Running Our Course in 2016

Well, let me invite you, this morning to turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 12, Hebrews chapter 12 for our time of study in the word this morning. if there's any passage that I find myself thinking about more than any other over the span of the New Year's week, it is Hebrews 12. Every year, I, I go back to this passage and meditate on it afresh, and, and what I wanna do this morning is to take a break from Genesis and just, share some meditations from Hebrews chapter 12 verses 1 and, 2 with the time that we have, this morning.

If you want to give a title to the message, it would be Running Our Course in 2016.

Running Our Course in 2016. let me start with this. Walter Payton, is a name that might be familiar to some of you, was one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. over the length of his career, he ran for 16,726 yards, which is actually the second highest in NFL.

History, and he averaged 4.4 yards a carry, which is just absolutely remarkable. What that means if you configure it differently, is that throughout the course of his career in the NFL, Walter Payton ran for a total of 9.5 miles. And he got knocked down every 4.4 yards of that 9.5 mile journey. That's getting tackled over 3000 times.

Imagine running a 9.5 mile course, running from here to the Tyler Mall, for example. And getting tackled every 4.5 yards. Getting back up, running another 4.5 yards, and getting tackled again and again and again, the entire journey as you're running to the Tyler Mall. If such a course were set before you, would you run it?

Would you run it? Would you run that course? Walter Payton did, and he ran it with attitude. His motto was never die easy, which meant that he never got tackled without a fight.

One writer says it this way. He says one thing that Walter Payton rarely did is run out of bounds. Instead, he would lower his shoulder and deliver a blow of his own, always trying to make defenders pay for attempting to bring him down. Peyton played the game with the attitude that if he was going to get hit at the end of the play, he was going to dish out a little punishment of his own, something to make the defender remember him the next time they met.

Walter Payton ran his 9.5 mile course, and he ran it with attitude throughout the 13 years that he was in the NFL. He ran it with the attitude actually that we need to run our course. With the attitude actually that the writer of Hebrews is seeking to instill in his readers in Hebrews chapter 12. And I wanna just read to you, we're just gonna look at verses 1 and 2, but I wanna read verses 1 through 4 to you as we get started this morning.

Listen to what he says. He says, therefore, having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, and lay us laying aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, let us run with. Endurance, the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself so that you will not grow discouraged and lose heart.

You have not resisted to the point of shedding blood, and you're striving against sin. This is the word of God and may God help us this morning to understand what His Spirit has to say to us through His word. It might interest you to know. That the Greek word that is translated race in this passage is the Greek word ago.

Agone, which is the word we get our English word agony from. A word like this speaks of the agony of exertion, and in a context like this, it includes the agony of actually striving against opposition that is set against us. In fact, the wordone is translated elsewhere in the New Testament as fight. For example, in 1 Timothy 6:12, Paul tells Timothy to fight the good fight, and the word translated fight, the noun fight at the end of that quote that you see on the screen is the Greek word ago.

Literally, Paul is saying to Timothy, agonize the good agony in that passage. And this is consistent with the context of Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 4, the last verse that I read, the writer speaks of his readers striving against sin. They're on a race, and it involves them striving against sin. And the word striving is the Greek wordone with the prefix anti attached to it.

The combination of these two words amounts to the word from which we get our word antagonism from. The use of Aon in verse 4 demonstrates that part of the agony that we encounter on our course is the agony of striving against sin and against sinners from without. And striving against sin from within as we seek to run the course that God has set before us. From this language alone, we learned that the course that God has set before us to run in Christ is not some obstacle-free racetrack with straight lines and a neat environment for us to run upon.

It is a course that features many obstacles. And influences that will get in our way, and that will push against us and seek to retard our progress and push us back in the opposite direction. These forces will seek to tackle us. That's the course that is set for us to run.

Let's think about the course that is, is set before us, before we look into the passage. We're told that this course is, this race, this Argone is set. Before us, which means that we don't set it before ourselves. It means that we don't get to choose our course, it is chosen for us.

And there's much about our ago or course or race that we all as believers in Jesus have in common. For all of us who know Christ, our course is to pursue Jesus and to pursue holiness, and to strive to do the most good, and to do all that God has called us to do in Christ, and to grow in grace and to be transformed into the people that God has saved us to be. This, these things we all have in common. And yet at the same time, there are aspects of our course that are unique to each person.

If you're married with children, your course involves different responsibilities than that of a 17 year old single person in their senior year of high school. Your course involves pursuing holiness in the context of marriage and parenting, whereas the 17 year old's course involves their pursuit of holiness as a high school student approaching graduation. Our course, our courses are different in other ways also. Perhaps your course in 2016.

involves a new chapter in your life in which you are embarking on a new venture that is filled with unique challenges. For some of you, your course this year may involve another year of schooling or dealing with life after graduation with all of its opportunities and, and challenges. Your course in 2016 might involve a cancer diagnosis for you or for somebody. that you love or some physical condition.

that you will need to live with. Your course might involve dealing with painful issues that confront right now, you and your spouse in the context of your marriage relationship. It may be very particular trials that will be in your life that you have to face, that maybe other people aren't facing those kinds of trials. Your course might involve particular sin struggles.

That you have to face, which other people don't have to face in exactly the same way. None of us choose these obstacles that come against us, but they are a part of the course providentially that is set before us to run. And no two courses are exactly alike. Does that make sense?

Johnny Erickson, just think about her, for example. She did not choose every aspect of her course. She believed in Jesus and she chose to follow him and she's running the race, but one fine day in 1967, she dove into the waters of Chesapeake Bay and broke her neck as a 17-year-old. And in the days and the months that followed her accident, she struggled with depression, and with anger and with suicidal thoughts.

But over time, she worked through her doubts and began to discover and embrace the course that God was setting before her to run. Her course is not one that she would have chosen for herself, but it's the one that God set before her. And she has obeyed Hebrews 12, and she has run her course and run it well. The readers of the book of Hebrews did not like their course.

It didn't turn out to be as problem-free as they thought at the outset. From the language that is used in Hebrews 12, we can infer that they were growing weary. And losing heart. They were experiencing persecution and experiencing painful circumstances.

They were tired of the battle. Read later in Hebrews 12, you see that their hands were limp, their knees were weak, and they were fainting with regard to the course that was set before them. In fact, they were considering abandoning their course altogether, and returning to their former life in Judaism. They stood in need of motivation, they stood in need of direction, just as we do today as we stand here just past the threshold of a brand new year.

The writer of Hebrews speaks to them, and he speaks to us, and from what he says in verses 1 and 2, what I wanna do is observe seven things that we should do with the course that God sets before us. Or another way of saying it is 7 ways that we should run. The course that God sets before us this year. Number one, we need to run our course, however it is set before us.

We need to run our course however it is set before us. Let us run, the writer of Hebrews says the race that is set before us. Notice the word run. The writer of Hebrews is challenging his readers to run this ago rather than to walk this course.

Both walking and running involve putting 1 ft in front of the other, right? And making forward progress. But when a person runs, he's putting 1 ft in front of the other more quickly, and his stride is longer. It takes more commitment to run than it does to walk.

Running by its very nature is more aggressive than walking. And in calling us to run, the writer of Hebrews is telling us that it's not enough to simply be on the right path. We need to be making forward progress on the right path, and it's not even enough to be making forward progress on the right path. We need to do so quickly.

With as quick and as long of a stride as possible so that we can make progress as swiftly as possible on the course that God has set before us. Guys, this is how we meet the opposing forces. That come against us. We meet them in a full sprint.

We don't stand still waiting for the enemy to come to us. And we don't even walk up to our enemy. We meet our enemy in a full sprint. And we meet force with force.

When I was young, I played football for 6 years and one of the things that I, a little physics lesson I learned is that if I was fearful and let someone hit me, it generally would hurt. But if I was running at them and hit them harder than they were hitting me, it felt good. and that's the way we need to be. That's the attitude that we need to have on this gun that God has given to us to run.

We meet our enemy in a full sprint. The writer of Hebrews points us, he doesn't just tell us to run, but he says run the course that is set before us. He points to your course that is set before you, with the things that we all have in common, but also those unique things about your particular course. He points to that course and says, run it.

Run the race that is set before you. Which course do I run? you ask. He answers, run the course that is set before you.

So to obey this command means to stop sitting around. And waiting for God to give you another course that is more to your liking. It means to stop waiting for God to change something about your course, or to remove some obstacle from your course. It also means to stop looking at other people's courses, and envying the course that they get to run.

Sometimes we think, man, if I, if I had that person's course, I would run that really well. Meanwhile, we sit around and refuse to make progress on the course that God has set before us. Here's the problem with that. At the judgment, guys, you and I are not gonna be held to account by God for how well we would have run somebody else's course.

We will be judged based on how we ran the course that he set before us. So whatever your course may be this year, obstacles and all, painful circumstances and all, run it with all your might. Don't just tolerate your course or cope with your course, run your course with all of your might. Don't walk it, run it with everything.

That's in you. That's not all. Yes, we should run the course that has been set before us, but how should we run it? And this brings us to the next point, which tells us the next thing we must do with the course that is set before us.

And that is, we need to run it together. We need to run our course together. The writer of Hebrews says in verse one, let us run. If you truly want to obey this passage, you don't just pick up and start running by yourself.

That's not the vibe here in this passage. The call of this passage is not to run in isolation from other people. The language of this instruction implies togetherness. If I came over to your house and I said, let's run.

Let us run. You would understand that I myself am wanting to run, and I'm inviting you to run together with me, right? And that's exactly how the writer of Hebrews is wanting his readers to understand him. The writer of Hebrews is himself running this race, and he is beckoning his readers to join him.

And to join with one another in running this race together. Let us run, he says. Let us run together is the basic vibe of this passage. The writer of Hebrews is serious in this book.

About us running together. This is why in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 24 and 25, he challenges us to consider how to stimulate one another to love and to good deeds, and to not be forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. This is why in Hebrews chapter 3 verse 13, he exhorts us to be encouraging one another daily, while it is still called today. He wants us to run and to run our course together.

He wants us to run in a pack, so that we can mutually minister to one another as we run. Evidently, God has designed all of our courses in such a way that we run our course best when we run in the company of other brothers and sisters, and we are stimulating and exhorting one another to love and to good deeds while we run. And so think about that here at the beginning of a new year. Let's, let's do a better job of running together.

This year. Here at Cornerstone, there are a number of venues where we can gather with others for the purpose of fellowship and mutual ministry, Sunday school and the morning service that you guys are all at right now are just two of such venues. Be a part of a care group this year if you're not already a part of a care group and run together this year with the members of that group. Reach out to others in your care group and beyond your care group who need prayer and help.

Move toward those brothers and sisters who are in the clutches of sin and help them to run in freedom from sin. Seek out help for yourself. When that is what you need. Take advantage of the ladies' Bible studies and the man forums and the men's leadership meetings.

Many opportunities, the, the youth group meetings, you see those listed in the bulletin, get together at every opportunity you can with your brothers and sisters in Christ, both formally and informally. According to Hebrews 3:13, It's evident that apparently, we need encouragement daily, right? And I would just ask you, are you, you running your race in such a way that you are receiving and giving encouragement daily to your brothers and sisters in the Lord? Run the race and community.

With others. But you say, Pastor Milton, I'd love to do that, but this race thing, thisone is so hard. this Argone is agonizing. Well, you should have known that by the word he chose, Argone, when he said run this.

but that leads me to the next point, which brings us to the third thing that we must do with the course that God has set for us, and that is to run our course with endurance. With endurance. He says, let us run with endurance. This word endurance means to remain under.

It has the idea of not giving up, of persisting when the going gets tough, of staying with something even when the going is hard or frustrating or the desired outcome is not coming at all or as quickly as you would desire. if you've never run the race before, you just got saved 5 minutes ago, and you're being told you got a race to run, and you, you read someone telling you, you got to run with endurance, that right there is a, should alert you to the fact that this is gonna be a difficult gun, a difficult course to run that's gonna require endurance.

On your part where you're gonna have to stay at it in those moments where you will wish that you could drop out and quit. Maybe you have been running your course, or you did at one point, but you've stopped.

Maybe you are discouraged by what a poor runner you have proven yourself to be. Maybe you're not doing as good of a job at running this race thing. As you thought you would do. I think all of us who've known the Lord any longer than A month, are disappointed in how we've run the race, right?

I thought when I was 19, I would have done such a better job. Then I see that I have done as I look back as a 51 year old. Maybe you've tripped and fallen more times than you can count and you feel like quitting for that reason. Guys, I just wanna encourage you that whatever you do, don't let your failures.

Cause you to give up and stop running. Take encouragement from Proverbs 24:16, where Solomon says, a righteous man falls. I love that. A righteous man falls 7 times and gets back up again.

Based on Solomon's statement, we can say that the true measure of a person is not determined by where he falls, but by where he lies. True righteousness is not the absence of any failure. True righteousness involves getting back up after failure and keeping at it. If you've already broken some godly New Year's resolution that you have made.

In fact, I remember years ago, On New Year's Day, reading a devotional from Charles Spurgeon. And he said something to this effect, tomorrow is blood red with the murder of fair resolutions. That was such a discouraging thing to read on New Year's Day. Thanks, buddy.

but that's true, is it not? if you've already broken some godly, noble New Year's resolution, then what that means now you get to do this beautiful thing called repentance. Repent and fly to Christ. Confess your sins to Him.

He will be delighted, thrilled to forgive you. Get back into God's word and into the disciplines of grace and keep running, keep pumping your legs and running forward. Run with endurance and when you stumble and fall, get back up and never stop getting back up. Run with endurance.

That's not all we need to do with the course that is set before us. Yes, we should run it. Yes, we should run it in community with others. Yes, we should run it with endurance, but we should do 1/4 thing and that is we should run our course with a sense of history, with a sense of history.

The command that the writer of Hebrews gives us, let us run is preceded by the words, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us. In other words, the writer of Hebrews wants us to run with an awareness that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. And who are these witnesses? Well, it's all the people that he has just spoken about in Hebrews chapter 11.

It's Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Sarah, and Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, and all of the prophets. If you read through Hebrews 11, And you look at the list of people mentioned in that chapter, you see that these are people who ran the course that was set before them. And some of their courses were truly epic. And some of their courses involved the saints overcoming in tremendous ways.

And yet some of these courses ran these individuals straight into the business end of a sharp blade that left them sawn in half. or beheaded. All of their courses involve them facing tremendous opposition and conflict. But they ran the course that was set before them.

And in the process, they furthered God's redemptive plan in human history, and they now hand the baton to you. And you have a course that is set before you to run. Run your course, run your course. With a sense of appreciation that you are merely one individual in a very long chain throughout redemptive history, who have faced similar challenges.

Let men like Abel and Abraham and Moses, and Noah and the others in Hebrews 11 testify to you of the faithfulness of God. Imagine the rest that they are enjoying right now in glory, having crossed the finish line. Let them bear witness to you, of the power of faith. And of the faithfulness of God.

Another thing that you think about when you read Hebrews 11 regarding this cloud of witnesses. Is that you note that these individuals, most of them listed were as notable for their failures as they were for their faith. Noah is listed in Hebrews 11, he was a man of great faith, and yet he got drunk and his sons had to witness him in a shameful moment of drunkenness. Moses was a man of great faith, yet he lost his temper.

With the people of Israel and thus was disqualified from being able to enter the Land of Promise. Abraham was a man of great faith, yet he lied to kings to protect his hide, and he also had sexual relations with his wife's handmaiden in order to help God fulfill his promise. David was a man of faith, yet he committed adultery with Bathsheba. Samson was a man who stumbled.

And failed in colossal ways, and he suffered massive consequences as a result of his sins. Sarah laughed when she heard the promise being spoken that she would be having a child at that point next year, that she would be pregnant by that point. She didn't believe God at first. She laughed at the promise of God.

But then she believed, and she conceived, and she gave birth to a son. And she named him Yitzhak. what that means? Laughter.

Laughter. But one of the things we learned from Hebrews 11 is that we don't, we don't have to be perfect in order to make it into the hall of faith. Hebrews 11 is not the hall of perfection. It's the Hall of faith.

It's the hall of imperfect people who had faith in a perfect God. And their faith never died. These men and women stumbled and they fell in various ways, yet they got back onto their feet and they clung tenaciously to the grace and the power of God and they kept on running the course. Believing in God.

And these are the witnesses. These are the witnesses sitting in the stands surrounding you and me today, and their testimony encourages us to run. Our course with faith. And to run it with endurance.

There's something else this passage tells us that we need to do with the course that is set before us, and that brings us to our next point. And that is, I don't know, a simpler way to say this, we need to run it lean. In verse one, the writer of Hebrews. preceding the command, let us run, he says, laying aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, let us run.

He tells us that the race we are to run is an ago, meaning it's agonizing, but guys, we often make the race more agonizing than it sometimes needs to be because we try to run with so many encumbrances. And sometimes these encumbrances are sins. Sometimes they're not necessarily sinful things, but they serve to slow us down nonetheless. Here's the deal.

The devil will do everything in his power to keep you from running this course. But if he cannot succeed in preventing you from running this course, he will do everything he can to weigh you down. With as many things as possible. He'll start handing you stuff saying, hey, as you run, take this with you.

Put this backpack on. Here, put this on your shoulders. Here, can you pull this wagon for me while you run? And he'll weigh you down.

He'll weigh you down with anxieties that are tied to the cares of this world and the things that money can buy. He'll weigh you down with guilt and with condemnation. He'll weigh you down with doubts. He'll weigh you down with possessions and with the entertainments and the distractions of this world that are of no eternal value.

All such things make our race actually harder. They leave us worn out more quickly, and they keep us from charging against the enemy with the full speed that we're actually capable of. If we traveled lighter, We could actually run faster. And the writer of Hebrews says to his readers and to us to lay aside anything that encumbers us and slows us down.

He's observing these readers, and he knows they're discouraged, they're losing heart, they're frustrated. They're not running as well as they thought. It's not going as well as they thought, and he's looking at them and he's like, part of the problem is you've got your hands full of so many things. Of course, you're not gonna run well.

Put the stuff down. The writer of Hebrews also tells us that we should run laying aside. Every sin that so easily entangles us, to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us. Notice the word laying aside, you might want to mark that in your text, implied in the command to lay aside is the fact that the readers were evidently holding on.

To certain sins. You cannot lay aside something that you're not holding on to, right? So evidently the readers of this letter were trying to run while holding on to certain darling sins, and the writer of Hebrews is telling them to let those sins go and to put them down. He describes what they need to put down as the sin that so easily entangles us.

In other words, the sins that we hold on to, And hold close to ourselves, those are the sins that so easily trip us up. He's actually educating his readers as to why they're tripping so often. They're being tripped up by the sins that they're clutching onto. And he says to them in this passage, quit trying to run the race while clutching on the sin and holding it so closely to your person.

Put your sins down and run without them. You'll be OK. You don't need those sins. Put them down and run the race without these sins in your grasp.

They're only gonna trip you up and make your life harder. Not easier. Some of us as we think about the road ahead, we can't imagine the road ahead without the sins that are our pet sins. It's a frightening thing.

The writer of Hebrews says, put them down, put them down. And then run free of these sins. You'll be OK. All in all, if we are to run the race well, we need to declare war against sin.

We should make no compromise with sin. As one writer says, blessed is the man who has made no inner truce with sin. But we're good at that, aren't we? We make our little truces with sin.

And allow it in our life to some degree and as long as it doesn't get out of hand, we're OK. No truce. No truce with sin. Put the sins down and run free of them.

We should hate sin and seek to remove it from our lives swiftly and without mercy so that we can run the race free of such things. what? If you got sin in your life, I'm not here to beat you up. Repent of those things, repentance is a beautiful thing.

Come to God, repent of those sins and say to God, I'm wanting to lay these aside, help me God, to lay these sins aside. And that's, that's a prayer that God would love to help you with. Run this course lean. That's not all we should do as we run the race that is set before us.

There's a 6th thing we need to do. That is we need to run our course. Looking at Christ. We need to run our course looking at Christ.

He says, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. It it's interesting, the writer of Hebrews does not, he's not just calling upon us to fix our eyes on Jesus. He's calling upon us to run while fixing our eyes on Jesus. He's telling us how to run.

If you just sit around and you're not making forward progress and you're just staring at Jesus, you're not doing what the writer of Hebrews is calling you to do. He's telling you to run, and while you run, be staring at Jesus. And the Greek here lit, literally the word fixing our eyes, it's literally means looking away from all else, fix your gaze exclusively. Upon him To look to Jesus involves looking away from those things that you tend to look to for guidance and for encouragement.

Fix your eyes upon Him. We are to run our course with our eyes always upon Jesus. He is our compass and he is our guide. He is our North Star.

He's the ultimate source of the encouragement and the perspective that we need. Been thinking about this thought this week, like, like there's an encouraging fact, an encouraging reality that lies underneath this command. And that encouraging fact is that our course, no matter where it takes us, will never take us to a place where Christ is not in view. If he says, run your course, looking at Jesus, that must mean that wherever my course leads, Jesus will always be in my line of sight.

Nothing will ever separate me from him, and nothing will ever be able to prevent me from beholding him. However tough my course may be, in 2016, God has designed my course in such a way that Christ is always in view. That's encouraging, right? Just two really quick examples.

In Acts 7, we see that Stephen's course led him to a place where he was standing before the Sanhedrin, who hated him so much that they're going to end up stoning him in a few moments. And yet in that awful moment of standing before the murderous hatred of the members of the Sanhedrin, That's where his course took him. Stephen from that point was able to look up and say, behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Evidently being in front of the Sanhedrin wasn't such a bad place to be, because Stephen could see Jesus from there.

The apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos for his faith, and yet while he's there in this place of exile, he saw a revelation of Jesus Christ that he records for all of us in the book of Revelation. So, obviously Patmos was not such a bad place to be. That's where his course took him, but from that location, he was still able to see Jesus from there. So here's one thing we can know for certain.

Whatever my course may involve and wherever it may take me in 2016 and beyond, it will never take me to a place where Jesus is not fully in my line of sight. And when you think about it, isn't that enough? Isn't that enough? So what if we lose our home?

And all of our possessions if Jesus is in view. So what if we lose our health? So long as Jesus is in view. So what if our church undergoes persecution?

So long as through all of that, Jesus is in view. Observe how the writer of Hebrews describes Christ. He says, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. He's giving us here stuff to look at.

And to meditate upon Jesus is the beginning and the end of our faith. He had a course to run and he ran his course, even though his course took him straight to the cross where he suffered and died. Christ knew the course that was set before him, and he knew that it would take him straight to the cross. Yet you read the Gospels and you see that he marched relentlessly to Jerusalem, telling his disciples, I'm gonna suffer and I'm going to die.

And he set his face like a flint and marched toward Jerusalem with a haste and a determination that was so great that his disciples, the text says, marveled. At him. Yet, Jesus did halt. In the Garden of Gethsemane.

Kneeling in agony and sweating, as it were great drops of blood, Christ asked the Father that if it's possible, could you remove this cup from me? In other words, Jesus is looking at theon set before him. And he's saying to the father, if it's possible, could you give me another gun? To run The father basically replied saying there is no other course.

That will result in the salvation. Of those who believe in you. And so Christ in that moment embraced his course. And he ran it straight to the cross and through the cross to glory.

Christ was willing to endure the cross. The text says, because he had his eyes fixed on the joy that was set before him. This joy was so great. That the text here says that he was able to despise the shame.

what that means? That he was able to look at the shame of the cross and count it as nothing. He was so fixed on the joy that was set before him that the cross, all of its suffering, all of its shame, he viewed that as nothing in comparison to the joy that was set before him. And what was that joy?

It was the joy of being where he is right now, at the right hand of God in the highest place of honor and relationship with the Father imaginable. And it was the joy of him being there and bringing many sons and daughters to glory with him. Christ was staring at the joyous finish line as he ran his course and we should be staring. At the same finish line as we run our course.

Fortunately, it just so happens that our finish line and Jesus Christ are one and the same thing. Our course will end at the right hand of the throne of God, seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Wherever your course may take you here on earth, you can know that it ends here. At the right hand of God in Christ.

So keep your eyes on Jesus. Your course will end exactly at the spot where Jesus is right now. There's one final thing that we can observe. As to how we are to run our course in 2016.

in obedience to this passage, let's put it this way, run our course today or run it now. When the writer of Hebrews says, let us run. this command is present tense, and part of what that means is that he's saying to obey this command means you get started now. You run now.

At the present time today. So, apparently, all that needed to happen for us to be able to run and run well has already happened. There's nothing else that we need to wait for before we commence with obeying this passage. He's saying, run, be running now, today.

He would say, what are you waiting for? Quit waiting for God to change your course or to give you a better course that is more to your liking. Or this is what we do, quit waiting for someone else to start running their course. It's easy as a husband or wife to say, I know I'm supposed to do this, but I, I know I'm not doing what I should be.

But as soon as my spouse starts running the course the way they should be and do their part, then I will do what I'm supposed to do. What you're saying is I won't run my course the way I know I should run it until somebody else starts running their course. Quit waiting on somebody else. You run the course that is set before you start right now, today already.

The writer of Hebrews wrote with a sense of urgency. To these readers, if you read the full sweep of the book of Hebrews, you see an emphasis, especially in the early chapters on the word today. In Hebrews 3, he says, therefore, just as the Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, but encourage one another day after day as long as it is still called today, lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

In Hebrews 4:7, he says he again fixes a certain day today saying to David, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden. Your hearts. These passages illustrate the urgency. That is in the heart of the writer of Hebrews as he writes.

He's not trying to motivate his readers to make wonderful plans for tomorrow. He's wanting them to make a determination about what they're going to do today, right now. In his mind to not obey God today is rebellion, no matter how wonderful your plans might be for tomorrow. To disobey God today, while promising to obey Him tomorrow is evil and hard hardening.

We should be reminded, guys, that at the judgment, we're not going to be judged by God based on how great our plans were for tomorrow. We're gonna be judged based on what we did with our today's. A couple of years ago, I wrote a poem for the men up in Mammoth when we were looking at this passage, seeking to give expression to the tragedy. And the insanity of putting things off until tomorrow.

This poem represents exactly how you should not respond to this message this morning. And I pray that this will not be your response, but here it goes. I'll run with endurance the race every day, beholding the savior while tracing his way. I'll banish the sin that bedevils me so and put off distractions that render me slow tomorrow.

I'll do this tomorrow. I'll go to my family and humbly impart apologies needed to comfort their heart. Then healing will come after such a long while, and all will be joyful when we reconcile tomorrow. I'll do this tomorrow.

I'll finish my wanderings and worship the Lord, I'll gather with others and study His word. I'll open my life and invite others in and point them to Christ as their savior from sin. Tomorrow. I'll do this tomorrow.

Today is so short and the going is tough. The hour is late and I fought long enough. Tomorrow my flesh should diminish in me. The world will retreat so that I can run free tomorrow.

I'll do this tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm sure to be much more inclined to spiritual virtues. Today I've declined. The day will be easy.

My demons will rest. I'll be much more godly and give God my best tomorrow. I'll do this tomorrow. I'm stretched on my deathbed, my days are all gone.

Tomorrow I'll answer for all I've not done. Oh what will I give when before him I fall. A wasted existence and that will be all tomorrow. I'll do this tomorrow.

Guys, whatever you do, don't let this be your testimony. Be aware of Satan's tactics. It's not beyond Satan to sound incredibly pious. In fact, let me give you something that Satan will sometimes say to believers, and let's see if you can detect what's wrong with this quotation from Satan.

He says to you, read your Bible, pray. Gather with others, lay aside sin, pursue holiness, run the race tomorrow. Tomorrow. Sounds pretty pious, doesn't it?

But no matter how pious the voice may sound, the dead giveaway that it is Satan's voice is the fact that it leaves you in disobedience today. All Satan cares about in any given moment is to keep you in disobedience today. And if godly sounding plans for tomorrow, serve to leave you in disobedience today, Then he's all for your godly plans for tomorrow. Don't fall for this trap.

Run the race, run the race today. Don't wait until tomorrow. Run the race that God sets before you in community with others, run it with endurance, run it lean and mean, run it with a deep sense of history, and run it always looking at Christ. And if you have never looked to Jesus Christ before, look to him now.

Stop trying to be the beginning and the end of your own faith. Stop trying to be the author and perfecter of your own salvation. Let Jesus be the author and the finisher of your salvation. He suffered and died and is now at the right hand of God, in order to make it possible for you to run the course that he will set before you, a course that will end in glory with him.

And if you've never believed in Jesus, I urge you, To look to him Believe in Him today. Don't wait until tomorrow. Now is the accepted time and today is the day of salvation. Believe in Him.

Believe in Him today, and then run. The race with attitude all the way to glory. Let's pray Lord, we do not know what, what this year holds. We do not know what tomorrow holds, but we know that you hold tomorrow and you hold us in the palm of your hand.

We ask that you would help us as individuals and as a church body to run, to run well this year, to run together, to run with endurance, with a sense of Appreciation for the history. That That we've been blessed with the cloud of witnesses and, and with a sense that one day we will be among the cloud of witnesses once we have handed the baton off to those who follow us. Help us to run, Lord, looking at you always, Jesus, and just putting aside the sins and the encumbrances that slow us down and take us off course.

This passage is so basic and so simple and yet so rich and deep.

We but touched on some things in these verses to help us to run well. But we're asking you to help us, Lord. We thank you for this opportunity to give our offerings to you. We ask Lord that you would receive these funds and do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus and for the spread of The good news of salvation through him.

We ask all of these things in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Amen.