior, receiving all that He wants you to have. That you would spend your days reveling in His grace, appreciating your second chances, and enjoying every blessing you have been given. May God’s angels be with you, that the wicked foe would have no power over you, and may Sandra Boulais rest in peace.
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October 2022
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