Well, thank you for a wonderful night. I mean, I would have just come down here to eat and to be in such a beautiful place. As I was telling Stephen, I said Holiday Inn Express works for me, so thank you so very much. I didn't realize I just didn't know how many were connected with Bob Jones, so that's a blessing. Thank you very much for that. I didn't even know when I came to the university that Stephen was a graduate. Of course, I didn't even know who you were. Who's the guy that runs Sermon Audio? And I have just been particularly thankful for the influence, and I'm sure you hear this, but it's worthy to note that sermon audio has a very unusual influence at this time in history. You know, we don't know if it's gonna be around like this a hundred years from now. Nobody knows that. But to take the culture of the day And to use that for the advancement of the gospel and the edification of the church is just a beautiful thing. And I listen to sermons on a reasonably regular basis. I listened to four sermons of a local pastor recently. But my wife listens to them all the time. And she has her very favorite preachers that she listens to. Unfortunately, I'm not in that group. But she has two or three gentlemen that she listens to. you know, and if they got a new one that comes out, she listens to it. So thank you very, very much for being a blessing to the local church through your ministry and also for your commitment to theological faithfulness and truth and that commitment. So it's a blessing. Well, as you can imagine, I wondered like, what do I preach to you guys? I mean, what am I going to say to you that would be helpful? and what would be encouraging to you. So I'd like to read from the book of Hebrews, if I may, and share just some simple thoughts tonight from this 12th chapter that is a chapter that deals with the perseverance of the saints. We have 2,500 students that joyfully left campus yesterday. And many of them were delighted because they actually finished. It's a joyful thing to finish. And Hebrews chapter 12 is giving us a metaphor of the Christian life. I don't know what sports you like, if you're a sports person or not. I grew up here in South Carolina, so just about everybody plays sports in South Carolina. And so, I went through the whole public school system, so I played I played varsity football in high school and soccer. I played soccer at the Citadel. I'm still very much a sports enthusiast. I'm probably the favorite, I'm the best fan the Bruins have at Bob Jones. So I love sports, but there's one sport that has never been an interest to me at all. There's nothing about it that interests me, and that's track and field. And the reason is because you have to run. And there's nothing about running I enjoy. If you had my body, you wouldn't enjoy it either. And football, you get to hit somebody. Soccer, you get to kick the ball. Running, you just have to run. And there's just people who have different body shapes. They're built for that. And yet, when we look at the Christian life and the metaphor that the writer of Hebrews presents to us, what it's like, he gives us a picture of a race. Just like a race has a beginning, the Christian life has a beginning. And just like the race has an end, so does the Christian life have an end. We begin at the moment of conversion, of our confession of faith, and it ends the moment that we depart this life. We finish the course, we finish the race, and we step in the glory. The difficulty is the in-between. It's the running the race that's the challenge. And so, when you're running a race, what is your greatest... what is your greatest danger? If you've done any running at all, you know what it's like to run and exercise, and you know what it's like to be in a place where you want to quit running. I'd like to read Hebrews 12, and I'm going to read verses 1 to 4, and I'll just focus my comments tonight on verses 3 and 4. It says, wherefore seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight in the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience or endurance 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. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. The writer here, I think, presents to us the real and present danger for all of us who are seeking to follow the Lord. And that's what he says here in verse 3, when he says, Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your mind. I think the great danger that we all face, the real and present danger, and I say present because it's today, and that is the danger of getting discouraged, of being wearied and fainting in your mind. Christian ministry is not the same as being involved in secular work. It's not the same. Anybody that comes into the ministry, and I tell the people that come to work at the university, I say, this is just not a job. This is a ministry. The moment you get into a ministry, it is amazing all the crazy things that start happening to you. Have you experienced that? I mean things like, I was just going to work. I'm just trying to work. But you're in spiritual work. You cannot be a part of advancing the kingdom of God without a response from the kingdom of darkness. And so Satan understands that. And the struggle that we face is the danger of becoming discouraged. What is the condition of discouragement? Well, he tells us here, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds." In the context of the book of Hebrews, the believers in Rome had in the past suffered abuse from the Roman government and their antagonists. Their conflicts had affected them. and it affected them emotionally and spiritually. He uses and describes the struggle. He says, "...lest you be wearied and faint in your mind." The word wearied in the Greek language is in the aorist tense. It means you kind of come to a point in time. The word faint there is actually in the present tense. You're living in this state. The word weary means to come to a point in time where you're sick and tired of something. Have you ever gotten sick and tired of something? It's a process of being worn down, losing your resolve, and giving up. The word faint in your mind means to be living in the present in a state where you've lost your heart. So you sort of... you kind of come to a point where you're sick and tired of it and then you've lost your heart for it. You can't take it any longer. You want to get out of it right now. Mark Minnick describes this as a person who says, I'm doing it and I'm done with it. Aristotle used the phrase to describe the condition of a runner who collapsed from exhaustion after crossing the finish line. The writer of Hebrews is concerned that runners not falter before the finish. To faint in your mind is to lose your heart. It's to lose your motivation. In the ministry, having right motives are crucial. Why am I doing what I'm doing? My motives have to be right. But it's not sufficient for effective ministry if you lose your motivation. What is it that stirs me up every morning? I'm a Southerner, so as a Southerner, I grew up drinking Coca-Cola. The worst Coke in the world is when it goes flat. It loses its fizz. And it's very easy in ministry, if I could say it this way, to lose your fizz. I've been in it a long time. I've seen good people with good hearts and good motives, they lose their passion. In Hebrews, the book of Hebrews here, the believers had lost their heart, they were withdrawing from Christian fellowship, and they were drifting back into Judaism. They were drifting away from the Lord. And the ultimate threat was that they would become so discouraged that they would walk away from their faith. And so the need was to hold fast to the faith, keep their heart, and endure victoriously to the end. So, the question then is, what causes us to become discouraged? And I have far more here tonight to say than I'm going to take the time to say, but what is it that causes us to become discouraged? And in verse four, it says something very interesting. He says, you've not resisted in the blood, striving against sin. The word resisted is the idea of an ancient warfare where soldiers stand and they face each other and a bloody combat hand-to-hand is about to begin. And the idea of resisting is a decision to take a stand and not compromise. It's, I'm gonna stand. The word striving is the root word for the word race, running the race. It's the word agon, agonize, agony. And it pictures the exertion of energy against a negative force. It is living with constant tension. We get discouraged oftentimes because we live with tension and we live with it all the time. Now we use other words like stress, problems, pressures, difficulties. We had Thanksgiving break and when it comes to a break, I'm just absolutely terrible. For three or four days, I'm not even worth shooting. I flop around like a fish on a deck. I don't know what to do with my life. I have no purpose or meaning. I can't figure out how to relax. And Thanksgiving break is, you know, obviously I'm thankful, but it's like three or four days. What can you do in three or four days? I got to go back to work. I went back to work at Bob Jones and I had to preach in chapel that Monday morning. I didn't want to go to work. I was as motivated to come back to preach to the students as the students were motivated to hear me. And my wife, did you come to the service that day? Or did you? She came. So I'm walking to go out for the service. My wife meets me. And she grabs me by the coat. And she said, she said, you need to go up there and be excited. You need to go up there and be motivated. Remember, the students feel just like you feel. So you gotta change. She was preaching to me before I went up to preach. Discouragement comes when we live with tension. It's like raising children. When you have young children, especially at least three or more, my son and his wife are getting ready to give birth to their third child. They're going to have three under three. Their whole life is incessant. There is absolutely no break at all. That is when you find yourself emotionally becoming discouraged. So, what are the areas that we agonize against? And I'm thinking of your ministry, same as ours. Number one, you have the hostility of the world. You have the hostility of false doctrine. Wherever the true gospel is preached, the false gospel is not very far away. I love the little poem of Daniel Defoe, the writer of Robinson Crusoe. He wrote in his own day, wherever God erects a house of prayer, the devil always builds a chapel there. And it will be found upon examination, the latter has the largest congregation. I thought that was very interesting. That was like 300 years ago, however long. Wherever you go, the truth is preached, it will always be opposed. Always be opposed. I've been spending the last six months working through the book of Mark and my morning devotions and it has been glorious. I've just... I go every morning to my devotions so excited about what I get to learn. And from the very beginning of Christ's ministry, from the very start, He was opposed. How could you be opposed with an internet website? They don't even know who you are. They know who you are. Stephen Lee and I have something in common. We get persecuted by the same people. But there's a tension. There's pressure always to compromise and conform to the world. You're not trying to be worldly. You're just trying to do what the Lord wants you to do. But there's pressure. There's the persecution of the world. And if the world doesn't try to persecute you, the world tries to seduce you. And then internally, we have our own struggles. The Bible says, lay aside besetting sins. I've often wondered, is that a besetting sin? Is it a personal sin that we struggle with individually? I think that's a plausible way to look at it. But because the article is before the words for sin, the sin, I think it's the sin of the book of Hebrews, which is the sin of unbelief. The sin of falling away. The sin of turning away from the Lord. The children of Israel came out of Egypt, but they didn't get into the Promised Land because of unbelief. The unbelief of our own soul and the necessity of our own faith being built up. Becoming discouraged, living under the tension. So, what is the answer that the Lord gives us for discouragement. What's His counsel? And I'd like to just note what it says here in verse 3. It says, that endured. That's His advice. For consider Him. The Him is referring to Christ. The endurance here is He spoke about in verse 2 was on the cross. For He endured the cross. The word consider there has the idea of analyzing. It's like an accountant who goes over every line item on his Excel spreadsheet and looks at every single detail. The word consider means to reason with careful deliberation. It means to give careful thought, in detail, in examination and meditation on the sufferings of Christ. Over and over, he faced wicked men from every angle. His reputation was constantly being maligned. He was arrested and went through a trial that violated all the procedures of the ancient Jewish judicial system. It was unjust. His death sentence was a political ploy by the Romans to alleviate the bloodthirsty crowd. His scourgings were public mockery. His crucifixion was the crime of the century. Yet throughout all of this, Jesus never one time yielded to sin or to discouragement, though he struggled and battled. Compare your struggles to Jesus. Think about it. See how he suffers. Watch him in the garden of Gethsemane as he sweats drops of blood. Look at his meekness as he stands before his accusers as a gentle lamb. Hear the crowd cursing his name. Be astounded that he never offers one word of defense, not one word, to his accusers, even when he was given the opportunity. Feel those blows that come down upon His own back as He's wounded for our transgressions. Hear the thud of the wooden mallet as iron spikes are driven into the Savior's flesh. And listen to Him as He prays for His murderers and forgives His offenders. Consider Him. Think about Him. I'd say one of the struggle times, and there have been multiple struggle times in our ministry, was the first time my wife was diagnosed with cancer. It was in 1999. And at the time we sat down together and talked through what we were going to do over a period of time that my wife was going through treatments, medical treatments. It was about a five-month period. and it was to take place in Denver. She would be at home with her mother, her sister, her siblings, family, church, everything was cared for. The only thing that wasn't cared for was income. We didn't have any money. So my wife said, you need to go on the road. And basically, I was a preacher. And so you need to go preach. And I'll stay here. And so I went on the road for four months out of five. There was a period of time of about 80 days that I was home two days out of the 80. My wife was in bed most of that time. So there were a lot of things I learned during that time. I thought about our military soldiers who go overseas and away from their family. I think of old-time preachers who would leave for a long time. We traveled. I lived in a recreational vehicle. And I spent most of my nights in church parking lots. Just for your information, the loneliest place on planet earth are church parking lots at midnight. There's nobody there. And it was very lonely and very challenging. And I spent many nights going to bed, crawling up in my bed, and opening up to the book of Psalms. And I read the Psalms until I came back to a place of peace. You say, which one did you read? Doesn't matter. They all work. All 150 of them. Some of them are short. Some of them are long. But it's all Christ speaking to us by His Spirit, through His Word, ministering grace to the heart to give you strength in these times that are tense and difficult. The only answer that I have for discouragement is to consider Him. It's Christ. And in considering Him, you are experiencing the true nature of sanctification. Because the true nature of sanctification is in your connection to Christ through union with Him. And it's the mystery that I cannot explain, but we all know it if we've experienced it. That when we look into His Word and we see Him, then in that union God strengthens our soul so that His endurance through suffering and struggles is actually my endurance. It's available to me by His Spirit through His Word. And so I identify with Him and through that I'm strengthened by Him. I don't really have any other advice for discouragement. There's occasion or two that maybe a shot of whiskey would help. But that's just passing. That's what the world does. Takes a shot of whiskey and it loosens them up for a while. But they got to go back to tomorrow. But thank God that we can go to Christ. And Christ strengthens us through His own sufferings. And it's the beauty and the miracle of the Christian life. So, I don't know where y'all are. I have no idea what you're facing in your own personal life. Everybody faces discouragement in so many various ways. But the Lord always encourages His own. with His sweet words that come to us and help us and encourage us. What a wonderful Lord. I was just thinking yesterday, we had a girl come to my office and she was so distraught. So at Bob Jones, I go really quickly from being a president to a pastor, real fast. And she just has so many obstacles to overcome. But the Lord gave her strength and encouraged her heart that she's going to make it. And by God's grace, we're going to make it. So thank you, Stephen, for this time. Thank you for your faithfulness. And as I mentioned jokingly, but truthfully, we were partners in suffering by a few reproaches. I can't figure out who's worse. It's you or me. I can't figure it out. You got it pretty bad. But it wasn't that bad. But we rejoice. And we rejoice that we're allowed to experience that by His grace. So, thank you very much. Can we pray together? Lord, we thank you so much tonight for your blessing and grace. Thank you for Your Word. Forgive us, Heavenly Father, of our own sins and how often that we are overcome with a sense of weariness and fainting. And Lord, I thank You that You give us strength by Your Spirit through Your Word. Thank You for this unique and special ministry that You've raised up and I pray that you'll continue to bless them and help them be true and faithful to your word and continue to meet their needs, encourage and strengthen their staff as they work and serve together. In Jesus' precious name, Amen. Let me just say one word if you don't mind. One of the things I appreciate about your ministry that makes you very unique is you're not a church. And so you don't have to deal with the same level of people problems. You have your own problems. Believe me, everybody has their own problems. But you do have a unique opportunity to develop relationships with people over a common cause that is a real blessing. It's a real privilege to do this. Probably the greatest experience that I've had was when I traveled as an evangelist. And over a period of 20 years, we had 57 young people travel with us. 42 of them were Bob Jones University graduates. As I look back on that period of my life, the greatest experience was the relationships that we built. to this very day. So that yesterday we had lunch with two former team members. We had 10 weddings that came off of that team. And so yesterday we had lunch with one of those couples. And today I drove down into Georgia this morning and had breakfast with another one of those team members. And they are my closest friends. I have nobody closer in my life that I am to them. So you have a great blessing here. And I don't know quite how it works with y'all, because you're working from home and working on your computers. I'm not sure how that works. Probably that works well with the young and not too well with the old. But you do have a great blessing here. And I just want to encourage you with that.