“THEREFORE THEN, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us”
In any court case that goes to trial, you have witnesses. Those witnesses can bring some truth to the story because they supposedly were there when “it” happened. The funny thing is that what we see is not always the whole truth. Take, for instance, the story in the movie My Cousin Vinny. The prosecuting attorney had many witnesses, but what they saw was not the whole truth. The new lawyer, Vinny, unravels the witnesses’ testimonies, and the two youths go free. You have to vet the story to find the real truth sometimes.
We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have borne testimony to the Truth, as it says in verse 1 of chapter 12 in Hebrews. It goes on to instruct us to strip off and throw aside every encumbrance and sin that clings to us and entangles us so we can run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Great instructions for those who are in the cloud of witnesses to the Truth, but what about the crowd of people who have been listening to witnesses who have the story wrong or have not seen the whole Truth of Jesus? Just like in My Cousin Vinny, these witnesses can convince many people of the wrong thing.
Who are your witnesses? What are they saying? Where are they getting their information, and is it right or wrong? You can see how this can play out like we are all in a courtroom, listening to one witness after another in the chair. This is the Christian life we must live: vetting where and from whom we get the truth. We are in the courtroom of life, vetting the witnesses, but we are not judging blindly. No, we are not called to make sound judgments based upon our own intuition and life. We have the Bible, the holy, infallible, living Word of God, against which to test all those witness testimonies.
At the time Hebrews was written, the Bible as we know it today was not around. The witness you got your story from was very important. This letter was written to Jewish people who knew the Old Testament and about Jesus. They believed based on second or third-hand eyewitness accounts. We don’t have that limitation today, but we do have the Bible in its complete form. When the next witness in your life gets up to talk about the truth he witnessed, vet that truth against the Bible. What does it say about that? Dive in and research the issue. You don’t have to believe every witness or testimony, but the Bible does instruct all of us to study to show ourselves approved. What are you believing these days?
Prayer: Father, in today’s world, we have so many false teachers and preachers misrepresenting the Bible. I pray for clarity and vision to weed out false teachers. I pray for wisdom and knowledge to rightly judge the true message of the Bible and deny false teaching that goes against Your Word. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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