Take your Bibles, please, and turn to Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12. I'm going to begin reading in verse 1 and read down through verse 7. I don't think we'll get down to verse 7, but I read it so that we kind of grab hold of some of the words that are there and have them freshly in our mind as we consider something that I wanted to come back to. I said in last week's sermon, and I want to do that this morning, to come back to those thoughts. And those thoughts do include some things that are going on in latter verses, but we're still looking at verse one. So Hebrews 12, beginning in verse one and down through verse seven, he says again to us, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as signs. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with signs. For what sin is there whom his Father does not discipline? Let's pray. Father, again, we are grateful to You for Your power, Your majesty. We are so filled with gratitude for Your kindness. We thank you for your mercy toward us. We thank you that when you think and deal with us, you're motivated by love. I thank you that you are not like how the world characterizes you, distant and grumpy and complaining and angry and agitated and filled with prohibition and with desires to strike and to blow. But Lord, we do understand that that is Your attitude towards sin, because of its evil. But Lord, You have not remained distant from us. You have not pulled aside in Your greatness and kept distant from us. You have drawn near to us. And You have drawn near to us in the sweetest way. through taking on human flesh and becoming a man, yielding yourself to evil men, to destructive men, to sinful men, rebellious men, yielding your son over to be despised and hated and afflicted and to be hung upon a cruel executioner's cross judged guilty by the world, yet judged innocent by you. Lord, you sent him into that storm of judgment, and Lord, then raised him out of death, having caused him to bear our sins along with his body on the cross. Lord, how good and how gracious you are to not remain distant, but to sweetly and wonderfully and so lovingly draw near to us through your Son. Lord, even more so to raise him up and then to faithfully and powerfully call men and women and children to repentance in this earth, in this world. You are not like the world says. but you are active, moving and working in your creation to get glory for your name through how you deal with us. And may we this morning be a people who are quick to give to you glory and honor and majesty and praise and honor because you are worthy. Lord, it's a joy and a privilege to read the words that we've read, to think, about how you went to the cross despising the shame, enduring it. And you did so for a joy, the joy that was set before you, that you would create for yourself a people who would praise you and honor you and follow you and be disciples, loving you. Lord, how good you are, and we thank you. And again, may our hearts and our minds resound in honor and worship to you, the one true living God. We pray this in the name of our great high priest, the one who hung on the cross for us. Amen. We are again going to be focusing on what we see in verse one, a call to, at the encouragement of the great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, to lay aside every encumbrance, to lay aside the sin which entangles, and to reign with endurance the race that is set before us. So to frame our thoughts, I want to begin with a quote from Sinclair Ferguson. a current living theologian, pastor, Scottish, wonderful teacher. But here's the quote, it's very simply said, he says, in God's workshop in this world, suffering is the raw material out of which glory is forged. In God's workshop in this world, suffering is the raw material, it is the stuff, it is the component that he uses to forge glory, I would say, for his people, in his people, and for himself. So when we come to think about suffering or the issue of running with endurance, the agony, the pain that's associated with that, then we want to keep in mind that there is associated with that suffering a kind of glory by God's design in the way that He has set things in order according to His purpose and to the counsel of His own will, to such a degree that suffering is made for us as Christians, and only for us as Christians, it is made to mean something. It is turned from pain and it is transformed even from evil, we could say, into something that would even bring glory to God and play a part in our glorification as God cleanses us, as God keeps us, as God guards us in our walk with Him, our running with Him, in our race of endurance until we Finally, in eternity, step into His presence. And I submit to you that only God can do this kind of work. Only God can take the evil and the difficulty of suffering and make it something glorious and wonderful and beautiful. And this is what I mentioned last week, wanting to return to, and maybe it's preaching to the choir on some degree, But perhaps it will be a blessing to someone and maybe a help as we continue on in this pursuit of running the race with endurance. I'll remind you that the word race there in the Greek is the Greek word agon, and it is the word that signifies engaging in intense struggle. The difficulty of the race is what's in view here. And again, we get our English words agony or agonize from this Greek word. And I think I mentioned last week that it's in this word, the understanding of a race and the hardness of racing, that the issue of suffering is injected into what the writer of Hebrews is saying. And I love him for that, and I think we should thank God for placing this teaching here in this moment for us, because all the world faces suffering. All the world is going to have to come to terms with what's going on in the world that brings pain, that causes suffering in others or in ourselves, And we as human beings who are finite and do not have all the answers in ourselves must come to some idea of how we deal with that. What do we do with suffering? The world asks that kind of question all the time, often denying the existence and the power of God because suffering is in the world. It makes sense, doesn't it? If God is all-powerful, if God is sovereign, if God is mighty and great, and He has all things under His control, as we are fond of saying in the church, God's in control, if that's true, then why on earth, and if He's good, then why on earth does He allow suffering and pain in the world? Why does He not just step in and immediately end it all and bring everyone to happiness and joy and peace, I mean, I understand the argument, and the natural man whose mind is not oriented to think in terms of God's greatness and sovereignty in the way that the Bible speaks of it would tend to run that way. It's the nature of man to accuse God of not doing what God is capable of doing. and to charge him with not in fact being good and therefore not even existing as God. I mean, suffering is an important issue. It's everywhere. Tim Keller, the former, he's passed into glory now, the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, apparently used to go out on the streets of Manhattan and ask people, do you believe in God? And when they answered yes or no, he'd ask them if they answered no, why? Well, it was 90% of the time the issue of suffering. Why does God not do something? He can't be good. He's not God. There is no God. And it came down to that very issue. Well, I submit to you that many of those people, if not all of them, had not read the Scripture, had no context for that in their life, and therefore they could not make sense out of it being lost men. But this is the issue before us today, the race, the agony, the struggle that we all face as Christians. And how do we face that as Christians? How do we endure the difficulties of life? We need to understand, if we're going to understand any of this, that the agony of the race is in the running, isn't it? The agony of the race is in the running, and so many, even in the Christian church, have just give up any effort, any attempt to try to do anything according to Scripture. And maybe we'll understand that a little bit more here in a moment. The word run here is literally the idea of exerting oneself. We know what that means. You can't run without exertion, can you? You can't run without striving. You can't run without spending energy and strength. So he's telling us that in all of our pursuit of life, that the expense of our energy, the pouring out of our effort, our striving, needs to be focused on this one area, and that is the area of running, racing, running the race, fixing our eyes on Christ, if we are in Christ, and running after Him. Keller made the comment that all of life is a race. And you could go one or two ways with that, but all of life is a race. But we are the ones who have been placed on the course designed, laid out before us by God. The rest of mankind is running in their own broad way to destruction, and they will reap that benefit in the end. The word endurance is a word that means to abide under, to stick to it, to keep at it. So the picture is that our energy is spent in holding under this struggle that has come into our life. whatever it may be, and how do we make sense of it, and how does God going to turn it into usefulness and blessing into our life? So he has in mind spiritual exertion here, spiritual energy, which would show up in us in obedience to God. That is the call, after all. The call of repentance, the call to salvation is a call to come and to follow Jesus Christ. It is to admit your guilt of sin before Him. It is to acknowledge that He alone has done all that must be done in His work on the cross and in the perfection of His life and through the power of the resurrection. Jesus has done all the work that must be done to wash away sin, to remove its condemnation, to set us free from the bondage that it has brought upon us. to enliven us, to raise us to spiritual life, and then to set us on a new trajectory in our life. Christ has done all the work that must be done, and all he is commanding us to do is to turn from our own efforts, our own exertion for our own glory, for our own purpose, yield it all to him, turn and believe in what he's done to save us, and we will be saved. It's a call to obedience. I mean, after all, every man, woman, and child on the planet, in some way or fashion, is going to obey someone in this life. You're either going to obey your own dictates and desires for yourself, or you're going to hear the call to repentance, hear the call to faith, and you're going to turn, and you're going to yield obedience to Jesus in salvation. There's only two ways to live. Either you are king of your life or Christ is king of your life. Either you live for yourself or you yield yourself to be used by Him for His glory and His purpose. And you are eventually with Him glorified. So it's obedience. It's a spiritual exertion. It's in accordance with His will, not by any determination of yourself. It's with these things in mind, he says, that we are to lay aside the encumbrances and the entanglements, and we won't spend any more time there. The world, we need to understand, those that are following the dictates of their own desires, the world spends their energy, in fact, trying to escape the same suffering that we endure, don't they? Have you ever thought about that? It's easy for me at times to read the scripture when God addresses the issue of suffering in the life of a Christian and say, why is it always us? Why does even as I've come to faith, I realize that it seems as if sufferings intensified in me sometimes? When I look at the world and I become almost envious at times, they seem to be just going about life, everything is fine, everything is happy roses and smelling good along the road of life. Why don't they suffer? Well, that's a false view of reality, isn't it? All men, all women, all of humanity suffers. to one degree or another. There are very few people in the world who escape this life without suffering, even if it's just at the point of their death. in the suffering it incurs. But the world is spending its energy. It is spinning its wheels. It is trying everything that it can think of, knowing fully that God is who He is, trying to escape suffering. The old adage, drugs, sex, and rock and roll are not just simply for the good times. They are, they are, they consist of the underlying attempt of humanity to escape whatever's bothering them, or whatever's gone wrong in the moment. The flesh does all that it can to organize its world, to maximize individual glory, and to blame God for the ills of the world. The world arranges itself in such a way that it tries to get safety and comfort and freedom from suffering, yet without God. That is what's going on in the world around us. The pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of happiness, the desire for pleasure, Escaping it all, going off into the wilderness and living off the grid. What's your motivation there? Is it to find comfort and safety apart from God? Taking advantage of others, enslaving others, seeking pleasure. Trying to get safety and trying to find comfort and freedom from suffering. Yet without God. I submit to you that all human effort, apart from Christ, is spent for that very purpose. To escape death, to escape suffering, and to come to some point of happiness in themselves. Sadly, this false theology of the world is often mimicked in the church. And it's often taught from the pulpits. albeit in a deceptive way, if you will, turn to Luke's Gospel, chapter 21. And I don't know if I said it, but I need to say it, that I've borrowed heavily from thoughts by several men, David Robertson, a Scottish preacher, Tim Keller. So these are not necessarily my thoughts originally. There's nothing new under the sun. Luke 21, we want to begin in verse 10. Jesus here is preparing His disciples for what's coming in a very short period of time. He says in verse 10, He continued by saying to them, Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in various places, plagues and famines. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you." This is Jesus speaking to at least His apostles, His disciples. He says, but before all these things, which you really don't look forward to anyway, he says, they will lay their hands on you and they will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and the prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for my namesake. In other words, what happens to you is not going to happen for you. It's happening for my name, for my glory, for my purpose. That's a perspective that we need, that what happens to us in this life happens for God's purpose, for His sake. He says in verse 13, it will lead to an opportunity for your testimony. So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves, for I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. But you will be betrayed even by parents, and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death, and you will be hated by all because of my name." That sounds lovely, doesn't it? That sounds like something we want to look forward to and with great expectation. I mean, I'm kind of, I'm interested in Don't prepare beforehand. God will give you utterance. You will stand before kings and governors and you will speak for me on my behalf. But the other part, being betrayed by your loved ones, being thrown in prison, being hated by all because of my name, being put to death. I'm not all jumping up and down for that, but look at verse 18. It says, yet not a hair of your head will perish. That's almost contradictory, isn't it? It sounds like it, doesn't it? You'll be betrayed. You'll be executed. You'll be persecuted. You, all of this, all of this, but not a hair of your head will perish. And there are some circles in the churches that are preaching a message that says, see there he says, not a hair of your head will perish. God will keep you. God will perfect you this way. You'll not experience that. We'll see it again in other verses here in a moment. Of course, we understand that He is not referring to the mere physical preservation of your life without suffering or without pain. He's looking ahead to the cross, knowing the work that He's going to do, preparing them for what they're going to see in just a few short days or weeks or months. And He's going to bring to their remembrance, not a hair of your head will perish in all that comes against you. And look at verse 19, this explains it really. He says, by your endurance, same word that we encounter in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 1, by your endurance, as you remain here, as you bear up under this perseverance and hatred and destructive attitudes of men, you will gain your lives. What he's really saying is it's through perseverance It's through endurance. It's through remaining faithful. When the tidal wave of persecution seems to be sweeping you away, there is salvation. That's what true salvation is. Holding on. Remaining under when you have every opportunity to take a hike, to run the other way. The King James Version here says, where it says, by your endurance you will gain your lives. King James says, in your patience, possess ye your souls. As you endure, as you persevere, you will actually come into the true possession of your soul. It reminds me of the time, the words that Jesus said, if any man would gain his life, he must lose it. If we want to possess our souls in eternity, we will yield them to God's purpose. We'll lose them. We'll be prepared to give up all, even our physical breath, all of our possessions, all of our worldly goods, so that we gain eternity in Christ. Turn to Romans 8.28, another place where there's almost a deceptive understanding of the truth. One of the most quoted verses in all of Scripture. One that falls right in line with what we're talking about in the book of Hebrews about suffering. Romans 8 verse 28, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. And the way that we tend to think of that is, we know that God causes all things to work together for good. God's working good. He's doing good. As we love Him, He's working good. And we tend to skip over the things there. But don't lose sight of the Word, the things. God causes all things, everything, whatever it may be. The good, the bad, the suffering, the joy, the tragedy. whatever it may be, all of those things, God is turning toward Himself in us so that we have the maximum benefit from it all to His glory. Maximum benefit in our lives, both here and in eternity, because God is faithful and He is able to make Our suffering means something more than just suffering. Keller says it this way. He's actually paraphrasing a sermon by Jonathan Edwards called the Christian Happiness. He says it this way. He says, your bad things will ultimately work out for good. He says, your good things can never be taken away from you. And he says, your best things are yet to come. That's a wonderful, wonderful way to see the all things of Romans 8, 28. Because Paul goes on to describe what that really is that we know and understand and hold fast to it being. Because he reminds us, it's not that God's working all things together for good for everyone, but it's for you. It's for those who He has predestined, those who He's called, those who He has marked out and foreknown and so forth and so on. And it's more than just this is the work of salvation in you, but this is all of God's focus in saving you is here. Election, predestination, calling, His foreknowing, His loving, it's all there. All of His grace is for you. And if we trust Him to save us, then we certainly trust Him to make sense out of our suffering, don't we? That verse does not teach us that He's going to part the waters for us and cause us to escape, but He's going to make everything that comes against us beautiful, good for us and for His glory. No, the biblical theology of suffering teaches that Christian perseverance, number one, identifies us with Christ, and number two, shows our faith to be genuine If you turn to 1 Peter 1, the biblical teaching of suffering teaches that Christian perseverance identifies us with Christ, but also shows our faith to be genuine 1 Peter 1 beginning in verse 6. He says, "...in this you greatly rejoice." And he means the fact that you have been born again of a living hope and you have an inheritance that's been obtained and it's undefiled and it's imperishable. He says, "...in this you greatly rejoice, even though now For a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And though you've not seen Him, you love Him. And though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. Yes, we do. We have been born again to a living hope. Yes, we have the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Yes, we have an inheritance that's imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away. Yes, these are ours in Christ, but in the intermediate time, he says, trials come. And what do they come for? What does he say? To prove faith. but also identifies with Jesus. Because that whole passage that we just read talks about our inheritance and our faith and our salvation, and then it leads us down to, oh yes, Jesus Christ and His glory and the revealing of who He is in the end. This is where all of your suffering, this is where all of your salvation is taking you. to be revealed with Christ. What that means is that in the end, when all is said and done, when time is put away, and judgment comes, and the fullness of Christ is revealed to all of creation, we will be there standing with Him, in Him, spiritually. And it will become evident to all our salvation, our inheritance, but more so, infinitely more so, the glory and the majesty of who He is and how He's dealt with us. The revelation of Jesus Christ. The curtains are pulled back. The show is over. And it's revealed. This is God's wisdom. This is how He worked. This is how He saved. This is how He is. glorified Himself. But don't leave out the fact that Peter says various trials, proving of your faith. Let me read to you one man's perspective that reflects this in a beautiful way. a man named Sir Norman Anderson. He was an English lawyer and evangelist, a professor, who spent his entire life serving the Lord, teaching and evangelizing. He had three children, one son named Hugh, whose life appeared to be very promising. He'd gone to university and had a brilliant career there, but at the age of 21, he was diagnosed with cancer, and very shortly thereafter, he perished. Four years later, the two remaining children, for what I don't know what cause, also died. And then 60 years into his marriage to his wife, she began to show signs of dementia. to the point that she could no longer recognize him. Sixty years of faithful marriage. Someone asked him when he was in his mid-eighties, toward the end of his life, as he gave one of his final speaking engagements, they asked the question, when you look back over your life, and you reflect on the fact that you have lost all your children, and your wife doesn't know who you are, Do you ever ask the question, why me? I think I would be one saying, why? Why me? Why now? Why this suffering? But here's his response that so beautifully illustrates the perspective of endurance in running the race, and God's glorifying the suffering that he endured. He says, no, I've never asked that question. why me, but I have asked the question, why not me?" He says, I'm not promised as a Christian that I will escape the problems encountered by others. He says, we all live in a fallen world. I am, however, promised that in the midst of difficulties, God through Christ will be present with me and will give His grace to help me in the difficulties. and to bear witness to Him. And I submit that that is only a work of God's grace. And it's only a work of God's grace that does not have the exaltation of this man at the center, nor is it for the mere pleasure of this man's comfort, but it is for the purpose of causing him, in his mind, in his heart, to determine himself to glorify God, to give testimony to what he's done. And I'd love to hear more about how God worked in each of those situations in his life as he had loss after loss after loss. And yet at the end of his life, here he is, faithful, Suffering in the Scripture teaches us that we are aligned as Christians with our Savior, joined to Him, and can never be separated from Him. At the end of that great statement in Romans 8, Paul says that I'm convinced that there's nothing, nothing, life nor death nor height angel, whatever, nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. No suffering, no pain, no hardship, none of it. Now if you turn back to Hebrews 12, And I'll just simply call to your remembrance what we've already read in the passages that we've read, where he deals with the pain of the endurance of running, the energy that's spent, the metaphor there of a race, and runners, and athletics, and so forth. And I don't want you to see that just merely from your perspective alone, that I'm running the race. He is calling us to do that. But who's in the midst of the race with Him? It's Jesus. He points us ultimately to verse 2, fixing our eyes on Jesus, who Himself ran the race, who Himself knows the course, who Himself set the course for us. And there's a wonderful, although it's not as clear as the second metaphor, there's a wonderful metaphor here that pictures God and Christ as sort of the coach who's with us. I mean, He takes the good things in our life that tend to draw us away, and He uses those things to strengthen us. to remind us that we don't, apart from Christ, have the power, the ability, or the desire to follow Him. So look again to Christ. Look once more to Him. And that's what a good coach does. He corrects, he reminds, he helps. He says, no, don't do it this way. This way is more efficient. This way is more productive. But we also have the metaphor that is very clear, and it's the metaphor of a father. The metaphor of the father, the teacher, the instructor. And we see these two, I think, reflected in the word discipline. And I counted it, but I don't remember how many times it's there, but it's there a number of times in just a few short verses. But the word discipline in the Greek is the word paideia, paideia. And it has the picture of, the clearest picture for us is of a father who is instructing his sons, his children. He is there to correct. But in His correction, He is not just merely punishing or correcting, but in the correction, He shows them, He rebukes them, and moves their focus, moves their understanding back to the truth. We do that all the time as fathers and as parents. We often inflict suffering on our children. so that they know what the truth is. We correct them either verbally or physically with spanking to stop them from the evil intent of their heart and to put them on the right path. And this discipline is very clear when it comes to the idea of the father But it's clear also that that's what happens when he's telling us, fix your eyes on Jesus. He's still in the metaphor of a race and a coach. And his instruction is exactly the same as what a coach would do. Directing and correcting and helping. It's the same word that's used in Ephesians 6-4 to command fathers to raise their children in the instruction and in the discipline of the Lord. The beauty of these verses is that God Himself is the teacher. God Himself is the instructor. God Himself has entered with us, and is walking with us, and is joined with us, and has placed us in the churches and the relationships that we are placed in for this very purpose, to help us, to strengthen us, to run the race with endurance. And some of our discipline in the church will be teaching, informing, giving truth, correcting wrong thinking. And some of our discipline in the church and our lives will be the correction of pain and suffering that God brings to bear on us. And all of it exists to turn our focus back to Christ and to keep it there. that we lay all other things aside, everything is let go and put away. If you had an aspiration to be a bodybuilder, if you've ever lifted weights in your life, you know that this is the case. There's often pain associated with bodybuilding or running. You don't ever get to the point of being Mr. Universe, until you have gone to the gym, broken your muscles down, and then built them back up. There's pain involved, isn't there? The same is true of running, and any form of exercise in that regard. The same is true also, as we, as I've said, as we impart correction and discipline on our children. God uses the pain of suffering to exercise and to correct our souls. Tim Keller says it this way, that this is non-destructive. Let me start over. He describes it as this, non-destructive, designed pain that leads us to escape our sin and is actually God getting deeper into our soul. So when He tells us, let us run with endurance, let us lay aside every entanglement, this is what He's after. He designed the pain. He owns the pain. He orders the suffering in such a way that it does not crush us, that does not bring retribution to us, but that does cause all of our lives to escape the sin, to correct our thinking, to refocus our thoughts, And God is getting deeper into our souls in this way. When we encounter suffering at God's hand, we must remember that God is making himself prominent in our life in that moment. I know that's hard to think of, that's hard to conceive, that's hard to see as you're going through the difficulty. Often, your heart and your mind are so blinded by pain or whatever's before you that you can't even think straight. But God is faithful at such moment to bring this to remembrance. God is making Himself prominent in you. Not only is He making Himself prominent and aware and present, but He's making Himself preeminent. As He takes us back to Christ and to the Scripture, He is telling us, My power, my purpose, my goal in this exceeds the level of the pain, the level of the suffering. My purpose far exceeds what's going on in your life now. And it, it will bring the fruit of righteousness. It will bring the fruit of Christ's likeness in you. He is prominent in the pain. He is prominent in the difficulty of the race. Why else would He tell us, in the midst of all the suffering, to turn and look to Jesus? Because He's there, and He's the only hope of holding fast. The only hope, the only power we have of perseverance is the person of Jesus. And when we take our eyes off of Him, we veer off the course, we go back to our old way of thinking that we are in charge, we lose sight of God's purpose and His plan, and we begin to stray and to drift. And then what? He disciplines us again. He brings us to correction. He is mastering us so that we are not, in the end, mastered by our flesh. That's what He's doing. It's a wonderful, interactive presence of our Savior with us. When, as we said last week, As Paul said that he was convinced of this very thing, that the one who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. I think in part this is what he had in mind, yes. He takes hold of us, doesn't he, in salvation. And we have a propensity to let go of him, but he's not going to let hold of us. He's going to keep us and He promises that over and over. He is mastering us so that we are not mastered by the flesh, by our sin. He is keeping us. I think at this point I want to give you a couple of quotes and finish. The first quote is by John Newton, the great writer of the hymn Amazing Grace, who wrote many other great hymns and other theological writings as well. He wrote this about the issue of suffering and enduring in the race. He says, everything is necessary that God sends. And we need to think about that. We need to think about that truth. Everything is necessary that He sends. What God sends into our life is of absolute necessity because God sent it into our life. If it wasn't necessary that what God brought into our life, if we didn't need that, if we could pick and choose that, then God's not God. He's made a mistake and he sent something that he hasn't controlled, that he has no power over, into our life. No, what God sends into our life, everything he sends, is necessary. But the second part of this quote is this. And we need to grasp hold of this, too. Nothing can be necessary that He withholds. Nothing can be necessary that He withholds. It puts a perspective on envy, doesn't it? It puts a perspective on our desires for the things of the world. And when we're spending our energy seeking after those things that we think will help us deal with suffering, bring us peace, put us at comfort, we're seeking after the things of the world, the desires of our heart, the pride of life, whatever it may be, and we don't have those things, then they are not necessary for us to have. So we should stop spending our energy and looking for those things and thinking that they'll satisfy us. They won't. Only Christ will satisfy the believer. Only Jesus can satisfy the believer. And really, only Jesus can satisfy the human heart. The only way there's peace, the only way that there's any comfort at all is if we are joined to our Savior and He is preeminent in our life. Only Jesus brings peace and reconciliation. And what God is doing when He brings suffering into our life is mastering us so that we are not mastered by the flesh, but in His instruction, in His correction, He is causing us to ultimately refuse our own desire, to refuse our own glory, to diminish ourselves and to see Him as preeminent. That's what's going on as He calls us. to run with endurance the race set before us. And it's a wonderful purpose that God has set in our hearts. And then finally, quoting a portion, I think of a hymn, it is a hymn, it's an old hymn, by the writer Ann Steele, Maybe you've heard of Ann Steele. She was an English Baptist poet and hymn writer in the 1700s. And this is a portion of the hymn that she wrote called, Thou Lovely Source of True Delight. We'll read this, I'll pray, and then we will sing our final hymn and be dismissed. This is what she writes. She says, Thy glory, O'er creation, shines, but in Thy sacred word I read in fairer, brighter lines. My bleeding, dying Lord, see my bleeding, my dying Lord. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful to you for grace. We thank you for your infinite power, your purpose to bring suffering that we endure into the counsel and the purpose of your will, that you would make it mean redemption to us, that you would make it mean sanctification, cleansing, that you would make it refocus our lives, our hearts, our minds on you. And Lord, we know that you are the only one with the kind of mind and counsel and power that can do such and unheard of work. We love you for it and pray that you would be honored and glorified in our lives today and in this week. And we love you and pray in Christ's name, amen.