Thank you so much for your fellowship, your love, for sharing with me, many of you, your conversions. It was just wonderful, just wonderful to be here this past weekend. Sometimes I think when I go to large conferences, I have a good time, but when I go to cozy conferences of 100 to 200, 250 people, I have a better time. There's just such a warmth and such a love in this congregation and so many searching, hungry, satisfied, drinking people of God. I would encourage you, I would encourage your pastors to go on, persevere, spread the word. God can yet do great things, even for backslidden, self-destroying America. And he can do it in Rhode Island. One of the things that moved me profoundly in a certain summer about five years ago, when I spent most of my summer studying revival, was that God usually raises revival in the most unexpected times. In the darkest times. And through the weakest means. And it usually begins by filling a few men of God on the pulpit with great measures of the Spirit and great longings and burdens for the souls, the welfare of the souls of the sons and daughters of men. And then God speaks through that man and begins to impact the people. And it begins with the children of God, not with the world. And as the children of God get filled with the Spirit, and feel burdened for their society and their neighbors and their friends and their associates, the work marches on. And God comes with the wind of His Spirit and blows where He will and does wondrous things. That's the way it ought to be. And yet, so often it's different, isn't it? So often our hands hang down and we grow weary and we wonder how we can continue. Discouragement is the number one occupational hazard of the ministry and of witnessing for Christ. So many times we begin well, but we stumble on the racetrack. My dad used to say to me as a young man, remember if you ever come into the ministry, it's one thing to begin something, to begin a church activity, It's another thing to continue it. To persevere to the end. It's one thing to get converted. It's another thing to stay converted. And both are wonders of grace. Who's to say which is the greater? When we think of Pentecost, we think of Acts 2, verse 4, the great classic Pentecost text. The Holy Spirit moved and came and filled the apostles and gave them tongues gave it to speak utterance in various tongues to the nations. What a wonder! The pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And the New Testament church is born. But we forget that an equal wonder is Acts 2.42. And they continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine in breaking of bread and in fellowship and in prayers. And so one of the great calls of Christian discipleship is endurance, continuation, running the race, the best race, to the end. So when we feel weak and tired, emotionally and spiritually, and we're tempted to give up, we're prone to say, what's the use? What's the use of pressing on? Verily, Asaph said, I've cleansed my heart in vain. We look around and sometimes the wicked seem to prosper more than the godly. Like Asaph, we're prone to want to give up. And we get tempted to give up. So how do you endure? How do you endure when everything seems against you? How do you endure when the more you pray, the more afflictions you get? How do you persevere in believing in the absence of anything tangible to confirm your faith? How do you go on trusting God in the dark night of the soul? How do you keep on praying for that ungodly husband or that ungodly prodigal when the more you pray, the further they seem to go from God? Well, the answer to all these questions is that we persevere and we endure out of the strength of Jesus Christ who persevered and endured for us and ran the race to the end and sent his face to Jerusalem and never turned back, of whom the Bible says, Jesus, having loved his own, loved them to the end. Dear Christian, Your Master loved you to the end. You must run the race to the end. This afternoon, in this closing message, I want to consider with you how to run the best race to the end. I want to look at it with you from two verses and I ask you to keep your Bible open this afternoon to these two verses Because we're going to look at phrase by phrase of these verses, and if you have it open, you'll best be able to grasp what I hope to say. Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about, with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth 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 his shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. So our theme is running the best race, running life's true marathon with endurance. We want to look first at the mission, what we are to do. Second, the manner, how we are to do it. And third, the motives, what is to encourage us to keep on running the best race. So running the best race, its mission, its manner, its motives. Now the author of Hebrews ministered to the Jewish Christians around 68 A.D. You know that was shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. And this book is written as a series of sermons to discouraged Jewish converts. Jewish converts who were paying too much attention to their Christ rejecting fellow Jews. These unbelieving Jews were challenging the spiritual worship that the Jewish Christians enjoyed in Jesus Christ. They were challenging them that they didn't have a real high priest. After all, the Jews with their Judaism and their ritualism and their ceremonies and sacrifices, had this high priest in colorful clothing and their religion was colorful. It was bloody. It was graphic. And they were saying to the Hebrew Christians, your religion is so boring. It's just a guy standing behind a pulpit saying some words to you in a plain building. Come back to Judaism. And they were beginning to persecute the Christians. They were... Oh, if several people applied for a job, they'd give it to the non-Christian. They were beginning to throw, we know from history tells us, some of the pastors into jail. And there just was a general malaise, a general spirit of impossibility of discouragement that began to creep over the Hebrew Christians. They were losing their first love. They were fading in their running the Christian race. They were discouraged. And they were saying, what's the use of going on? And so the author to the Hebrews in the first nine chapters sets before them this glorious high priest and tells them, what? You don't have the best high priest? You've got by far the best high priest. You've got the priesthood of Jesus Christ, to whom the priesthood of Aaron finds its fulfillment, the priesthood of Melchizedek finds its fulfillment. There's no priesthood like His. He's passed into the heavens. He's broken through the wall of your sin. He sat down at the right hand of God. He's the Son of God, Almighty God. He's the Son of Man who understands you and your infirmities. That is, therefore, Come boldly to the throne of grace to find grace to help and mercy in time of need. And so in nine chapters, the author to the Hebrews is saying to the Hebrew Christians, keep courage. You have the best high priest ever. And then in the last four chapters, you have all these imperatives about how they are, therefore, to walk the Christian walk. and to run the Christian race. Now, at one point in my conference ministry, I was asked to give an overview of the book of Hebrews. And I read the book, re-read the book, re-re-read the book, and then it suddenly dawned on me, this book is all about one thing. It's all about endurance. running the race to the end. So I read the book one more time and I counted all the verses that said things like this. Keep on keeping on. Persevere, hold fast, run the race. And I counted 96 verses in 13 chapters. The theme, the mission, is endurance. And the apex of the book, I believe, is the two verses set before us this afternoon. That is apex in terms of what to do Now that you do have the great high priest, the apex of the book, of course, is Hebrews 4, 14 through 16, that we have this great high priest who is the son of God, who is the son of man, who feels our infirmities and who is sinless on the man and the preeminently qualified one. Let us therefore come boldly. Let us therefore now run the race and endure to the end. Now in my Oxford dictionary, endurance which, by the way, is used in all three verses. Run with endurance is the original language in verse one. Jesus Christ endured the cross, verse two. Verse three, consider him that endured. So this is clearly the major theme here. In my dictionary, the definition of endurance is to hold up to remain and then this beautiful definition to continue despite pain without flinching. That's the call of the Christian. To keep on running. Now, of course, the first question we need to ask ourselves is, are we out in the racetrack at all? If you're not a Christian, you're still in the stands and you're watching people in the racetrack and you haven't got on the racetrack. That's a problem. So you need to fly out into that racetrack, ask God to convert you, to regenerate you, and you need to get in the starting blocks, and you need to run by faith, by repentance, and so on. But that's not what our text is about tonight. Our text is about those who are on the racetrack. And what the author to the Hebrews does in these two verses is he paints for us a beautiful panorama, a picture of the entire Greek Colosseum races in his own day. These were famous races. Think Olympics. Think the French bike-a-thon. Long races. Marathon races. We're not talking in our text this afternoon about a sprint. We're talking about a long marathon. That's what he's painting for us. And he's drawing us into that race. Every Hebrew Christian, every Christian of all ages is in this serious race. And the message to everyone is keep on keeping on. Don't sit down. Don't take a break from being a Christian. God never said you have to break from being a Christian. I sat next to a man on the plane one time. He looked to me like he was about 50 years old, or 70 years old, rather. But I said to him, I know better than to say, you know, are you retired? So I said, you know, what work do you do? And he said, well, I'm retired. And I said, oh, how old are you? He said, I'm 50. I said, you're 50. He said, what are you doing? Well, he said, I was a minister. And things didn't work out. So now I'm retired. I gave all my life to the Lord, he said, and the rest of it is for me. I said, the rest of it is for you. You are a minister. The whole of our life is for the Lord. There is no break from this race until the end day. My wife and I once took a long hike in Scotland, up a winding hill. And, you know, all those wines in the highlands of Scotland. We thought we could get to the top in about, you know, 45 minutes. It took us like three and a half hours because it got to be so long going back and forth like this. We were exhausted when we got to the top. And we expect, I don't know what we expected once we got to the top. We expected something big somehow. We got to the top and there was just a little sign about that big. It said, rest and be thankful. And you see, in the Christian race, it's like that. You see, there's windings, there's curvings, and it's long, and sometimes it's tiring, and you're overwhelmed. But in the end, you won't just see a little sign that's to be thankful. You'll be ushered in to the glories of God. And you will truly be thankful forever. But you need to endure. You need to endure. You're not there yet. You need to keep running the Christian race. So that's the mission. Run steadily, run deliberately, run actively every day. Now when I was in high school, I ran for track and I remember how many times our coach said to us, now when you run, you pace yourself. Don't get out of that starting block and sprint the first half of the race and you'll peter out halfway through. You're going to be last place. You pace yourself. That's what you have to do in the Christian race. You run steadily, deliberately every day, using the means of grace every day, reading and searching the scriptures every day, engaging in personal intercessory prayer every day, reading sound literature every day, fellowshipping among the saints every day, living antithetically to this world every day. Christian life is not passive. We must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing it is God who works in us, both who will and to do, of His good pleasure. So I call to you, Christian, I call to you through my text this afternoon, endure and press on and run the race that is set before you. Even when God seems to come against you, trust Him. Go on. Say with Job, though he slay me, Yet will I trust in Him. Trust in God as your greatest friend, even though He seems to come against you in His providence sometimes as your greatest enemy. Just keep persevering. Run the race that's set before you. Before you know it, you will hear the words at the celestial gates, These are they who have come out of great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white. in the blood of the Lamb. And oh, what a day that will be. What a day that will be. My father died 20 years ago, just last month. I was thinking back on those days and his funeral. I preached on this text at his funeral. These are days that have come out of great tribulation. Washed their robes. Made them white. in the blood of the Lamb. I saw my Father endure to the end." There was tribulation. But he couldn't let go of Jesus because Jesus couldn't let go of him. And the beautiful theme of the book of Hebrews is that your endurance is in Christ's endurance. You hold fast because He holds you fast. Now that's the grace of God. So it's not something you have to do all by yourself, for yourself, to yourself, and in yourself. It's something He does for you, in you, through you, as you cling to Him, as you follow Him, trust Him. Endure, endure, endure, endure, endure to the end. But now you say, but from my side then, How do I do it? That's my second point. The manner. We've got the mission. Endurance. The manner. Well, the manner, our text tells us, is both a negative and a positive perspective. Let's begin with the negative first. Negatively, we must rid ourselves of sin and hindrances. Notice what it says. Let us lay aside, verse one, every weight, that is every hindrance, and the sin which so easily besets us. That's not just our besetting sin or our favorite sin or our darling sin or our bosom sin, as our forefathers called the sin that you fall into most easily, though it is that. But this is all sin, anything that trips you up. And so let us run with patience the race at the 74th. Anything that trips you up must be set aside. So you see what the author is doing. He's continuing to paint this picture of the Grecian runners. Here's what they would do. The Grecian runners came to the racetrack. They'd have all kinds of paraphernalia with them. They'd have, you know, I guess today you'd say a duffel bag and they'd have all kinds of stuff in them, change of clothing and supplies in case they got injured. And then they have a whole set of clothing on. They have a trainer. They give everything to the trainer. And they take off their coat. They take off their pants. They have the barest stitch of clothing on and shoes. That's it. Nothing on them. No paraphernalia. And they run the race. I mean, nearly naked. Because they don't want anything to hold them back. They set aside everything else. What the author to the Hebrews say is something very, very personal and very powerful. He's saying that when you run this Christian race, you don't need to set aside just the gross sins like, you know, robbing a bank or being unfaithful to your wife or huge big sins that most Christians don't don't do. But he's saying, lay aside everything that entangles you. I told you when I was young I had to quit basketball because it was entangling me and running the race. Tonight, this afternoon rather, I want to ask you this question. Is there something in your life that you need to cut back on or maybe cut out completely? that would help you run this Christian race better. You know, it's so interesting that John Calvin in his section in the Institutes where he talks about the Christian life. He begins with self-denial. That's a foreign word in America today. Self-denial is a dirty word in America today. self-denial. We Christians, we don't have to deny ourselves. We have everything in Christ. Oh yes, you have to deny yourself. You have to deny yourself the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. There's so much that can trip you up as you run the Christian race. And you've got to set these things aside. Today, So many think they're Christians and they don't have any self-doubt anywhere in their life. Don't even know what this idea is. So let me ask you, when's the last time you actually said, you know, I would like to do A, but I won't do A because A may interfere with my walk with God. I'm not talking about legalism here, I'm talking about gratitude to God. You know, here's what I find so often. You have people that say, you know, I just can't find any time. My life is so busy. I can't find any time to do personal devotions with God. Now, how much time do you spend on the Internet? Oh, well, yeah, well, three hours. Oh, you find three hours a day to be on the Internet and zero hours a day to spend time alone with God. Something's wrong, perhaps. You think you can cut out a half an hour maybe and spend a half an hour alone with God? You see, we're our own worst enemy in running this race. Because we're enemies of self-denial. I would love to spend some time on the internet. I would love to explore different websites. But I've got a calling that keeps me very busy and working for the Lord. So I've said to myself years ago already, I will never spend one minute looking at other people's blogs. This is just for me now. I'm just not going to take any time going on the internet except to go on and get something I know I need for a particular purpose. That saves me hours and hours and hours. And it helps me run the Christian race better, I think. So I'm just asking you, just in the quiet of your own soul, don't think about anyone else now. Just think about yourself. Don't think about your husband, your wife, just yourself. What should you lay aside to run this race better? And are there things in your life that are actually sinful, that you're not closing the door on completely? Sometimes we say, well, we don't want to sin, and sometimes we conquer some of our besetting sins, but other times we leave the window open a little bit. What this text is saying is shut the window, shut the door, you've got no business sinning, you're a Christian. And an old elder in my church, he used to say that his dad said to them when they were boys, once you're a Christian, you ain't got no business sinning. You see, sin is a foreign intruder. You're a new creation in Jesus Christ. Lay aside that sin. Ignite yourself. Turn the other way. You young men, when you go on that computer, you're tempted to go in a direction that will bring you sinful things before your eyes. You shut that computer off. You run away from it. Or you turn it in another direction. It will ruin your Christian race. It will destroy you. It's poison for you. I know of a lady in Wales, doing a conference in Wales, and she's 85 years old. Boy, was she a feisty old Christian woman. She was just great to listen to. And she's telling me that one day she's sitting in her home, minding her own business, and three men came into her house, broke in. They tied her up around her eyes and her ankles and set her in a chair. They began to start to steal things in her house. And finally, she heard them banging around with her grandmother's heirloom shrine, and she got upset. She said, you thieves, you've got no business being here. You're foreign intruders. Now be gone, or God will bring you into judgment. Now, one thief got very upset, and he sat down beside her and started talking about his deprived childhood and so on. The other two began to mock with him, and they started to get an argument among the three of them, and they left without the china. Well, that was great. But I thought about that story later. I thought, you know, that's how we should treat sin. Sin tries to break through our ear gate, tries to break through, as Bunyan said, our eye gate. We should say, sin be gone. You've got no business here. I've got a new heart. I'm a new creation in Christ Jesus. Paul tells me, reckon yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Be gone, sin. and send it away. You see, sin is disastrous. And one of the greatest problems in the Christian life today is that we don't see sin as sin and we downplay sin. We desensitize our conscience to sin. We dumb it down. We let down our guard. We trivialize it. And we must not do that, says the author to the Hebrews. You're running a race Sin is your enemy. Sin takes your eyes off your Savior. Sin interrupts your relationship with your God. Sin is anti-God. Sin makes you worldly and selfish and proud and unbelieving. Sin is spiritual insanity. Lay it aside. Run the race. With a single eye, as we sing in one of our psalters, let us have a single eye, thy name to glorify. And so all these things that are so-called, as Jerry Bridges calls them, respectable sins. All these things must be laid aside. What respectable sins? Well, the big one, of course, is unbelief. That was the biggest problem of the Hebrew Christians. Unbelief is a monster sin. It's the mother of all sin. You've got to lay that aside. Have faith in God. Trust Him. Fear? Worry. Love of things. Cares of this life. You see, all things that... These pastors aren't going to excommunicate you if you love things a little bit too much from this church. These are sins that fly under the radar. But you know in your conscience your weakness. I don't know, maybe some of you women are just You've got this craving to go to the mall maybe twice a week to go shopping like you need things twice a week. And you're spending too much time at it. I've got a lady in my church who just came to me and she just confessed to me. She said, you know, I'm spending far too much time trying to get things stuff. Or maybe it's very legitimate things like relationships, maybe you're You're looking too much to your spouse or your children to give you fulfillment in life. Or maybe your professional duties. Maybe you're trying to climb the corporate ladder too fast or too intensely and you're not spending time with God. Maybe recreational pursuits. Maybe an undue proportion of your time and heart is given to things that, well, are all legitimate. But you're suffering in your relationship with God because you've crowded Him out. You've marginalized Him. But you think it through, I've given you some ideas. But this is the point. To put off sin is never easy. Once you engage in things that trip you up, it's hard to then backpedal and deny yourself things that you like. But we must do that. That doesn't mean it's easy. God never promised Christians an easy life. He promised Christians a blessed life. So the imperative to lay aside every weight that drags us down is an imperative that we must keep. You can't just let sin happen. You can't just let sin penetrate your soul and your mind. You've got to confess it. You've got to forsake it. You've got to fear it. You've got to hate it. There's an old Scottish divine. Maybe you've heard his name. Ralph Erskine. A great, great preacher. And he said in one of his sermons, I never forgot it. I read it as a young man. He said, when it comes to sin, you've got to use one of two approaches, fight or flight. He said. If you're weak in that area, you've got to flight, you've got to use flight, you've got to run away. If you're a recovering alcoholic, God hasn't called you to be an evangelist in the bar because you're weak when it comes to alcohol. Instead, you've got to walk around the block, make sure you don't go in the door. But when it comes to something you're strong in, well, then you might want to fight it head on. Defeat the devil. But either way, you see, that's how you handle sin. Fight or flight. Now, thanks be to God, though it's not easy, it can be done. Thanks be to God. Sin can be laid aside. Thanks be to God. Sin does not belong to you as a believer, does not belong to your new nature. It clings to you, but it is not you. You are dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Sin's not your life. Christ is. We heard that this morning. Sin is a thievish foreign intruder. Don't let it nestle in the home of your new heart. You see, there's a difference between an unbeliever and a believer with regard to sin. Unbelievers cling to sin. For believers, sin clings to them as you're trying to run away. So I'm not saying that You're going to be perfect. You're never going to be perfect in this life. But the general tenor of your life has to be such that you're running from sin. You're not running to sin. You're running to God, away from sin. Let us lay aside, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Negatively. But you know, as well as I do, that negative Christianity will never, never sustain itself without positive Christianity. You see, that's what legalism does. Legalism says, well, I'll stress all the negatives. You can't do this. You can't do that. You can't do the other thing. You've got a whole list of negatives. And that's real Christianity. That's a bunch of nonsense. You know, if Christianity were primarily negative, no one would embrace it with heart and soul. And what happens when you have primarily a negative religion is as soon as you begin to slip up a little bit, the devil comes back in and you try to sweep that heart clean. You fail and he comes back in. Jesus says he makes it seven times worse than before. Because when you leave a vacuum behind, that's what happens when you're negative only. You leave a vacuum behind. Something needs to fill that. And if it's not positive, And it's negative. You'll get tired of running the race. You'll peter out. You'll stop. You start running the opposite direction eventually. That's why legalists often end up being very worldly, ungodly people. So you need something positive. Christianity is primarily positive. As important as this negative is, the positive is even more important. And it dominates the Christian. And the positive is Jesus Christ, as I tried to preach to you this morning. So the text goes on to say, let us run the race that set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of faith. You see, when we confess him, when we appropriate forgiveness and learn to live by faith as a forgiven sinner, we can run the Christian race with new legs. It was zeal that you could never run without the positive. We need to look to Jesus, not only to run the race because he's justified us in his blood, but to run the race because he sanctifies us as our example as well. He ran the race before us. He endured perfectly. He's our model runner and he's our coach and he keeps us on the racetrack. We owe everything to him. And you see, that's the message right here in this context. You know, of course, that just before our text is that long chapter of Hebrews 11, by faith, Abel, by faith, Enoch, by faith, Abraham, the whole chapter deals with this, that all the Old Testament saints ran by faith, looking to the Jesus to come. And so what in the world are you Hebrew Christians doing? Because Jesus has come and you can look back and you can see the cross with greater clarity than the Old Testament saints could ever see it. What in the world are you doing, thinking of giving up when they didn't give up? If they persevere to the end, why aren't you? Look to Jesus, man. That's what the author to the Hebrews is saying. You're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, all these Old Testament saints. All the promises of God are yea and amen in Jesus Christ. Endure in Jesus. Jesus is your uniquely qualified supplier and sustainer of faith. He evokes your faith. He stimulates your faith. He's the content of your faith. He's the object of your faith. He's a pioneer and perfecter of your salvation. He's the A and the Z. Serve Him. Look to Him. Run to Him. Live out of Him. That's how you run the race. He's everything. A few months ago, well, several months ago now, just before my mother died, I was reading to her from Revelation 21. She had severe, pretty severe case of dementia near the end. Could yet have been worse. You could dialogue with her for two or three minutes at a time, but she couldn't remember my dad. She'd been married to him for 52 years. She could remember psalters she sang. She could sing whole psalters that she learned when she was a teenager. And boys and girls, young people, I want to tell you something. What you fill your mind with when you're boys and girls, when you're teenagers, that'll stay with you your whole life. You might forget everything else, but what you fill your mind with. You fill your mind with bad singing, bad songs now. You listen to iPods and you listen to songs that your parents don't know you're listening to and they're not good for you. They'll come back to you when you're 70, 80 years old and they'll haunt you. I've had to counsel people who cry, weep over the fact that when they were young, they didn't fill their mind with good things. Well, my mother could remember all these things when she was a teenager. Couldn't remember 52 years of being married to my dad. No remembrance of my dad. It's just terrible. Couldn't remember who I was. So I'm reading to her Revelation 21. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. And I said to her, without thinking, Mother, do you know what that means? And I thought, oh, you're stupid. Of course, she's not going to know what it means. Why? Why am I confusing her? So I was going to answer it. And she said, honey, she called everybody honey because she couldn't remember anyone's name. Honey, don't you think that means that Jesus is the beginning and the end of our life and everything in between? Yes. Yes, Mother. That's it. You see, here she is. Her mind is fuzzy about almost everything. And she remembers that Jesus Christ is everything. Because that was her life. What a beautiful thing. He's our author and our finisher. He'll help you. I had another lady in my congregation. She was in the hospital 75 times. I visited her every one of those 75 times. I got to know her so well. She had all kinds of diseases. She got dementia near the end, and she knew it. And she said to me, Pastor, I want to tell you something. I'm getting dementia. I'm saying some really foolish things. Don't take heed of any of the foolish things I say. But I want to tell you one thing. The Lord has promised me that when it comes to Jesus Christ, when I think of Him, I'll say nothing foolish to the very end. So everything I say about Christ, you can listen to me. Everything I say about other things, don't listen to me. She was a feisty woman, too. And you know that is true. Right to the end. Whenever she spoke about Christ, she was fine. It was beautiful. Christ to the end. Look to Jesus. He'll help you. He's the origin of your faith. He's the completion of your faith. He's the supreme exponent of your faith. He's everything. Look to Him. And you'll find a positive motivation. So that's my third thought. Let's look at the motivation now. Not just the manner, but the motivation. How do you keep on keeping on when you're discouraged? Well, I want to give you two motivations. Two motivations. And the first motivation has three parts to it. The first motivation is the example, the example of Jesus Christ, of looking to Him. Number one, be motivated First, by what He endured. Look what the text says. Look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross. Think about this. Jesus hung in the naked flame of His Father's wrath. No eye of pity looked upon him and said, Jesus, we understand. The heavens didn't break open and say, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. Hear ye him. Angels didn't come to strengthen and comfort him. He was left alone. He trod the winepress alone. Even the sun of nature would not shine upon him. It was dark in those last three hours. Heaven rejected him. His father forsook him. Earth rejected him. Scribes and religious rulers and secular rulers, Jews and Gentiles, hell rejected him. All the devils came upon him to to eat up his flesh, as it were, to destroy him. Rejected by heaven, by earth, by hell. He endured to the end. So that he could pay for your sins. and love you to the end. Now, should that motivate you? If He loved you so much that He endured to the end of the most great, profound agony the world has ever known, the greatest cry of dereliction the world has ever known, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? If He endured that cross and gave His life for you and died for you Can't you at least live for Him and endure to the end? You know, your crosses are small compared to His. It always intrigues me that when people get cancer, they end up, of course, in cancer clinics and there's people sitting around in the room and often first they're shocked they have cancer and they're near despair and everything is very sad and trying to cope and grapple. trying to cling to Christ. And they have ups and downs, lots of tears, lots of crying. Then they come to you a couple of months later and they say, you know, Pastor, I've been going to get chemo treatments and so on. And I look around that room. I really don't have it so bad. There's a lot of people there a lot worse than me. And some way to get some comfort out of that. Well, think about Jesus. The crosses he endured are so huge that our crosses are small. Actually, he endures the substance. We just endure the shadow. We just follow him. We're just little partakers of his suffering. Can't we be motivated by his big cross to endure our little crosses and keep on running? That's what the author to the Hebrews is saying. You Hebrew Christians, you've got no right to even think about quitting. Look at what he endured. Look to him. Be motivated by His cross to carry your cross. Then secondly, be motivated by what He rejoiced in. Look at what the text says. Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. Too often we forget that the cross was not Jesus' terminus point. Not His end point. He rejoiced even under the cross. And we know that from the moment he spoke to the thief on the cross that he would be with him in his kingdom. That was a moment of love and life on the cross. A moment of joy for Jesus and for the thief. A moment when the nails of both of them were forgotten. And for the joy that was on the cross, for the joy that was set before him, he rejoiced. He knew he would be victor in the battle in the end. He knew he would be delivered from the powers of evil in the end. He knew he would be resurrected by his father in the end. He knew he would be taken home to glory to receive his promised reward in the end. So the joy that was set before him. with the joy of His own homecoming, the joy of being in the arms of His Father again, the joy of reunion in the bosom of His Father, the joy of being crowned with honor and glory and having all things put under His feet, the joy of bringing many sons to glory, the joy of bringing you to glory, and the joy of saying on that great day, Here am I, Father, and all those whom Thou hast given Me. And have not one chair empty in heaven. Oh, for the joy that was set before Him. She endured. Now you'll be motivated by that. Hebrews is saying. Look to Him and be motivated by the joy that was set before Him. And the joy set before you. The joy set before you is the eternal weight of glory. Knowing that your future home with Christ in Heaven is secure. Knowing that you'll be married to Him. Knowing that you'll have everything that eyes have not yet seen or ears heard or has entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him. You're going to be married with Jesus and spend eternity with Jesus for the joy that is set before you. Don't stop running the race. You've heard the story of William Montague. 19th century young man who was blind, fell in love with a beautiful God-fearing woman, wanted to marry her. She wanted to serve him all her life. And a surgeon came to her father, who was an admiral, and said, you know, I think I can do a surgery on William's eyes that he might be able to see. And William agreed to submit himself to the surgery. It's fairly dangerous. The bandages had to be around his eyes for two weeks. He said to his own dad, Dad, I want you to be my best man and I want the surgery exactly two weeks before my wedding. And when my bride walks down the aisle, I want you to come up and unwrap the bandages, because if I can see, I want the first thing I can see to be my bride. And that's what happened. And everybody was kind of tense, of course, and he came forward and the dad came forward and unwrapped the bandages around William's eyes and William could see. And it was a very aristocratic audience, and you know you weren't supposed to say anything, but William just blurted out, my dear, you're far more beautiful than I ever imagined. Can you imagine what it was going to be like? When you no longer see through a glass darkly, you're king of kings. Here below, you're just constantly saying, oh, I wish I knew him better. I wish I loved him more. Somehow he seems to be out of grasp. I get glimpses of him, but then he's gone and I can't behold him as I would. I can't see him face to face. But in that day, the bandages will be taken away and every sin will be gone and you will see him face to face. You'll be married to him and you'll cry out, gracious Savior, you are far more beautiful than I ever imagined. Like the Queen of Sheba, the half of it was not told me of thy glory, O King Solomon. For the joy set before you. Run the race. And then thirdly, you're going to be motivated, I hope, by Jesus' example in what he despised. He noticed that in the text too. Look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. And it said down at the right hand of the throne of God, despising the shame. He knows it's a shameful thing to die alive on the cross. It was an accursed death. So accursed that God said if the body would stay on the cross, Overnight, the whole land would be cursed. Mothers would take their children on the outskirts of Jerusalem, walking along the main highway, and the crosses were lined up on the main highway because they were objects of shame. And people had to see them. So mothers would take their children and they'd say, look there, look there, those three men up there, they're notable criminals. Don't you ever be like that. They're shameful things. And here is the Son of God, the Son of Glory on the center cross. As if He were the greatest criminal, as Luther said, the greatest criminal that ever lived for your sins. But He loved you so much, my friend, that He despised all that shame. Now in our culture, we can relate to that somewhat. If you're in an Asian culture, you can relate to it much better. Or a Middle Eastern ancient culture, Because our culture operates mostly by guilt. If I want to really get you to do something that can make you feel guilty enough, I can motivate you to do it. But in the Asian culture today, and in the ancient Mideastern culture, the motivator was shame. Shame. Shame. You don't want to shame someone. I remember the first invitation I had from a publisher from Korea. translate one of my books into Korean. He talked to a Korean friend in Illinois. The Korean friend wrote me a letter. Would you let this Korean publisher translate one of your books? And I saw the address there. Well, we Americans, we just do things the shortest way. So I wrote to the Korean publisher. I said, yes, please do. That's great. And my Korean friend from Illinois wrote me a week later. He said, what did you decide? I said, well, I told the publisher to go ahead. Oh, no, he said. You didn't communicate directly with the publisher, did you? I said, yes. I said, well, what's wrong? He goes, well, if you had said no, it would have been a tremendous shame. I said, what? We don't understand that. But in Middle Eastern culture, in Asian cultures, even today, shame is a motivator. Jesus despised the shame. Despised it. Didn't matter what people said of him. Only what his father thought of him. Only to do the will of His Father. Only to love His people to the end. And you see, you young people, you boys and girls, people may shame you for being a Christian. Shame you for being different. They may marginalize you. Isolate you. Just don't worry about it. Despise the shame. And live in the fear of God. Not the fear of man. You know, man will desert you anyway. Say Hosanna today and crucify you tomorrow. Don't live by the fear of man, live by the fear of God. You know what the fear of God is? The childlike fear of God? The fear of God is to esteem the smiles and frowns of God to be of greater weight and value than the smiles and frowns of men. Despise the shame. It doesn't matter. Live by the fear of God and you keep running the race, no matter what man says to you. Like Christian in Hilton's Crotch, remember that? He felt the burden of saying, you have to have God. So he runs the race. He gets on the racetrack. He's running. And the neighbors come out and they say, Christian, come back, come back. Who do you think you are? You're out of your mind. He's trying all kinds of things to make him feel shame. And he puts his fingers in his ears and he runs. He goes, life, life, life, eternal life. He despises the shame. That's the way to live. So that's how you should be motivated by the example of Christ. Be motivated by what he endured, be motivated by what he rejoiced in, be motivated by what he despised. But now there's one more thing before I close. We've got to be motivated, secondly, by the witness of the saints. Go back to the beginning of verse one. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside, etc. What in the world does that mean? Well, the painting is now complete. You see, around the racetrack are these stands. All the Old Testament saints are in the stands, in the author's mind, author of Hebrews' mind. He's speaking figuratively, of course. And the Old Testament saints are saying, keep on running. Enoch, who walked with God, he's there by Saint Enoch. Hebrews 11, Enoch is saying, you keep on running. I walked with God for 300 years. Keep on, Christian. He's in your stands. I still remember when I was 17 years old, reading Genesis 5, 24 for the, well, really reading that for the first time. By faith, Enoch walked with God. I said, oh Lord, that's what I want. How do I do that? How do I do that? Enoch motivated. Hasn't Abraham ever motivated you? He got up early in the morning and obeyed God and took his only son? Hasn't David ever motivated you in the Psalms? I hope so. Martin Luther said, if you don't consider David to be one of your best friends, even though he's dead, I doubt if you've ever become a Christian. Because who can't identify with David if you're a Christian? The Psalms are an anatomy of all parts of the soul. David motivates us. So we get motivated, not only by Christ, we get motivated to run the Christian race by other Christians. Old Testament. But our stands are just burgeoning with people everywhere. We've got stands that are overflowing. We've got 20,000 people in our stands. Saying, run the race, run the race, run the race. We've got all the New Testament saints. Doesn't James motivate you? John, Paul, Peter. What about 20 centuries of church history? Luther motivates me. Calvin, I can hardly read the life of Calvin without weeping. Samuel Rutherford motivates me. His letters sat on my nightstand for 25 years. Whenever I got discouraged, I'd just open Rutherford's letters, read about his riches in Christ, and my heart would just be motivated to keep on running. Most of my best friends are dead ones. They're my friends through the books. I love those men. I love Dr. Lloyd-Jones. It motivates me. I love Robert Murray McShane. What sermons that man preaches. It motivates me to strive harder to prepare better sermons. Who's in your stance? They're all saying to you, aren't they? Every Christian in your stance is saying to you, you keep on running. Don't give up the race. Sometimes I think about it. What would happen if I fell? I would fall into sin for one minute and destroy a lifetime of ministry. What confusion I would bring to my 750 members in my church and to the extended family of Christ around the earth. Oh God, keep me running the race. And then there's all those people that have gone before us Relatives. My dad is in my stance. Oh, how could I let down my dad? I've got to run the race. He still talks to me sometimes. Not literally, of course, but I still hear his voice. I remember before he died, he pulled me aside and said, Joe, I want to tell you one thing. Preach Christ. You can never preach them enough, he said. Sometimes while I'm preaching, I hear that voice ringing in my ears. My dad's in my stands. So is my wife. The way she encourages me in soft, sweet ways. So I'm in Mozambique. Open up my suitcase. I'm there tucked in a pair of socks. There's a little note. I'm praying for you, honey. Instead of being angry that I'm gone away from home and complaining like so many ministers' wives, I'm praying for you, honey, that your work will be blessed and you'll be used to the conversion of many people. She's in my stands. Thank God for her. And then I got, oh, you've got to come to my church sometime. I've got wonderful, godly elders. They're in my stands. They encourage me. I come back from this conference, they put their arm around me and say, how'd it go, brother? They're in my stands. Isn't that what church is all about? Isn't that what this church is all about? If you were the only one sitting here this afternoon, this whole atmosphere would be different, wouldn't it? The whole pathos would be different. It wouldn't be the same. But you're here together, you reinforce each other, you fellowship in between the services. One man said to me, between the services, the best part of a conference is the fellowship. Because you encourage each other, iron sharpens iron. It's not only the dead saints that are in your stance, the living saints are in your stance. Keep on, keeping on, even to the end. You know, I want to close with just two stories. When Gerald Ford passed away, he was a Grand Rapids boy. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I've been for 26 years. And Grand Rapids is kind of proud of Gerald Ford. The museum is there. And the day came, he wanted his body buried at the museum. When the hearse went from the airport to the Gerald Ford Museum site along the highway, and there were thousands of grand Rapidians who lined both sides of the highway, and our family was there too, out of respect. I looked across the highway, and there was a little boy who had a sign above his head that was bigger than he was. He was shaking that sign, a smile on his face, and the sign said, Welcome Home, President Ford. You know, I thought to myself, I thought, that's amazing. Here's a little boy who's so happy. that he rejoices to welcome home a dead body. Do you understand what a contrast that will be to your homecoming one day, if you're a believer, where you will have rows and rows of cherubim and seraphim and the souls of the redeemed made perfect, and Jesus at the end, at the gate of pearly bliss with a soft cloth in His hand, as Rutherford said, to wipe away every tear from your eye, and all of them saying, Welcome home! Welcome home, sinners saved by grace! What a day! That will be. And are you tempted to not run the race when you've got such a future? When this little life is like less than a one-page introduction to a thousand-page book of eternity, and you're going to spend all eternity with Christ, depending on how you live this little, little page of a life? Are you going to throw that all away? Don't be a fool. Run the race that I said before. Now, let me let me speak just a word in closing to those of you who aren't on the racetrack at all. In the 19th century in northern Scotland, there was a major train line that crossed the Great Ravine and the viaduct that bridged it was one of the wonders of the north. And one night, a terrible storm raged in that area. The stream under the viaduct turned into a raging torrent. And a young Highland shepherd sheltered his sheep as best he could for the night. And early in the morning, he got up to see how things had fared. And as he made his way up the hillside, he noticed to his horror that the central column of the viaduct had disappeared and that the bridge was broken. He knew that the train was due soon. So he ran up the embankment the rest of the way and he caught the train just in time, thank God, and he waved his arms to the conductor to stop the train. But the conductor waved him away and the boy ran to the track, and he threw his body across the track. And the conductor stood on the brakes and ran over the boy and stopped just before the train went down into the abyss. Everybody was sleeping on the train. They woke up startled. They jumped out. They ran to the front. They looked into the valley. The horror! They saw the track laying in the valley. Then they looked at the mangled remains of the poor shepherd boy. And no one said a word. until one old man spoke. And he said, that boy there, that boy there, he saved my life. My friend, if you're unsaved, if you don't have a loving, living relationship with Jesus Christ, you need to stop the train of your life that is going 90 miles an hour Even as I speak now, Jesus Christ throws Himself across the track of your life and says, stop and consider your ways and repent and believe in Me. Please stop. Stop, stop, stop. Before you go into the abyss, And don't rest until you too can say, as you look on Him on the center cross, that man, that God-man there, He saved my life. Amen. Great God of heaven, please bless the message, all the messages of this weekend. But help us to persevere to the end. Help us to find our life in Christ initially and to find it in Christ continually and to look to Jesus to the very end. Oh, Lord, be a wonder-working God. And do that miracle of free grace in converting and in keeping converted so that we may run the race to the end. Help us, O God, not to give up, Not to let the hands hang down. Not to slip back into sin. Not to backslide. Not to grow wheat. Not to dumb down our consciences. But help us to be sensitized against sin. And run the race. Run the race. The best race to the very end. We pray in Jesus' name. Asking also, Lord, Thy blessing upon this church, upon its pastors, on the visitors here today. Bless this congregation with a wonderful sense of divine approbation. Let them grow quantitatively, qualitatively under the faithful preaching of Thy Word. Let the pastors continue to run the race, looking to Jesus and the people as well. And let them be in each other's stands. Let them be on the racetrack together. Let them encourage each other. You run, brother. You run, sister. Keep on going, keep on going and help each other along the way. Help each other to look to Jesus Christ, help each other to lay aside sin, help each other to run the race. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.