Our lesson this morning is gonna come from the 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews, and I'm gonna read the first three verses of that chapter. The book of Hebrews is a letter that was written. Some believe it was a sermon that was recorded, but either way, it was written down for our instruction, and it was written mainly to Jewish or Hebrew Christians, people that had come out of Judaism and into Christianity, either because they were saved or being saved, they learned the more perfect way in following the Messiah. In the book of Hebrews, there's a lot of instruction about continuing, about enduring, about finishing and not going back. And people have really made the mistake of thinking that that's referring to our salvation, that we're saved, but yet don't fall back into a state of unregeneracy or of being lost again. Once you're saved, you're always saved. And I am unashamedly a believer in that doctrine, that once a person is saved, that they're saved forever. But what he's referring to when he talks about falling back, he's referring to falling back into their old ways. In other words, once you have Jesus as your sacrifice, there's no more need to go back into sacrificing animals. Jesus is the fulfillment of that. Now for us, the same message is true. Once we've been saved, we're in danger of falling back into our own old ways. And we need to be warned about that and be open, the fact that that could happen to us and our eyes opened. And so there's this admonishment about continuing until the very end. And in that light, I want to read chapter 12. Chapter 11 is the roll call of faith. It's where, if this was written by Paul, which most likely it was, or at least many think that it was, In this passage, he goes and basically describes all of those saints of old that have lived by faith, and that all of them served God with faith in their life, that they didn't do the things that they did in order to earn God's favor, but they did the things they did because they believed in God. By faith, they walked with God. And he finishes that chapter with what I'm going to read this morning, the first three verses of chapter 12. where he says, wherefore, or because of all these that have gone on before in faith, wherefore, seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Actually, I'll stop reading there. That'll be our text for this morning. And I want to talk this morning, if God would help me and I'd ask that you'd pray for me, about running the race. we're encouraged here to run a race. Now, this was probably a race, a foot race, was the most common sporting event that the people of this day would have watched. And if you think about running, it implies a lot of purpose, and sports do that. I know that today is probably, half the audience has sports on their mind about the chiefs making it to the playoffs and some of the other half scoff at that and say that's so ungodly that they do that. But the Apostle Paul often referred to the Christian walk in light of a sporting event. And the reason he did is because it was something that the people understood and it implies a lot of purpose. I mean, if you think about anybody that played sports, in one way it's frivolous because it doesn't take very long until your body is unable to play sports. And so if you spend all of your young days only concentrated on sports, By the time you're my age, you're going to be saying, I wish I would have invested in something else because my body won't keep going like this, right? Some of you are nodding your head. Yeah, I've experienced that. But here he's talking about this foot race and it has a lot of purpose with it. And anybody that played sports knows that there's always an end goal to the sport. If you're playing football, as it were, then you know that your goal is to score touchdowns, to score more than the other teams, and to win the championship. And everybody that's out on the field is working hard to finish strong and be a champion at the end. There's this glory that comes later on that is very temporary, but it's there anyway, that you're wanting to be the one that finishes first. And here he basically is comparing the Christian life to that and saying that we are living with purpose and there's a goal at the end and we're all striving towards something and there's an objectivity to living our lives. And I thought about that in relation to us and the way that we live our lives and those that are unsaved and how they live their lives. If a person is not saved, if you don't know the Lord as your Savior, then what is your purpose for life? I mean, if you think about it, Solomon said that life under the sun is basically vexation. He said it's vanity and vexation of the spirit. What does that mean? Well, vanity just means that it's emptiness and vexation of the spirit means you're striving after wind. That's what it means. So in other words, life under the sun is just emptiness and grasping after wind. And if you've ever tried to do that, you've never caught it in your hand to your satisfaction. You're always striving for something more and always coming up empty. And that's what he said, life is underneath the sun. In other words, if you're living and there's no heavenly perspective in your life, then you're just going around in circles with no end goal in sight and just wasting the time that God has you here for. That's what life is without God in it. And how many people in this world are running the rat race? They're trying to achieve something, and when they get there, they try to achieve something else, and when they get there, they try to achieve something else, and nothing satisfies. And the end of a life without God is, at best, if some people say, well, when you die, nothing happens, I don't believe that. But if you believe that, then just think about what that means. that you're going to just go in circles in this life and experience all the pain and trouble and suffering and agony and all that comes along with it. And then you're going to do the best you can to have comfort and then you die and you go back to the dust and then nothing. Or, if the Bible is true, and which I believe that it is, and when you die without God, you go to a place of torment and hell, then you go through all the agony and the pain and the suffering and the heartache and all that goes along with life, and then you die and then you're tormented forever. But either way, that's not the way that God wants you to live your life. He wants you to suit up and run a race. He said, I want you to participate in what I have going. And so many people stand on the outside of the auditorium, if you will, or the place where the athletic event is, and they don't even come in the door. They're not witnessing what's going on. They're not participating in what's going on. They're just disassociated from what God has going on. And that, my friend, is vanity. And I want you to know this morning that most of the world is living in vanity. And it just is beside, we just can't understand how that people lack wisdom. We can't understand how that people can't figure out what's right and what's wrong. Every day there's a new morality, a new thing that's the definition of righteousness. And they condemn anyone, the world does, that doesn't adhere to their version of righteousness, but it's always changing. And as God's people we say, how is it that they cannot see that there are absolute truths? It's because they're not even in the auditorium. They're out there living in vanity and they can't see. What you've been able to see, and maybe this morning if you're lost and you say, I just feel like life is empty. I feel there's an emptiness in my heart. I feel like there's an emptiness in my soul. I feel like there's a purposelessness about my life. I wish that I could just get engaged with what I was created for. That's what the Bible tells us salvation is. It's when God draws us into purpose and meaning and salvation, and He does through Jesus Christ. So I'm going to just say before I get further in the message that God wants all of us to be engaged in the race. He wants all of us to lace up our shoes, so to speak. And you say, well, how do you do that? Well, you get saved. If you're without God and you feel God calling you, then you need to respond to the calling. This is not rocket science. People say, I wish I could just understand. If God is drawing your heart, the answer is to follow the draw. If he says, come unto me, come. And he says, I wish I could just figure out what God wants. And he says, come unto me and I will give you rest. Surrender your life. Repent of your sins. Lay it all down and I'll give you rest. I wish I could figure it out, you say. And he says, just come. You know why people don't participate in the race is because of fear. I learned that with sports when I was growing up. I didn't know that I had some natural ability within me to be able to play, and I always told myself I would never be good enough. Until I was a sophomore in high school, I never played actual real sports for a team. Always just played pickup stuff. and sometimes some YMCA things. But I always felt like I wasn't good enough. And I thought about that in relation to people looking at Christianity. And a lot of the times people don't surrender. They don't come. They don't follow the draw of God. It's because they just don't feel like they're worthy. I'm just not good enough. I just couldn't make it. If I ran, I probably wouldn't be any good at it. I've got lots of flaws. I want you to know that we all do. And here in this group of Christian people, all of us that have been saved, this group of witnesses that's here, that all have given witness to the saving grace of God, all of us came to God unworthy. And all of us came humble, or we didn't come at all, and all of us came with empty pockets, and if we brought anything to exchange, God turned us away. If we started to make deals with God, God said, no deal. But when we finally got empty before God and said, I don't have anything to offer God, I just need what God has to give me, we found peace in life and salvation. The day I got saved, I didn't do anything good, extra special, the right words. No, I didn't have any words. I had a broken heart. I didn't have anything to give to God. I was in poverty. And I just called out to God in my despair, and He saved me. And there were no fireworks, but there was peace inside my heart. And that's how I started running the race. Now, this race that's run is something I've had on my heart a while, just talking about this cloud of witnesses. And I feel like I'm probably not going to be done with this this morning, but I want to share some about that cloud of witnesses. But today I want to talk about the race and I'll start with the cloud of witnesses. And this is a crowd. He uses the word cloud and that actually kind of was Amusing to me and I couldn't really figure out exactly why he said that they were a cloud of witnesses And I still don't know that I fully know but I do understand that in their day that that implied many In other words, that, you know, one time we see the cloud in the Old Testament was whenever God filled the temple or filled the tabernacle with His presence. He did so in a cloud of smoke, right? And so actually, that implied that it was a very great presence of God. In other words, it was very, you know, What word do I want to use? It was not large in terms of space, but magnificent. And so when Jesus said that he was going to come back, he said that we were going to meet the saints that come with him together with them, where? In the clouds. And actually, I always thought that meant the sky, and I think that it does, but the implication to them was that it would be a great number that gather together in heavenly places, in the heavens, in a great cloud, that there would be so many. And so I actually think that this is referring to the vast number of witnesses. And if you think about the illustration of running a race or a sporting event, you know that when you go there, you see a crowd like you've never seen anywhere else. In fact, I often get a little jealous of the sporting event and wish that the church crowd looked like the sporting event crowd. Went to a high school event on Friday night and there was some 10,000 people there to watch some high school young men play basketball. And it was fun, it was a good time. And I had the thought, I wonder what it would be like if this group showed up to church. Be a great cloud of people. It'd be just so many that it would overwhelm us. But here in this where he's talking about this race, he's talking about this great crowd that is watching us run. this race. And it's for encouragement. Now, this cloud of witnesses was the ones that were mentioned in chapter 11. And it goes all the way back to, you know, Abel. and Noah, and Abraham, and all of these that have run the race before we began to run the race. And I thought, what an encouragement that is to think that as we're running the race, which is the Christian life, we're trying to live for Christ, to live for God, that there's a bunch of people and the purpose of the crowd is to watch, but also to encourage and to cheer. So at a sporting event, especially you think about running a race, if you've got one that you know or that you're supporting, you'll get behind them and you'll start hollering out, encouraging them to run just a little faster, make it around the last bin, finish well, finish strong, great time, a personal record, or you won first place and you took the gold and the crowd goes wild. And you think about as we're living this life and you think, you thought the Christian life was going to be glorious and it feels rather mundane. And it feels like that even though you do have purpose, you're wrought with more trials than you really expected that you ever would have been and you wonder if you have it within you to be faithful all the way to the end and keep your testimony and then be able to cross over the chilly Jordan waters into heaven's gates and what you want to do is not wreck this thing. Isn't that what's on your heart? I mean, when we're talking about living for God, you've seen so many casualties along the way, and people that have stopped running and have given up, and maybe they felt like they couldn't go on and so they just stopped, and you know how devastating it is to the cause. And so you say inside your heart, you say, I just want to finish well. I just want to cross the finish line, and I want to do so faithfully, because there's a crown to be won, the Apostle Paul said. There's something that I'm looking forward to, so I can't stop till God's done with me. And he says, well, I've got good news for you that there's a whole lot of people that are up in the stands that are cheering you on. Now, he's not saying that the saints of old actually are looking down from heaven and watching us run this race. It's figuratively saying you've got people that are up in the crowd and they are cheering you on and they've already ran their race and they finished. And they have their crown to show it. And they came to watch you finish your race. And so you've got people like Abel, and like Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and all these men. You see, we didn't start this thing. And it doesn't end with us. We're just one of the runners along the generations that's running the race. And the baton has been handed off to us. And now we're running the race. And how we run that race, we will be judged for it. And we want to do it well. And listen, God's people are all in our corner. They're all cheering us on, this generation saying, run well, run strong, hand it off to the next generation. The race, the world, it's just about done. We've got just a few more races to go. And maybe our race is the last one. Have you ever thought about that? Maybe our generation, when we turn the corner, Jesus comes back. If so, we want to be the generation that has uphold the truth, upheld Christ, lifted up the bloodstained banner. And there's a whole lot of people that are encouraging us along that you can read about. And I think sometimes we read those old stories and we go, that's a nice story. Do you know that they were witnesses? They were witnesses. That word witness is the word that we actually get the word martyr from. It means, and I looked up the definition of the martyr and they said a Christian witness. Well, I always thought a martyr was someone that suffered or died. And then I read another definition and it said, well, everybody knows that being a Christian witness includes suffering and even being willing to go unto death. Which is different. We think about a martyr as being someone that gave up their life. The real definition of a martyr is one that's a witness for Christ who will be a witness all the way unto death. So in other words, we're already martyrs if we've resigned to the fact that we're going all the way with Jesus. It just gets shown to be what it is whenever we have to suffer for Him. And Jesus said, we all will. So don't worry, you're going to have to suffer for my name's sake. You will just have to do it. To some degree or another. I mean, you know, your life might not be the same suffering as somebody else's, but if you're going to be faithful to the cause of Jesus, you're going to be a martyr. And he said, there's a whole cloud of witnesses that are filling up this auditorium that have gone on before us. Some of those we know personally because we live with them. And now we're left and they're in the crowd cheering us on. Herschel Combs was a really good guy. He was a Christian witness. I liked Herschel. He was always encouraging. He kind of finished his race, fought his fight, took off his running shoes and took his place in the stand to encourage us along. And in a figurative way, we know a lot more people that are in that crowd. You know, there's not very many days that go by that I don't think about what my grandfather thought about the day that I just lived. Now, I have no imagination that my grandpa is watching my life and either upset or happy about the way that I did it. But doesn't it feel like that? I don't know. Maybe you don't experience that. I do. I think about it and I think, Poppy, Would that have been the right thing to do? And his memory is like he's sitting there watching. It's not that he's sitting there watching, but it's like that to me. Encouraging me to finish strong. It's a waste if you start running the race and don't finish. Paul said about the race, he said, I'm not one that is like beating the air. I'm not one that is running in circles. I'm living this thing with purpose. I'm moderating my body. I'm training that I might win the prize. He said, athletes do this. They moderate all things that they be able to wear a crown. He said, a wreath is what that means. He said, and they want a perishable one. They will do anything. They will give up their life to be able to wear that crown for a day. And he said, I bring everything in my body into subjection that I might be able to wear an eternal crown. For the crown that God is going to give me is going to endure forever. And if it's going to endure forever, shouldn't I give something to it? Shouldn't I moderate my body? Shouldn't I bring my body under subjection and realize that this race that I'm running, if I don't finish, he said, I'll be disqualified. The word means a castaway. In other words, someone that said with their lips that they followed Jesus, but they just went off to the side. They're DQ'd if they don't finish the race. It's not talking about losing your salvation. He's talking about the waste that it is to know the truth and to know the reality of the gospel in your heart and not live it out all the way to the end. I remember my very first mentor. was Keith Freese, and he was pastor of this church many years ago. And I remember one of the first thoughts I had about Keith was, first of all, he's old, and secondly, he's still in good shape for being old, and he did all of that so he could keep preaching. He would walk every day around Northtown Mall, he would say, and he said, I walk every day to keep this diabetes and I moderate my diet so I could keep doing the one thing I still love to do. Preach. And I would watch him, and you say, well, and some people that are called to preaching, how could he say he loved it? Well, you know how it is. If you're a preacher, you know how it is. When the Lord helps you, there's nothing else you'd rather be doing. Whenever he doesn't help you, well, there's other things you'd rather be doing. But in the end, between the two, you say, I love to do what God wants me to do, and I want to be able to keep doing it. And he would just walk around Northtown Mall, and he would measure his sugars religiously, and he would moderate his diet for the most part, unless Shirley would fix him something sweet. And then he couldn't do without it, but he would try to do something else. And so the point was, is that he wanted to fit it. He was in his 70s. Which when I was 21, seemed like that was really old. As you get older, have you ever noticed that the age doesn't seem quite as old anymore? But anyway. But the one thing I thought about all of that, I thought, Lord, help me to finish like that. Because at the very end, if he would have just fallen off and done something that brought disgrace upon the ministry, how many years of service would have been erased and all the people would have remembered was the falling away. Now, we first of all look at that and say, well, how will people look at me? But that actually isn't the greatest casualty. We are here for a while and then forgotten. But how will people look at Jesus? How will people look at His church? Run to win! Run to finish! Run with purpose! And He says how, and I'll hasten through this, but basically He says that we have to prepare if we're going to finish. Whenever you start, you have to prepare by lightening up your load. He said that we have to lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us. And that basically means that there are weights and there are sins that can entangle us or they're so easily able to trip us up. And so you notice that when runners go to race, they get the lightest shoes, they get the least material they can in their clothing and still being somewhat modest, and they try to lighten up of every weight that there is so that they can run the very best that they can. Why? Because a little bit of clothing that's loose with the wind could be the difference between finishing first and not placing at all, because the difference is just a few tenth or hundredths of a second. And he said the same way us as God's people, we need to lighten our load. You know, when you're trying to live for God, sometimes the best thing you can do is get rid of some things. You know, sometimes we want to be able to live for God and then also be able to hold on to the things that we lived before we knew the Lord, and you can't do that. You can't live a duplicative life. You're not able to, long run, have one foot in the world and one foot in the church. It just won't work. It will not be successful. You will either love one and hate the other, or you'll love the other and hate the one. But you're going to go one way or the other. And if you straddle the fence of living for God, you will fail. The runner has to be all in. He can't say, well, I'd kind of rather be watching a movie right now, but I'm going to try to run this race and get this over with. No, he has to be singly focused or he will not finish well. And I think about how that even I, in my own life, and I'm going to just say it for me, sometimes I dabble my foot in other things that are not what God wants and it just won't work long term. We have to lay those things aside. Not all weights are sin inherently. They become sin to us because they weigh us down. We often times will keep things in our life and say, well brother so and so kept it in his life and he seemed to do just fine. That won't work. The Bible says that he that knows to do right and doesn't do it, to him it's sin. So even if brother so-and-so gets along just fine doing the same thing, it may be sin to you. Maybe brother so-and-so doesn't even realize that's sin at all. Or maybe to him in his life, it's not besetting him. You know, there are some things in life that way. We can't try to pattern our life after someone else. We have to do what God wants us to do. For one person, the very thing that's righteousness to one might be sin to another because it's not what God wants you to do. And so we have to lay aside the ways, we have to lay aside the sin. The Bible says we have to put off our old man. And praise God that we get to put off our old man. That even is an act of grace, that we put off our old man. You know, as Christians, we're not yet what we want to be. We're not there yet. We're still striving. We're still trying to be what God wants us to be. But praise God, we're not what we were. Are you? If you're still what you were, you need to be saved. But if you've been saved by the grace of God, you're not what you were. He has forgiven you. He has put your feet upon solid ground. The Bible says He has taken us up out of the miry clay and put us on a rock. So we're not what we were. So we need to lay aside those things that identified us the way that we were and to have a right approach. So we have to prepare and then we have to run with the right approach. And the Apostle says what that right approach is here. He said to run with patience the race that is set before us. Now, some of us feel like that's a dirty word, the P word, patience. We love our life like that anyway. We want everything right now. You know, the word patience here though means something more than waiting. It means cheerfully waiting or hopefully waiting. Now we're really putting a different definition on patience because you say, I can endure something, but now I have to endure something with hopefulness. I've got to endure something with cheerfulness. Now, come on, a man can't do that. A woman can't do that. No, you're right. We can't without the help of God. So he said, run with patience the race that's set before us. It makes me think the race isn't a short one. You know, some of us like sprinting. We'd rather sprint than run a long race. And I'm in that category, even if I'm slow, because it ends sooner. Running to me is painful. And they keep saying if you do it more, it becomes less painful. I'm cheerfully waiting for that. But in this Christian walk, in this life that we live, we're to patiently run. What that means is run with hope and endure. And if you think about what hope is, then that means that I have to believe that there's something better on the other side. Sometimes when we're in a line and we're waiting, it becomes almost unbearable if we feel like there's the possibility we'll be there for an eternity. I mean, think about it. You've been in line somewhere, maybe at the airport or at a restaurant, a fast food line, and you're forever, and you look around and you say, is there a possibility that I'll just be here forever? Will they find my bones here one day and say, well, he was next? That seems foolish, but the answer to that is no. Once we start to see that, well, they're moving, you know, when it's not moving, you just think this might last forever. But when it's moving, you say, well, maybe there'll be an end to this. So I'm going to cheerfully wait and think about the end. He says that's how you get through to the end in the Christian life. It doesn't mean that everything's going to be good. In fact, there's going to be things we have to just begrudgingly get through and we'd be cheerful and hopeful because we know the line's moving. And one of these days, there's not going to be any more of that weight anymore. There's not going to be any more of that pain. There's not going to be any more of that suffering, that endurance, that fighting against sin, striving against sin. It won't be there anymore. One day we'll take our last step and we'll cross the line and they'll say, that's it. You've finished. You've fought the good fight. You've kept the faith. And you say, it wasn't easy. But I'm sure glad I finished. I just had to take that burden and I had to sit it down. I had to lay aside the heavy weight and I had to run with patience and I just had to take one step at a time. Do you know sometimes in your Christian life, you're just going to have to take it one step at a time? Because you say, I don't see how this is going to end. You've just got to know. You've just got to know that it's going to end, that God has a better thing in store for me down the road. And so today I'm going to take another step. And I'm going to keep standing. And I'm going to keep being faithful because God wants me to finish well. And I look at what all these people around me have gone through. They stopped the mouth of lions. They endured the flames. They endured the pain of barrenness and all these things. And they finished well. And if that's true, then I can finish well too. Run with patience the race that's set before you. You know what else that means is that you've got to keep your eyes forward. I just think about how many times that we're trying to do what God wants us to do and Satan says, look back at what you've done. Look at how feeble you were. Look at how you tried to do the right thing and you failed. And I think that's one of the greatest tools of Satan is to get you to just turn your eyes around and look backwards. Now sometimes looking back can be an encouragement. Meaning, as you look back and you see how God has been with you, you can think about some time in your life that God was there. And if He promised that He'll never leave you nor forsake you, and you know that He was there at one point, you'll know He'll be there in the future. But most of the time, looking back is dangerous because we start looking at the wrong things. He starts uncovering our sinfulness. He starts uncovering our failures. And saying, well, you know, it's been such a rocky road. It's not been anything you expected. Why keep going? He said you have to run with patience the race that's set before you. That's the only thing you can do. You don't even know what's ahead. You just know what you have today. We sing a song in our song books that say teach me to take one day at a time. One day at a time. And we keep going toward the end. Last thing and I'm finished. is that we have to keep our focus upon Jesus. That's how we do it. No matter where we are in this whole thing, whether you're on the outside looking in or you're running the race and you're feeling discouraged, whatever it is, you have to put your eyes of your heart on Jesus. He says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Now, Jesus is our leader. That's what author means. He's our captain. He's our chief leader. He's the one that perfects us and brings us to perfection. He's our finisher. And he says, in order to finish well, You need to keep your eyes upon Jesus. And he said, here's the example that he set. And here's what he did. He endured the cross. He said it was the joy that was set before Him that enabled Him to do that. What was the joy? I have to believe that what He fixed His mind upon was two things. One, the glory of God. That He was able to satisfy the plan of God. And two, the salvation of mankind. And more personally, your salvation. He looked at that and he had joy thinking that God was going to be glorified and that you were going to be saved. And because of that, he endured with patience the cross of Calvary. He endured the shame. Now maybe you've not thought much about the cross, but I encourage you to. He willingly died a death for the worst of criminals and yet had no sin. Jesus was staked to a cross and he died a shameful death. His clothes and his robe was stripped of him. He wore a crown of thorns and blood flowed down his body. He was whipped to bloodiness and shame. And he endured that for us. He said, you have not yet striven against sin unto blood. In other words, you should be encouraged. You've never had to go through what Jesus did. But look at what Jesus did. He gave up everything. He came into a world that He created. He should have been crowned when He came here, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. But instead, He wore a crown of thorns upon His head, and He had a sign above Him that said, the King of the Jews. Yet they mocked Him and wagged their heads at Him and spat upon Him and whipped Him and scourged Him and left Him to be a mockery among all people. And He went through that with cheerful endurance. Because He wanted God to get the glory and for you to be saved. He said, look at Him. If you ever get discouraged and you think you're going to quit, look at Him. If you're lost and you're seeking the Lord and you say, I just don't know where to go, go there. Go to the place where Jesus died for you. Consider what Jesus sacrificed for you. Go there by eyes of faith. Come down to the foot of the cross and realize that He went all the way for us and we know that He didn't end there. He endured all of that. He was put in the borrowed tomb. And praise God, on the third day, Jesus rose from the grave. He finished well. He finished His race and His course and He kept the faith. And God crowned Him with a glory like He crowns no other man. The glory as of the only begotten of the Father. And He sits upon a throne today. at the right hand of God, and He makes intercession for us, and He's crowned with glory and honor, and one of these days, all men will bow to Jesus. Because He did run His race perfectly. He said, if you ever get discouraged and you want to head back, look to Jesus. And keep your eyes on Jesus. Even Peter was able to walk on water. whenever he kept his eyes upon Jesus. Nothing is impossible for the man or the woman that fixes his eyes upon Jesus and has faith until the end. And that's the only way we're going to make it. Because I'm going to tell you, there's going to be a lot of things that are going to come between you and faithfulness. And there's going to be desires, there's going to be temptations to strive off the path and to go your own way and make it your own and stop running the race and do your own thing. And this crowd of witnesses, this cloud of witnesses that's that's around us all is saying, don't give up. It's worth it. Don't lose heart. It's worth it. Stay faithful even when it hurts. Keep your eyes upon Jesus and finish well and you'll receive Paul wrote in the book of Corinthians, know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receives the prize. He says, so run that ye may obtain. And also he wrote to young Timothy, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me at that day and not to me only, but unto all of them that love is appearing. Don't lose heart. Keep pressing on and run the race. God bless you. Why don't we have a song? As we sing the song, the Holy Spirit often uses the preaching of the word to draw hearts and maybe today you have your heart stirred and you say, I need to pray. I need to seek God. I need to move toward God. We invite you to do that today. It's not me that you need. It's not the church that you need. It's the Lord that you need. And if there's something that you're holding back or something that's between you and the Lord, I encourage you to give that up to God in prayer. As we all stand and sing. Number two in the red book. Number two. Let's all sing.