Reborn to Run

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Well, thank you, Keith and the elders, for this opportunity.
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It is a joy to be back home with you guys today.
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If you will open your Bible to the book of Hebrews 12.
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We'll look this morning at Hebrews 12, verses 1 and 2.
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And with it being New Year's Day today, we recognize that many around us are taking part in the almost laughable annual tradition of making New Year's resolutions that will likely never see the light of February.
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But we have an opportunity this morning to look to God's Word and to assess our lives and to see how we will live the year before us and the years to come.
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And so I'm excited this morning as we look to Hebrews 12 to see what I believe is a golden principle of how we order our lives.
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Would you look with me? Hebrews 12, verses 1 and 2.
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The Word of the Lord says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the Founder and Perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
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Would you pray with me? God our Father, we look to You this morning for illumination from Your Holy Spirit to understand Your Word.
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Would You help us? Would You minister to Your people here this morning? Would You draw those who have not bowed their knee to You to trust in Christ for salvation? And would You encourage Your children this morning and build them up, we pray.
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Do that by Your Spirit and be glorified.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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I read a story recently about a man who was so overcome with the Olympic spirit, the great feelings of pride and vigor that we get when we watch the Olympics, that he decided he was going to set off on a course to swim across the Atlantic Ocean.
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And he was going to set off on this journey of several thousand miles from France coming over to New York City.
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And so, making necessary preparations, he began his journey, got in the water and began swimming.
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And within about two miles, he was rescued by lifeguards.
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And so, obviously, this man had not fully prepared himself.
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His failure was very great, but it illustrates for us a principle and a point that in order to do something of that magnitude, of that great accomplishment, we have to prepare ourselves.
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There are things that have to be done.
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There are sacrifices that have to be made as we train.
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And this man had failed to do any of those things.
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I think just getting excited and jumping in the water.
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Olympic athletes take years to prepare themselves.
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They take sometimes decades, some from very small childhood, leave their families and move far away from their homes so that they can be with the best trainers and the best coaches and have the best gyms to train in.
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And they give up so much so that they can become Olympic athletes, so they can pursue that dream of gold.
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That sacrifice is very expensive to them, but they succeed largely because they commit everything to pursuing this dream, to pursuing this goal of success in sports.
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And in this text we look at this morning, the writer of Hebrews uses the metaphor of a race, an Olympic-style race, to describe the Christian life to us.
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Now, as far as I know, we don't have any Olympians here in the room with us this morning.
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And if we're honest with ourselves, if we assessed our faith, our lives as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we wouldn't consider ourselves gold medalists in that regard either.
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We're prone to grow weary and tired.
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For many, this has been a very long, difficult year with various challenges.
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And life seems to beat us down, and we get tired.
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And if we're running the race at all, we begin to run more slowly.
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We get weary and overwhelmed.
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We're distracted easily by other things besides the race in front of us.
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The cares of this world, the good things, the shiny objects that draw our attention away.
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And so, though we see the Christian life set before us as a race, we recognize that we struggle in this race all the time.
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But there is encouragement in this passage for us today.
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There is encouragement for you as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ to focus your eyes on Christ and to run this race with endurance.
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All of us, all of you who have trusted in Christ for salvation have been born again to run this race of faith.
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And so, look with me at the central admonition of this text.
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It's in verse 2 of chapter 12.
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Sorry, at the end of verse 1.
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This is the central part of what he's saying here.
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Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
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The Christian life is described with many metaphors in the Bible.
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Sometimes as a struggle, as a fight.
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Often in these terms of athletics.
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The Greeks who would have received the New Testament first would have understood and thought of this in terms of the original Olympic Games.
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And even these Hebrews who lived in a Greek-influenced society would have understood these metaphors.
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So, the writers are taking abstract principles and putting them into concrete terms that they, and by extension, we can understand.
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But what exactly is this race? I want to define that from the outset.
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And I want to give you a longer quote from A.W.
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Pink who described this so clearly.
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He said, The race is that life of faith and obedience.
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That pursuit of personal holiness to which the Christian is called by God.
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Turning from sin and the world in penitence and trust to Christ is not the finishing post, but only the starting point.
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The Christian race begins at the new birth and ends not till we are summoned to leave this world.
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The prize to be run for is heavenly glory.
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The ground to be covered is our journey through this life.
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The track itself is set before us, marked out in the Word.
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The rules to be observed, the path which is to be traversed, the difficulties to be overcome, the dangers to be avoided, the source and secret of the needed strength are all revealed plainly in the Holy Scriptures.
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If we lose, the blame is entirely ours.
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If we succeed, the glory belongs to God alone.
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The prime thought suggested in the figure of running the race set before us is not that of speed, but of self-discipline.
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Wholehearted endeavor, the calling into action of every spiritual faculty possessed by the new man.
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That's a long quote, but it encapsulates this idea of what it means for us to be in a race.
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Everything we are, when we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, everything we are is transformed so that we can run this race.
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Your salvation is not the end of your life as a believer.
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It's merely the beginning.
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To be saved is to be set in the starting blocks of this race and to take off trusting in Christ for strength.
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And so, like the great Olympic athletes who've given up so much to be able to pursue gold, to pursue that thing that will be gone away one day, there are also many believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, many fellow brothers and sisters who have given up much for the sake of running this race.
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There's a story of five missionaries you might be familiar with.
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They were missionaries to the Huayrani Indians in Ecuador.
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And they went in the 1950s to reach this tribe of Indians who had never had contact with the outside world.
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They were known to the other tribes in the area as Alcas, which was their word for savage.
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And these savage Indians lived deep within the jungle and spent their days living by the spear.
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To grow up in this tribe was to learn and to know that you either lived by the spear or you would die by the spear.
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And so these men, becoming aware of this tribe of Indians and the fact that they had never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, set out to go and reach them.
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And these five men take their families, their wives and young children, and they move down and live nearby, and they begin to try and make contact.
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And through a providential series of events, a young lady comes out of the tribe, which hardly ever happened, and made it out alive.
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And so she can tell them a little bit about what this tribe is like.
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And these five men, Jim Elliott, Nate Saint, Pete Fleming, Ed McCulley, and Roger Udarian, they went and landed on the beach to make contact with these Indians after having some successful communication.
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And tragically, they were all killed by the spear of these men they went to reach.
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These men gave up their lives for the sake of running this race because they recognized that there was something worth more than even their very life.
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That running this race was bigger than themselves.
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And so, like these men, these modern martyrs we can read of, and their death sparked and ignited a flame in the missionary movement that led to many more thousands of missionaries going to the field and reaching new places with the Gospel.
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And just like them, this text starts with an encouragement for us of other men and women of the faith.
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And so as we look at verse 1, it begins saying, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses...
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Who are these cloud of witnesses that surround us? They are all of the men and women listed for us in Hebrews 11.
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And time this morning won't allow us to go into all of their stories, their wonderful stories of Old Testament saints, people like Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Rahab.
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Bible stories that we teach our children faithfully in Sunday school so that they grow up understanding these heroes of the faith.
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All of these, their story of faith is recounted for us, not so that we can look at them and say, Wow, those people were really amazing.
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That chapter in the Bible is frequently referred to as the Hall of Faith.
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But we miss the point if we put the emphasis on those people.
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You see, the glory about the Hall of Faith is not that those people were great.
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It's that God honored their faith.
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And by faith, He saved and used people who didn't deserve it.
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Because for all of the good stories we have about those people, if we read our Bible, we also recognize they failed.
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They were human.
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But those stories of faith do encourage us.
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We need to look back to those witnesses who give a testimony of a God who is faithful to His people.
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At the end of chapter 11, we read not only of those saints specifically, but of many thousands of martyrs, men and women who were beaten, and scourged, and even killed for their faith.
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Look at verse 35 of Hebrews chapter 11.
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It says, Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life.
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Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.
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They were stoned.
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They were sawn in two.
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They were killed with the sword.
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They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy.
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You see, not only these Old Testament saints, but through 2,000 years of church history, we have the testimony of men and women who ran this race with endurance to their death.
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Not men and women who couldn't escape their death, but literally men and women who ran into their death for the sake of their faith.
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That's how important this race is.
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And so, we as believers here in the 21st century, in America where if we're honest with ourselves, we're very comfortable, where although persecution is looming large, we don't see people every day here in our area beaten, and flogged, and killed for their faith.
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We need to read these stories and be encouraged by them.
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This cloud of witnesses helps us, encourages us, spurs us to get up and run the race before us.
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I have a brother who we met at the seminary whose family and church are from Nigeria.
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And I was blessed to meet this brother in a class and help him with some things.
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And over time, he began to tell me stories of his home church in northern Nigeria.
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And where his church is, is the primary center of operation for Boko Haram.
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And they don't get as much press in the news, but they're actually more deadly than all of the other terrorist groups around.
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And they target Christians for their faith.
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And so, this brother tells me of men and women at his church being killed, suffering bombing attacks as they leave church after a worship gathering.
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Over the past three years, he's been in Louisville studying so that he can go back and train other pastors and teach and encourage them.
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They've lost thousands of people to death.
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And the stories, they're heartbreaking, they're tragic.
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But they help you to realize that there are still around the world men and women who are running this race of faith, who are being saved by God and professing the name of Jesus Christ, knowing that it is signing their death certificate.
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There is immense value in running this race.
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The final part of chapter 11 tells us in verses 39 and 40 that we have a greater testimony.
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It says, And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.
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So this great cloud of witnesses, they are a tremendous testimony and encouragement to us.
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I encourage you this year, in this new year, find a biography of a great Christian and read it this year.
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It will inflame your faith.
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But they are not the highest and greatest witness to us.
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And so being encouraged by this cloud of witnesses to run, the text tells us how should we run.
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How should we run? The first thing it says to us is Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.
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Olympic athletes, especially in the ancient Olympic Games, would strip down, take off as much clothing as possible.
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In fact, for many years they ran in the nude so that nothing would tangle them up.
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Nowadays we have modern technology and you see some of our athletes are putting on more clothes that are specially designed to help them go faster, jump higher, go longer.
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There's millions of dollars spent to help them do this.
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To unencumber them so that they can run this race.
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And the first weight that is upon us is the weight of sin.
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You recognize that in a race, the race of faith that we're called to, sin is almost like a hurdle before us.
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It's a stumbling block.
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Sin is something that trips us up and causes us to fall.
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It slows us down.
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David wrote in Psalm 38 about his sin and he said, For my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden there, too heavy for me.
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And you know that feeling, don't you? You know that feeling of sin in your life.
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Because when we indulge sin, it's very difficult for us to look to God.
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It's very difficult for us to trust in Christ when we're running to the sin that He has set us free from.
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We feel shame and guilt.
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We want to hide in the corner and back away.
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And we become ineffective.
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That sin takes our run of faith and turns it into maybe a jog of faith.
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Or we trip over a hurdle and we're just laying on the ground injured and broken.
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You see, we do suffer much affliction because of sin in the world in general, but sometimes we bring pain and difficulties on ourselves because sin has consequences.
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That weight of sin weighs us down and prevents us from running the race as we should.
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We must deal with our sin in order to run freely.
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But this text describes also something else.
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It says, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.
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So what is this weight in the text? The weight that's referred to.
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These aren't sinful things.
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These are things that we could call morally neutral.
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They're perhaps good things, but they're things that pile onto us and burden us down and make us heavier so that we can't run the race that's set before us.
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There are many, many, many good things in this life and we are privileged because of where we live to enjoy the vast majority of them.
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But everything in our life becomes to us either a weight that burdens us down or a wing that lifts us up.
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And sometimes we find ourselves so encumbered by the many good things of this life that aren't necessarily sinful, but they're dragging us down and they're holding us back and they're diverting our attention from running after Christ to getting all these things.
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And again, many of them are good things.
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I'm not telling you that we should go live a monastic life where we don't have anything and we don't drink soda.
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There's not a list of things I can give you.
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It would be easier for us, right? What we want is a legalistic list of these things are acceptable and these things are going to hold you back.
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You have to assess for yourself in your life.
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All of the things you do.
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All of the activities you participate in.
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All of the relationships you have.
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All of the things you own.
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Are they helping you in your race of faith? Are they setting you free to run? Are they encouraging you? Are they building up your strength so that you can run this race? Or are they actually holding you back? Are they dragging you down? Sometimes things that are wrapped in the guise of being a good thing can actually be weights for us, right? Work is a good thing, right? God calls us to work and to earn and to provide for our families.
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Work is a good thing.
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And you should do well at your work.
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The Bible tells us that we should work as unto the Lord and not for men.
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So as Christians, we should be hard workers who do a great job.
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People should be delighted to employ us because we go above and beyond and always make sure that we give at least as much, if not more, in return than what we receive.
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But that next promotion at work, that next tier, is not always necessarily a good thing for you.
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Now that is unpopular advice by our culture standard.
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Because our culture says that the greatest good, the highest thing that we're all called to is to achieve and to receive rewards for ourselves and to make more money so we can have more things.
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Because our culture believes that's how you find happiness and joy and fulfillment.
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But it's not always good.
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If that next promotion takes you away from your family more, takes you away from your church, limits your ability to run after God in this life, it's not a good thing.
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It's a weight.
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And we have to viciously examine our lives and cast off these weights that drag us down.
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Runners at the highest level will do anything to eliminate a few grams of weight.
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They have special fabrics that are made to cut through the air.
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Do we apply that same level of diligence and desire to our lives to see how we can eliminate weights so that we can be freed up to run faster, to do more? That's what this text is encouraging us to today.
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He tells us to run laying aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely.
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And then he says this, let us run with endurance.
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Sometimes this word is translated patience.
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Patience.
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Endurance.
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Patient endurance.
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Keeping on.
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You see, the Christian life for most of us is not a sprint.
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It is not being saved and then giving a one big blast all out effort and then it's over.
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You've reached some magical level of sanctification.
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You're good with God.
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You don't have to try anymore.
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Whether you're young or old in here today, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are still in the race.
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It doesn't end in this life.
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It doesn't end when you retire from work.
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It doesn't end for you when you reach some level of biblical knowledge.
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It is a race of endurance.
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We have to endure and race and run when our circumstances are really difficult.
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And for most of us, we feel this weight.
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We find ourselves in challenging situations where life has gotten the better of us, we feel.
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And we're down and we feel like we can't run.
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And so perhaps we pray to God and say, God, please free me from these circumstances so that I can run again.
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I want to run.
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But here's the reality in what Scripture teaches us.
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You have to run even during difficult circumstances.
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You have to continue to run the race of faith.
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And it shows us and teaches us how much we have to rely on our brothers and sisters in Christ and on the Spirit to strengthen us for that run.
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But you have to continue to run when times are tough.
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God does not always in His providence remove from us difficult circumstances.
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But He is always faithful.
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Look back at that cloud of witnesses.
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Many of them suffered through really difficult circumstances.
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But the whole book tells us that God is faithful.
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Here's the more challenging part I think.
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You have to run when circumstances are good.
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When things are good, you have to keep running.
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We have a tendency in our culture, in our Americanized version of Christianity, we have a tendency to think that when things are good, we don't need God.
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We have this self-reliance within us.
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I fight against this all the time.
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When things aren't bad, I don't pray as much.
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And I don't feel like I have to run because right now things are smooth.
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The water's not choppy.
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But it's just as important, it's vital for us to run when things are good.
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You know, an athlete in a race will take advantage of the fact that there are hills up and down.
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And knowing that they run slower as they're running up a hill, when they come to a downhill portion, they run faster and take advantage of that downhill so they can make up some time.
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And so when circumstances are good in your life, when God has shined on you in a glorious, calm, and easy providence, that's the time to run even harder.
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That's the time to take the blessings that God has poured out on you and use them in service of others.
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So running along is our constant call.
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Whether things are good or things are bad.
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The Christian life does not give any room for coasting.
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There's no static position in the Christian life.
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If you are not running after God and running the race of fate set before you, you are falling away.
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You are stumbling.
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You are tripping.
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Our run so quickly becomes a crawl when we stop thinking about it and stop putting forth effort towards it.
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There are many hundreds of things vying for our attention in this life.
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Things that we set our eyes on.
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And it tends to be that whatever we look most at, we become like.
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You've seen this in your life.
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If you have children, you watch them, and they become their examples, right? The other children that they're around, the words that they hear they start to say, the mannerisms they pick up.
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Human beings are mimetic.
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That means we mimic.
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We naturally mimic the things we see and look at.
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And so in this life, there are so many things for us to look at.
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We have our bank accounts to look at to see how we're doing.
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It's a measure we use of success and comfort in this life.
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We have our children to look at.
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We look to them for joy and happiness.
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We look at the television and watch whatever's going on in the world and celebrities, movies, all those things.
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We look at our cell phones, right? These tiny, surgically implanted objects in our palms.
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We look at them all day.
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And whatever we fix our gaze upon, we start to become like it.
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We are dominated by the things that we see.
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And so, here's the glory of this text.
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Everything I've told you to do so far.
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Casting off sin.
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Casting off weight.
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Running with endurance.
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Here's the punchline.
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You can't do that.
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You can't muster up enough strength in yourself to do that.
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We're not disciplined enough.
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We're not built that way.
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We're broken.
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And so we need something else.
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We need something else to help us run this race set before us.
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And that's the beauty of verse 2.
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We're told, run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
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You see, the only way we can run is to fix our eyes on Jesus Christ.
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To look to Him for strength.
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To look to Him to deal with our sin.
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And so we look to Jesus first for that reason.
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We look to Him for salvation from our sin.
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It tells us in this text that for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.
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He endured the cross to make a payment for sin that was yours and mine.
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He endured the cross because we who were in rebellion to God needed a Savior.
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And God's love for us was such that He gave up His Son, who came and endured the most brutal punishment that we deserved on our behalf.
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And so, if you're here this morning and you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're not even in this race that we've been talking about yet.
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You're not on the starting blocks.
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You must look to Christ in faith for salvation.
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You cannot put away your sin by your own strength.
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The penalty for sin is death.
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And it's a death that if you die apart from Christ, you will endure eternal punishment for.
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But God in His love and mercy for us sent His Son Jesus to die in our place to pay the penalty for our sins.
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And so, you must look to Christ for salvation.
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The only way to be freed from that weight of sin is through Christ.
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But beyond that, like I said earlier, our salvation isn't the ending point.
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It's the starting point of our race of faith.
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We have to continue to look to Christ.
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We look to Christ for our sanctification, for our growth in grace.
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You see, like I said, what we look at, we become like.
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And so if we look intently into the perfect Son of God, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, if we look at Him with all of our beings, if we fix our eyes on Him alone, we grow in conformity to the image of Jesus Christ.
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By the Holy Spirit's work in our life, we grow.
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But it doesn't happen automatically.
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Now, we fully affirm that God is the One who saves and sanctifies us.
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It is not a work that we can do.
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We rely on God to do it.
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But that does not mean that you can lay idly by and expect this to happen.
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You see, when God by His Spirit shows us grace and makes us alive in Christ, He frees us from the chains of sin so that we can look at Him and keep running.
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So we have to look to Him for sanctification.
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You go where your eyes look.
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Drive a car.
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If you want to test this, find a big open field, drive down, look at something.
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You will end up where you look.
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And so where we fix our eyes is vitally important.
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This word, look, here, it's fuller than just our English word for look.
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That means look.
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And I have direct primary vision, and I also have peripheral vision.
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So when I say look at something, I can see many things.
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I can see all of you in this room right now.
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But this is a look that means everything else fades away.
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And so this look to Jesus is the look that helps us cast off those weights, those other things that drag us down.
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This is the manner in which we grow to know what things we should put aside.
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You see, like I said, we don't have a list.
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It's not that simple.
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But if we look to Christ and filter every thought through the idea that we are running an enduring race of faith towards Jesus Christ with Him as both our example and our goal, then everything falls into perspective.
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And it becomes very easy to make these decisions, but only with our eyes fixed on Christ.
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Finally, we look to Jesus for strength because the command to run with endurance is again not something we can follow on our own.
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If you're going to keep running when things are hard, and you're going to keep running when things are going well, you're going to have to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus for strength.
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You're not going to find strength anywhere else but in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And His example is laid before us in this text.
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For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
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You see, Jesus is the example of what it means to run with endurance.
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He came in flesh and spent every moment of His life perfectly obeying the will of God the Father.
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And through obedience, He was glorified.
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And now He's seated at the right hand of God.
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There's an end to the race.
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There's an end to the race, and it's heavenly glory.
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It's where we are with God, face to face, worshiping Him forever, which will not feel like a weight.
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It will feel like freedom.
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It's what we were created to do.
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But this life is hard.
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It really is.
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Pain and sickness and death and evil in this world beat us down.
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And if you start to focus on those things instead of Christ, you'll stop running.
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You'll stumble.
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We have an example in Jesus Christ, and we have a great high priest in Christ.
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You see, the fact that He's seated at the right hand of God is not unimportant.
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It's vital in this text.
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It tells us that His work has been accomplished for us, that our salvation and our sanctification are secure in Christ.
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We read elsewhere in Hebrews that He forever lives to intercede on our behalf.
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Jesus is interceding for you to run this race of faith.
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Corrie Ten Boom is fairly well known.
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She endured great difficulties in the Nazi concentration camps, and she wrote this, If you look at the world, you'll be distressed.
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If you look within, you'll be depressed.
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But if you look at Christ, you'll be at rest.
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You see, it sounds perhaps like I'm telling you that you have to work harder.
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And I don't want you to hear that this morning.
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I want you to know that the most freedom and the most rest you will find in this life is running full speed after Christ.
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Casting aside all of the other things that don't matter.
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Our lives are to be lived with one singular purpose in mind.
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I want to look quickly at a passage in Philippians as we prepare to close.
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Philippians 3.
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Another very popular text that speaks to what we're talking about in v.
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13 of Philippians 3.
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He says, Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
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Forgetting what's behind.
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Forgetting what's beside.
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Only pressing on to the goal of the high calling in Jesus.
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That is the life of a believer.
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It's a full speed run towards Christ.
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It's an enduring sprint.
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Not a short sprint.
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Only when we set our eyes and singularly focus on this one thing do we find true freedom from trying to live as this world wants us to live.
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From trying to find fulfillment in things that will never give you fulfillment.
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We need that singular purpose.
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Jim Elliott, one of the missionaries I talked about earlier who died in Ecuador at the hands of those Indians.
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He wrote in his journal a couple of years before he went to Ecuador this famous line, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
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So as I've encouraged you this morning to cast off things, the things we're talking about are things that you cannot keep.
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And what I'm encouraging you to gain is an eternal glory, true reward, real value in heaven with God.
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A reward that involves well done, my good and faithful servant.
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A reward at the finish line we get to keep.
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C.T.
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Studd wrote these famous two lines, Only one life will soon be passed.
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Only what's done for Christ will last.
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Everything else is invaluable.
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It doesn't have real value.
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The things of this life will be gone.
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And so I urge you in this new year, assess your life.
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Run with endurance looking to Jesus Christ.
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He's the founder and perfecter of our faith.
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Cast off things that are of little temporary value and look only to Jesus Christ.
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He's the one who can save you, He can sanctify you, and He can see you through to the end.
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Let's pray.