If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to the book of Hebrews, chapter 12.  We’re coming to the end of this great chapter and it’s been a chapter about the living of the Christian life.  And in the final verses of this passage that we’re going to read together this morning, the emphasis is going to be on our motivation for living the Christian life.  Why you do what you do is very important.  It’s very important for a lot of reasons.  One of the reasons why you do what you do is important is because it impacts your joy.  If you do the right thing for the wrong reason it can rob you of the joy in doing that right thing.  If you do the right thing for the right reason it can increase and sustain your joy in doing the right thing.  And the author of Hebrews…

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 12.  We’ll be looking at verses 12 to 17 this morning.  As we do so, I do want to bring you greeting from your Australian Presbyterian cousins. I’ve enjoyed being with them the last few days in Melbourne and in Sydney, speaking at the Presbyterian Theological College and also speaking at their General Assembly which they hold once every three years.  And they have expressed their appreciation to you for sparing me to them and it was a pleasure to be with them and to be refreshed with both new friends and old.  I also want to welcome those who are here who are friends and family of the children who have been baptized this morning.  It’s always a joy to have you present with us and we trust that you will…

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11. We’re going to be looking at verses 30 to 40 this morning as we continue our way through this book and as we continue our way through this great chapter of faith. The author of Hebrews has been explaining to us that the Christian life must be lived by faith. And in the passage today, he is going to show us five ways that that is so. And I'd like to go ahead and point those out to you so that as we read…

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11 as we continue our way through this great passage about faith. Every once in awhile we hear folks exhorting us to understand the Old Testament from a Christ-centered perspective – and that's good, and that's of course exactly what the author of Hebrews is going to do today, especially in the amazing verse 26 that we're going to read in this passage – but sometimes we hear people say, “If…

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11 as we continue our way through this book and through this great chapter on faith. The book of Hebrews, we have said all along, is about the great theme that Jesus is better. And trusting in Jesus means a life of faith, a life in which we base our whole hope on Him and on His promises. We just sang, “More than all in Him I find.” We put all of our hopes in Him. He is greater than any other treasure in life. So a…