The idea here I don't think is that at all. That isn't the picture of a bunch of saints sitting in a stadium staring down at a bunch of Christians running around.

They don't want to be involved in that necessarily. There's nothing in the scripture to indicate that they are.

But what it's saying here is, we are compassed about with so great a cloud of people who have given testimony to the fact that the life of faith is a winning way to go.

You see, that's what it's saying.

Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Perhaps you've

thought about dusting off your old jogging shoes with the hope of getting back in shape,

though your pace may not quite be what you want.

It should improve as you train and get stronger.

Well, with the image of running in mind, today on Grace to You,

John MacArthur looks at the parallels scripture draws between living the

Christian life and running a race. It's a perfect follow-up to the series John finished yesterday

titled Reaching for the Prize. John's lesson today is called Run for Your Life. So now open your

Bible to Hebrews chapter 12 as John begins the lesson.

We're coming to Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3 really, and 4 just kind of touching the last two verses.

The Holy Spirit apparently was well aware of the fact that good teaching, teaching where there is learning going on, boils down to effective use of figures

of speech. We need to have illustrations and figures of speech to help us understand what somebody's

communicating. And so in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit very frequently makes use of multiple

figures of speech. And in particular, there are many,

many of them incorporated into the subject of the Christian life. Now, all of these figures of

speech are different aspects of the Christian life. But there is one figure of speech that

appears repeatedly in the New Testament. And that figure of speech is the figure of a race.

The Christian life is seen as a race. And that figure is what brings us to our text, Hebrews

...