Christian Living

THE GREATEST FOCUS

by GLENN PEASE
02/09/22
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Based on Heb. 3:1

There are no end to the things we can think of and focus our attention upon, but the greatest focus of all is to focus our thoughts on Jesus. That is the focus of the Bible from beginning to end. That is to be the focus of all that we do in church, and in all the meetings and activities of the church. There is no higher subject for the mind to consider than Jesus. The text says, "fix your thoughts on Jesus.." He is to be the primary food for our thinking. He is not to be a now and then snack, but the full meal of each day. The mind needs a focus for there to be a primary goal of all our thinking, and that focus is to be Jesu

Notice, the call to consider Jesus is not addressed to the outsider, or to the part time believer who is just playing at being a Christian. It is addressed to the holy brethern. The implication is clear that you can never get so holy and mature as a Christian that you do not need to make Jesus the central focus of your thinking. It is not as if you learn about Jesus and then go on to other things. You never cease to make Him the focus of you learning, for in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Every subject we study is to be related to Jesus. The little child who sings Jesus loves me this I know, and the aged saint who has read the Bible for over fifty years need to have the same focus, and that is a mind fixed on Jesus. You cannot be too young or too old to make Him the greatest focus of your life.

Holy brothers with a calling

To share in heaven's glory

Let your mind run without stalling

Focused on the great story.

It’s the greatest story ever

That the world can ever hear.

For from His love none can sever

His presence is always near.

Let your mind be fixed on Jesus

There's no greater food for thought.

It is His desire to please us,

For by His blood we are bought.

May this mind be in you and me

So that we are never bored.

And may we daily come to see

Life's best is focus on the Lord.

The best sermons, the best books, the best Sunday School lessons, the best Bible studies, the best articles and the best of everything you can hear or read are those things that help you fix your thoughts on Jesus. He is to be the magnet that continually draws our mind to focus on Him. In contrast, whatever takes your attention away from Jesus and all He was and taught has the potential of being a danger to your soul. Of course, we all go many hours of each day without thinking of Jesus, but when we do begin to use our minds for study that will lead us to know and do the will of God, our focus is to be on Him. That is the whole focus of this book of Hebrews. In every way possible the author goes through all the values of the Old Testament and then focuses on Jesus as their fulfillment and completion. He is to be our focus because He has made all that came before Him obsolete or secondary. He is superior to all that have gone before, and that is why He is to be the focus of our theology and practice.

When people get their minds off Jesus they tend to fix on other things that lead to all kinds of conflict. There are so many different views of contemporary issues among believers, and this leads to much conflict that produces bitter fighting among the family of God. It makes me think of the preacher who wrote a book titled Come To Jesus. Later he became angry at another preacher who disagreed with him on some issue and he wrote another book tearing the man apart. He asked a friend what he should name the book. The friend said, "What not call it Go To The Devil by the author of Come to Jesus." The man got the point that he was over reacting and did not publish his attack. He had gotten his mind off Jesus, and let it get fixed on some issue that led him to be unlike Jesus. When you begin to have attitudes and actions in your life that are inconsistent with Jesus, you know your mind is not focused on Him, but on something that you have made more important to you than Him. This is the modern idolatry. Anything or anyone, or any idea that makes you unlike Christ is an idol at that point, and we need to crush it by getting refocused on Jesus.

There are many believers who are more law centered than Lord centered, and this can be a pain for all the fellow believers they try to bring into bondage to their legalism, but it will be a worse pain for them when they are judged to have been idolaters for putting the law above Jesus. This was the danger the Hebrews faced, for they were tempted to go back to the law of Moses and put him on a higher level than God’s highest, final and greatest revelation in His Son. This would be a form of idolatry because it would be putting what has become secondary in the place of the primary. This chapter goes on to warn of the judgment that God’s people suffered because of their unbelief and rebellion, and that is just it would be to take your focus off Jesus and put on Moses, the High Priest, or the temple. Fix your mind on Jesus or you will be in a fix for sure is the essence of this chapter.

Moses was the greatest Jew who ever lived up until the time of Jesus. He was special in God’s plan, and God had a special relationship with him. Numbers 12:6-8 reveals God’s testimony to Moses: “Hear now my words: if there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, shall make myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. 7 not so, with my servant Moses, he is faithful in all my household; 8 with him I speak mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings, and he beholds the form of the Lord.” He is the only one to see God as he did. In Ex. 7:1 God says of Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.” God never made any man like a God except Moses. God used him as no other man. He gave the law to His people through Moses, and led them out of Egypt by him. He was special and this book acknowledges him to have been a faithful servant in the house of God. But Jesus is as superior to Moses as a Son is superior to the best of the servants. Therefore, to fix your eyes on Moses and take them off of Jesus is to live in disobedience to the clear revelation of God, and this is to risk judgment. You can see why it was hard of the Jews to take Moses off the pedestal and put Jesus there instead. It was a breaking of the oldest tradition of the Jews. It was no easy matter making Jesus the primary and greatest focus of life.

As you study history you discover that the reason good people fail and fall from God’s best is always because they get their minds fixed on what is less than God’s best. Adam and Eve took their focus from obedience to God and focused on the forbidden fruit, and this was the end of paradise. Every fall from that point on was for the same reason. David took his eyes off obedience to God and put them on the beauty of Bathsheba and he fell. Solomon took his eyes off the wisdom of God and focused on pleasing his foreign wives and this led to idolatry and a fall. Peter was the only man to walk on water with Jesus, but he took his eyes off Jesus and focused on the raging waves and down he went. People are always sunk when they cease to focus on Jesus. That is the whole point of Hebrews. You will miss God’s best when you do not keep Jesus as your primary focus in life. Biblical theology is really quite simple: fix your mind on Jesus or you are in a fix.

What Hebrews is saying to the people it is written to it goes on saying to us today who may have no temptation to go back to Moses and the Old Testament law and its rituals of atonement, but who still have the danger of putting someone of something in place of Jesus as our primary focus. We tend to become people worshipers because there are people who are truly great in many ways and deserved to be honored. But when we honor them to the point that we exalt them and their ideas above the Lord Jesus we are in danger of idolatry, just as if we bowed before a golden calf. The point is that Jesus is the greatest in every way, and anything we do to lessen His greatness in our mind is a rejection of God's revelation.

Charles Jefferson wrote, "When we leave the New Testament and walk among the nations of the earth where shall we find a man with whom we should be willing to compare Jesus of Nazareth? Can you think of an Italian or a German or a Frenchman or an Englishman or an American whose name is worthy to be linked with his? The heart draws back shuddering at the suggestion of such a thought. Great men have come and gone, doing their mighty deeds and leaving behind names which shall not die, but what race or nation would dare even in its most egotistic and vainglorious moments to suggest that the most illustrious of all its sons has a right to sit on a throne so high as the throne of Jesus? His soul is like a star and dwells apart. He is unique, unapproached, unapproachable. He is the incomparable." When we have this conviction we will not be so enamored by any other greatness to the point where we neglect our focus on Jesus for a focus on any other.

The Hebrew people took a great chance in leaving Egypt and following Moses into the wilderness. It was a brave risk they took, but it was not enough to get them into the promised land, for a good start is not the same as a good finish. Many start great, but end far from great. They were delivered from Egypt, but it was not an end in itself. The goal was to get into the land of promise, but they failed to enter it. Jude sums in up in Jude 1:5, "Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe." Why remind Christians about such folly of the Jews? It is because the same folly is going on all the time, and people who should be having God's best are missing out because they have missed the importance of perpetually focusing on Jesus.

The Old Testament people of God were blessed with an abundance of miracles, and they had the greatest of leaders, and yet, they still rebelled against God's will and plan for them. They missed their purpose in life by their constant departing from obedience. Moses was a marvelous leader, but he risked his life in trying to lead this people. On one occasion when the people had grown tired and weary "Moses cried out to the LORD, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me." (Exodus 17:2-4) Centuries later nothing had changed, and these people's descendants killed their Messiah. The point of all this folly being recorded in God's Word is that every generation might see the weakness of human nature and the tendency toward disobedience. Paul makes this clear in ICor. 10:9-11, "We should not test the Lord, as some of them did--and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did--and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come."

It is because of this tendency that exists for all time in all people that we must recognize that the greatest focus for all people in all times is to be Jesus. The quickest way to depart from God and His will is to take our minds off Jesus. The history of Christian sin and folly can be traced to this one factor, and that is that believers have filled their minds with something other than Jesus. He has ceased to be their primary focus in life, and the end result is disobedience to His will, which brings judgment. Jesus was not just another Moses, a great leader of the house of God. He was the builder of the house. He has greater honor because of His superion role in relation to the house of God. He is the Apostle and High priest whom we confess. He is the one who made us the house of God. The greatest honor goes to the one who made the beautiful mansion, and not just to the one who happens to live in it. The glory belongs to the Maker, and that is Jesus.

There are so many distractions in the world and in the church that it is a constant need to be challenged to focus on Jesus. We can get caught up in controversy over dozens of issues such as healing, tongues, music, worship styles, cults and the occult, abortion, war, methods of mission and evangelism, mystical experiences, and on and on. But none of these are to be the foundation on which we build, for as soon as we make anything our foundation but Jesus we begin to sink our part of the house of God, for we are building on sand rather than the solid Rock. Paul makes this clear in 1Cor 3:10-11, "According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." An ancient Irish hymn put the essence of what Hebrews is saying in verse about making Jesus the greatest focus. Mary Byrne translated it into English.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

The author goes on in verse 2 to stress the faithfulness of Jesus. Moses was also faithful in God’s house, but the text here does not mention that Moses was unfaithful once, and that failure led to his not being allowed by God to enter the promised land. Jesus was not once unfaithful to the will of God. The faithfulness of Jesus is a theme that runs all through the Bible, and is another reason why we need to keep our focus on Him, for He is to be our example perpetually in all situations in life. As 13:8 stresses, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is ever faithful. Jesus is even named faithful in the book of Revelation.

Revelation 3:14
"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. (NIV)

Revelation 19:11
I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. (NIV)

Because He is faithful we can have courage and hope that keeps us on track as part of the house of God. We can count on Jesus to be with us, to understand us, to forgive us, and to empower us to overcome all temptations and be victorious in the battles of life.Because He is ever faithful, we too can be faithful in living in obedience to God, and not fall away into disobedience. The people of God in the Old Testament doubted the faithfulness of God and they grumbled and complained and just became impossible to lead as an obedient house of God. Their unfaithful spirit led to them missing out on God’s rest, and that is the risk that all take who doubt the faithfulness of Jesus. Those who take their eyes off Jesus and begin to look elsewhere for security will find themselves sinking into quicksand when the storms of life come. It is only when we stay focused on Jesus that we will find He alone can still the storm and faithfully guide us to shore.

When we stay focused on Jesus and His faithfulness we can be overcomers rather than quitters, as were the saints of old coming out of Egypt. They just could not believe that God would be faithful to His promise and lead them into the land of freedom and rest. They rebelled all along the way, and never made it because of their rebellion. We need not repeat their folly if we trust in the faithfulness of Jesus to lead us all the way. He had promised to be with us and lead us to the Father’s house where He had gone to prepare a place for us. He is faithful to empower us to overcome all temptation. I Cor. 10:13 says,

“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

Because of the faithfulness of God and His Son we can be assured of victory if we keep our focus on Him and not on self, or any other foundation. Our confidence and courage come from our focus on Him and His faithfulness. When we look away to find our courage and confidence in any other source we risk defeat, and that is why Jesus is to be our greatest focus. He has been where we are. He knows the trials of temptation from experience. He knows the pain of rejection and disappointment. He knows all the sorrows of life, and yet He was faithful to accomplish the will of God through perfect obedience. He knows it is not easy, but extremely difficult to always be faithful, and to always be courageous and hopeful. He knows just how much we need help to even come close to being all God wants us to be. That is why we need to keep our focus on Him, for there is no one else who can help us as He can.

Verse 6 also refers to the hope of which we boast. It is not only courage but hope that comes from a focus on Jesus. He is our hope, for there is no other that even offers us the hope of eternal life. Hope is a key factor in survival in a fallen world. Lose hope and you lose all reason to continue the battle. As long as there is hope there is reason to keep pressing on however hard the march. In some of the great marches of war prisoners many just gave up and laid down and died because they had not hope of surviving the march anyway. They thought it meaningless to keep going without hope. They just as well die now as later and so they did. Viktor Frankl saw the same thing in the Nazi concentration camp. He saw men who were as healthy as other just lay down and die because they lost hope. Others went on enduring all the terrible ordeal of hunger and suffering of all kinds because they never gave up hope. A focus on Jesus is what gives us an undying hope that keeps us going no matter what. Hopers are never quitters, and that is why we must never cease to focus on Jesus as our eternal hope.