Looking Unto Jesus

“Let us run with patience the race set out before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1b-2a)
As Theodore Monod said, “Only three words, but in those three words is the whole secret of life.” Looking unto Jesus is the only way to successfully live the Christian life. It is the key to victory and abundant living. It is our only hope and comfort. Without looking unto Jesus, we who have trusted in Christ will still make it to heaven, but our salvation will not benefit us here and now.
So what is it to look unto Jesus? How do we do it? Simply put, I think it means to focus on Him, to be occupied with Him, to look to Him for answers and deliverance. The phrase used in the Greek is “aphoroontes”, which means to consider attentively, turning our gaze away from everything else. Like Peter in Matthew 14, when he focused only on Jesus, he walked on water. That story is so common and familiar to us, but really think about it for a moment. Just by looking at this Man, Peter could walk on water! Think of the things that could be accomplished in and through our lives as we fix the gaze of our souls on Him. But Peter took his gaze off his Lord and looked instead at the storm. Really is this so shocking? Think. Suddenly, it hits him more fully - he is treading on the sea! The thunder roars a little louder. A cold wave slaps him, knocking the breath out of him. Thunder rolls, shaking the water under his feet. Peter is distracted. Wouldn’t you be a bit distracted?
You begin to panic a bit.
You forget why you’re out there on the water to begin with.
What are you doing? This is crazy!
What you are doing is impossible.
It is not natural. It contradicts all you know.
This is why we have boats, for heaven’s sake!
And without realizing it, you have stopped looking at God-incarnate - the Man who brings the impossible to pass.
You are looking frantically around yourself, heart racing, holding your breath….and now you are sinking. The next big wave hits you but this time you don’t rise above it. It brings you down with it and you’re treading water. You are gasping and fighting and flailing and your vision is blurred and you don’t know how you got in this mess. Even more, you don’t know how you’ll get out.
You have forgotten what brought you out there in the first place. You stepped onto the water in faith at the calling of Jesus, and by looking unto Jesus, you walked on water. For just a moment, by focusing on He who called you, you did the impossible. By looking unto Jesus alone. Looking away from the world around you. As soon as Peter looked at the external world, things went downhill. He looked at his circumstances, at the impossible feat he was at that very moment doing. He looked at the threats and dangers and darkness engulfing him. Most importantly, he was not looking unto Jesus.
Was it just the direction of his eyes that really made the difference though? What if his vision hadn’t been 20/20? What if maybe the sea water had blurred his vision?
I think we can take that story to mean that Peter was focused on the Lord. It was at His call that Peter stepped out of the boat. It was His miracle-working power and authority that gave Peter the courage (or borderline insanity) to put his feet on the sea. And as his gaze stayed on Jesus, I think we can understand that so did his dependence, trust, and focus. I think he was well aware that he, Peter the fisherman, could not walk on water by himself. It was not something about him or his skill that made it happen. It wasn’t his resolve or sincerity or effort or knowledge or holiness that worked this miracle. It was Peter’s dependency on Christ’s ability.
I believe that this story well depicts the concept of looking unto Jesus. It means to choose to fixate on Him. Instead of focusing on our circumstances and our feelings and outward appearances, we choose to fill our mind with Christ. Occupy yourself with Him. This isn’t some light and fluffy, “think happy thoughts” idealism. This is a battle of our minds. We have to constantly redirect our thoughts to God and the Truth in His Word. Satan, the world, and our flesh are always viciously fighting to distract us and bring our thoughts under their control. Satan never stops trying to get us to think of anything but Christ. He will even seek to get us focused on our own righteousness, or maybe our sins. He will entice our minds with our strengths and with our weaknesses. He will distract us with the pleasures of this world, and he will distract us with suffering. He will distract us with people, and with loneliness. With our broken past, or the uncertain future. With our friends and our enemies. He will whisper to us that we have failed - again. We cannot return to God now. Our guilt is too heavy - our sins too black. “You’ve burned too many bridges,” he lies. Or he praises us for our godly appearance. He flatters - “Look how well you’re doing. See how strong you are? See how hard you’re working? You’ve been much more spiritual than your brother or sister.”
All the while, we must war. We must war against the temptation to fill our thoughts with those things. We war to focus our minds on Christ. We don’t only focus on His gifts or provisions, but we focus on Him. On who He is, what He does, what He wants, what He hates, how He works and what He means to us. When you’re tired, and lazy, and defeated, and self-focused, and angry and hurting - what will you do? Make war. Instead of your weakness, think of His strength. Instead of dwelling on your needs, fill your mind with His provision. Instead of thinking to satisfy your flesh, think of what He suffered for your sins. Don’t get fixated on your anger, but meditate on the grace He has lavished upon you. Instead of focusing on your successes, think of His. “Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ!” (2 Cor. 10:5). “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). What things are these? All these descriptions are true of the Word of God - these are the things of Christ. This is what we are supposed to think about! “Set your affections on things above!” (Col. 3:2). “Mind the things of the Spirit!” (Ro. 8:5). “Gird up the loins of your mind!” (1 Peter 1:13). Can you see? This is where the battle lies - in your mind. This is what it means to fight the good fight of faith.
It won’t be easy. It is war after all. You will experience failures. It will probably hurt. It will go against what is natural. It will be long and hard and you will grow tired. But there is hope.
After all, “He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world,” (1 Jn. 4:4).
So even when you feel you are failing in your focus on Christ, when your gaze is clouded and muddled and you know you’ve allowed yourself to get distracted, or when you’ve looked elsewhere for so long that you can hardly see anymore, all it takes is a simple look. Maybe you don’t even think looking at Him will do you any good, but, “He loves it when we, gripped with doubt and fear that He will not be enough, turn the gaze of our souls to Him in trust” (Captivating, Stasi Elderidge).
So….
Look unto Jesus.

Impressed?

I want you to allow yourself to be impressed. Humor me for a moment. I want you to think on all the greatness of creation. Let yourself be overwhelmed. Think of the stars - not just the stars - but the galaxies. Millions upon billions of these masses of fire and gas and light just filling the sky with the glory of God. Stars that make our sun look like a golf ball at the base of Mt. Everest. Think of the majesty of mountains and crashing waves and vast canyons. Fill your mind with the color and variety on this earth. Variety in trees and flowers and weather and landscapes and rivers and clouds and even food. Some counts state that there are more than 500 types of bananas. Over 500 BANANAS. I don’t even like bananas, but that’s pretty impressive. And laughter. So many different types of laughs. So much variety that can be seen in people in general. Hair color and eyes and dreams and voices and sizes. Do you remember from first grade how no two snowflakes are the same? Have you really thought about that recently? When was the last time you tried to count the number of snow flakes contained in a snow ball? How about the number of snow flakes in your yard? How many snowflakes do you think have graced this planet through history? And yet, no two are the same? Really?
Keep going with me. Just flood your mind with all the beauty and wonder and detail and grandeur from God’s handiwork that you possibly can. There’s plenty. You won’t run out. Waterfalls and butterflies and lions and desserts and underground caves and crystals and colors and thunder storms and coral reefs. Glow in the dark worms. Oak trees and cheetahs. Friendships. Lavender and lilacs. The smell after rain. Sand between your toes. Climbing a 60 foot tree. Sun on your face. Diving into a freezing lake. Music. Dancing. Running.
You and I are put together entirely of atoms, held on this rock by this unseen force called gravity, whirling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour. There is enough information contained in your DNA to fill libraries…or to make circles around the moon. And at the same time - it all fits inside your cells. You are beautifully and wonderfully made. Sounds cliché…but truly, you are. The way that your 206 bones fit together with your blood vessels and muscles and ligaments and skin. How about the way your skin just knows how to heal itself from a paper cut? No one has to tell the blood to clot or the new skin cells to form. But they do. Your body does so many incredible things every single moment without you giving it a thought. Breathing, moving, building, repairing, pulsing, living.
Impressed yet? No? Try thinking about the way a baby grows in the womb. 24 days after conception, you had a beating heart. After 8 weeks, you had taste buds. After 9 weeks, you could suck your thumb. 12 weeks, you practiced breathing. At some precise moment, the millions of nerve endings in your eye lined up with the millions of nerve endings from your brain and the last one connected and by 7 months…You. Had. Sight. Just like that. You could see.
And this crazy wonderful, detailed, magnificent world of ours is so insignificantly small in the vastness of the universe. It is all hung on nothing and spinning through the blackness faster than we can understand and still, somehow, it is all held together. It all keeps going and functioning and living and glorifying God, day after day, through space and time.

Once upon a time, in all the vastness of space and time, there was a man. Beautifully and wonderfully made, but he would have fit in right along with you and I. He walked and ate and slept. He was not beautiful that we should desire Him. He had acne as a teen. He stubbed his toe. He had late night cravings. He got the flu. He played sports with his friends. He went to school. He probably did not seem so extraordinary. Maybe he was average in everything. Perhaps he was short. Maybe he wasn’t all that good at sports. Maybe he struggled in math.
Do you often picture Jesus like that? Like someone you could have sat down with on the grass and just had a conversation with? Someone you could’ve run into while running errands in town? Someone who went to the doctor when he got sick, just like you?
And yet.
And yet, He was God in the flesh. Yahweh on earth.
Really push your imagination now. Picture yourself sitting down with Jesus. Average day, average conversation. Just you and your friend sitting down for lunch. It’s warm out. The sun is shining. A mosquito buzzes by your ear and you swat at it. You’re just talking. Good, relaxed, heart-to-heart conversation.
And it hits you. I mean, you know He’s the Son of God - Messiah. You’ve believed that for a while now. But sometimes, like lightning, it strikes you. This man? 2 feet from you? He’s…GOD. Maybe he’s 5’7” and 150 lbs. Maybe his hands are dirty and he’s a little sunburnt. Maybe he smiles and there’s food in his teeth. But he’s God. The God who created the universe in all of its variety and detail and color and wonder. He’s sitting with you. The world keeps spinning at 67,000 miles per hour around the sun because HE causes it to. Your cells are holding to each other because HE WILLS IT. You can only take your next breath to speak because the 5’7” man at your side gives it to you. On the other side of the planet, it’s snowing, and each snowflake is unique, because He made them that way. People laugh and cry around the globe and He hears every single one of them. He’s listening to you talk about the weather, but he knows every thought in the mind of every person at this precise moment. He’s 150 lbs but he holds the galaxies in place and he hung the earth on nothing.
Right now. He’s holding it all together. Carrying it along to its intended goal. Everything depends on the man sitting next to you. All of it. Can you fathom that? Can you comprehend that Jehovah God came to earth as a human being?
Now are you impressed?

Come boldly [Hebrews 4:16]

Imagine for a moment. I want you to be a time traveler. You are a saint. Part of the Church - Christ’s Body. Justified. But you are going back in time to the wilderness. The wilderness that Israel wandered in for forty years. Hold on to that thought for a moment.

You are now an Israelite. You are at the base of Mt. Sinai. The entire nation is gathered around the Mount. It is time for God to give the Law.
You wait, with millions of your people, for God to descend.
You wait for God’s presence on the mount.
You wait for Him to come and speak with you - His people.
But you wait at a distance. This mountain will be inhabited by Yahweh’s Shekinah glory at any minute. Everyone stays well away. No one dares approach such holy ground.
And you continue waiting.
He is coming.
The God who brought you out of slavery is coming to speak. With you.
What will it be like?

And the ground begins to quiver. Just gently at first. Then it trembles. It rolls beneath you. You stumble to your knees. Black clouds race in like a terrible army and obscure the sun.
But there is a light. There - above the mountain. It grows closer. It fills the mountain. It seems almost that the mountain itself is on fire. A dreadful heat pushes at you. Deep, black clouds churn wildly. Lighting pours on the mountain like a rain storm. You shield your eyes.

Yahweh has come.

And then…the noise - the noise begins. A noise of great howling winds - the winds of the most fearful storm. It chills you to your bones. The roar of flames. It seems to be a fire ready to consume you. The rush of a thousand waterfalls. You can no longer hear your own thoughts. The yell of a battle cry that cuts through your soul. The sound of a thousand warriors marching. It is earth shattering and devastatingly beautiful. The sound cannot be described, but it strikes fear in you like never before.

Yahweh is speaking.

And you can not stand it. If He does not stop speaking, the sound might kill you. You feel smaller and smaller. Yet not small enough. You wish you could disappear. You shrink from the voice, but you can not back far enough away. The voice is like a vice around your body. Your head pounds and sweat drips down your back. Your legs hurt from trembling. Your mouth is too dry to suck in air. You’re suffocating.
Children cry. Mothers wail. Men bow their faces to the ground in fear and shame. The animals join in the cacophony and protest the thundering. A dog gets loose and runs in panic directly for the mount. No sooner does it touch the flaming rock, than it is incinerated. Nothing can touch the holy mount and live.

Still, He speaks.

You are overcome with your own unholiness. Your head burns and your throat constricts. You feel you might be sick. Every fiber of your being screams at you. Run. Hide your face. Shrivel into nothingness. Disappear. Be gone! Moan and writhe in agony for every cell in your body is at enmity with the Living God in whose presence you now stand! You are sinful. You are so small and worthless and so…nothing. Utterly sinful and wrong. And Yahweh is here. On the mount. Speaking. He is here in glory and power and terror.
Such small, inadequate words for the awesomeness of His presence.
He is here in infinite holiness.
You can not even begin to grasp the concept of true, undefiled holiness. What is infinite holiness?
You try to glimpse the mount and instantly you bury your face again. Your eyes burn from the searing brightness. And yet, you and your people are suffocating in darkness. Your limbs feel like lead weights. The darkness pushes you down to the ground. You try to cry out for the voice to cease, but your lips won’t move. Your voice is paralyzed.
And you are covered in filth. Putrid, sticky, wretched filth. Your own sins cover you like so much vomit. You can’t stand your own smell. You stand there, in the presence of the God who breathes out galaxies, in nothingness. Bare and vulnerable and so weak, you may as well be dead. In fact, you wish for death. You would pray for it if you dared. But it will not come.

Stop. Wait a moment.
You are not actually an Israelite. Remember? Do you remember who you really are?

The voice calls your name. Yours.

“Come,” He thunders.

He calls you to step forward. The crowd parts. You look up. You take one step towards the burning mount. And another. And another. You've left the masses behind you now. The heat is growing. But Yahweh has summoned you onto His holy ground. He called your name. The heat and light grow stronger. Your pace quickens. Your heart catches in your throat.

“Come boldly,” He beckons you.

Closer to the mountain - to the roar and the trembling rock and the pouring lighting.
How can you keep moving closer? You will die. Yahweh has commanded you to come forward, to be destroyed. So you walk forward to your death.

And you look down at your filth - but it is gone. You are clean. Your skin is smooth and soft and flawless. Your rags have disappeared. You are dressed in the softest, purest white. Suddenly, from nowhere, strength pulses through your veins. Boldness enters your heart. You begin to laugh. And to run. You run towards the mount. You are clothed in the righteousness of your Savior. You are forgiven. And accepted. And loved. You have been declared worthy. You are now called the righteousness of God in Christ. You have been redeemed from all your worthlessness. You no longer need to tremble when faced with the very holiness of God Almighty. Yahweh speaks to you - to you - to come be with Him. You step on the foot of the mountain and climb. You race for the top. The intensity of the heat is unbelievable - and yet you are not hurt. The light is blinding, and yet you stare right at it. The voice still shakes the earth, but now you tremble with joy. Faster. Climb faster. The Creator has asked for your presence on top of His mountain. He wants to sit and talk with you. He wants to be with you. Because you have been made worthy. You share in His holiness. The holiness that shakes the earth and rips the sky apart, has been bestowed upon you.
Yahweh sits on his holy mount and waits for your presence. Come boldly before the dreadful and wonderful God, because you who have trusted in Christ, have been made worthy. Dear child of the living God, come boldly!