I want to begin this morning by thanking Allen for filling the pulpit last week. I've heard from many of you what a good job he did. It's good to be back up here myself after not having preached for a couple weeks when Tommy was here and then being at a family reunion with Phyllis' family last week. I also want to thank you for your prayers for that time. The Lord really blessed and it was a wonderful week and a wonderful experience being with her family. But I need to go ahead and get something out of the way right now. I'm not going to be here next week. Now I've had to defend myself and say I didn't take a vacation for nine months anticipating that I would be gone a number of weeks in a row. But that hasn't stopped Bill Joyce from calling me Reverend Vacation. But next week is you're probably aware somewhere about this time I'm hoping to be crossing the finish line of the Marine Corps marathon. An event that I have been preparing for and training for and working hard for for some ten months now. Something that I could never have in my wildest imagination dreamed that I would do in my lifetime. Many of you read, most of you probably read my article in the courier about the type of training that I have done in preparation for this race. As I think back to January when I first started running, trying to run two or three miles at a time made my knees hurt so bad I could hardly go up and down stairs. Now running three miles is probably the shortest distance that I ever run, planning on going out this afternoon and running twelve miles sort of my last long run in preparation for the big race which is 26.2 miles. But running has become one of the real joys of my life. Again something else that I never imagined would happen that I would actually love going out and running. My wife, Phyllis has been a runner all her life. There's still a plaque or a sign of some sort of a lake in Japan where her family used to vacation listing her as the all-time record holder for women 13 and under in an eleven mile race around the lake. And who can pray for her? She has been absolutely wonderful. She's been gracious in the fact that she's been injured into her hip. His bothering her so much she's not going to be able to run with me and that makes it sad for me and it's very hard for her. That she has been a great encourager to me over the past few weeks even though she is not going to be able to run next Sunday. But for me running has done a number of things. I would say to you that I'm not much of a deep thinker. I tend to be sort of a shallow on the surface of the moment person. And running is one of the few times where all of the distractions in a certain sense seem to be removed. And I have an opportunity to really think about things. Think about the Lord. Think about what he has called me to. And particularly I've begun to use my time of running which when you go out and run 26 miles is a long run. It's a long run. I've used it as I've run through our neighborhood to pray for the houses that I run by, to pray for the families that live in our neighborhood, to pray for you and your family. And God has really blessed me during my time of training as I think I've become more of a thinker and more of a prayer warrior as I've had that additional time built in and structured into my life. Last week when we were in Orlando for the Famer Union, I had an opportunity to run a 10k race at Disney World. And as I was running one of the things that I thought about, one of the things that I meditated on was all of the times in scripture, particularly in Paul's letters that he compares the Christian life for running a race. Let me just read for a few of the things that Paul says. In 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 24 he says, do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize. Run in such a way as to get the prize. In talking about his own life in Galatians chapter 2 verse 2 he speaks of going to Jerusalem and he says, I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that preached among the Gentiles, but I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders for fear I was running or had run my race in vain. Then he talked to the Galatians themselves about their race in chapter 5 and verse 7 he said, you were running a good race who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth. In Philippians chapter 2 verse 16 Paul says to the church, talking about them holding out the word of life in order that I may boast on the day of Christ. I did not run or labor for nothing. In chapter 3 verse 14 he says, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. And then one of his last letters was to Timothy and he wrote to Timothy in second Timothy 4 verse 7 and 8 he said, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing. All these wonderful passages comparing our life of faith to a race, to running a race. But as you are well aware as I have already mentioned this morning as we have already read, one of my favorite passages in all of scripture is Hebrews chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. This is our text for this morning. Listen again to God's word is we read the words of the author of the letter to Hebrews chapter 12 1 and 2. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. What a wonderful, glorious passage that is for those of us who follow after Christ. I want us to consider a number of things in the text that I think relate to our lives this morning that have been particularly on my mind and heart over the past few weeks. First of all, as we look at the race as the author of Hebrews described it, one of the first things he does is draw our attention to the spectators around us. The great cloud of witnesses who are in a sense watching us and cheering us on as we run our race of faith. I love it when I go back to Hebrews chapter 11 and look at this hall of faith as it were of all of these men and women, these saints of God who have gone before us and whose names are listed for us to see as men and women of faith. One of the reasons that that is so encouraging to me is because of what we know about these men and women, because of what Scripture has told us about their lives. Now they were all indeed men and women of faith, but as we go through the list from beginning to end, when we consider Abraham, when we consider Isaac and Jacob and Moses and the people of Israel at the Red Sea and the prostitute, Rahab and Gideon and Beirach and Samson and Jepta and David and Samuel and the prophets and all of these, almost every one of them in the course of their lives is described in Scripture, struggled and fell and sinned and got back up and kept running the race. It's an encouragement to us to see how God worked in spite of their humanity and spite of their sinfulness, and he looked at their lives and commended them for their faith. You see, one of the things my wife has been giving me a hard time about since I began running is I've been going to the bookstore and buying every book in the world on running marathon. If I don't run a good marathon, I'm going to at least be with the most well-read people in the race, and one of my favorite books that I purchased was a book that is nothing but stories about people's first marathon and the story about how they decided to run the race and what it was like running the race for them. One of the reasons I love that book so much is because it's not so much about the great runners, the Frank Shorters, the Bill Rogers, the great runners who have won the Olympic gold and other things. There are stories like the 50-year-old Catholic nun who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and with a hundred pounds overweight and started training and within four years qualified to go to the Olympic marathon trial. It's the story about the guy who lost a leg in a traffic accident and with one leg years later ran a marathon. I read those stories and I think if they can do it, I can do it. I can run this race. It's the same way for us as we go back to Hebrews 11. This is one of the reasons the author says, consider this great cloud of witnesses. Consider what they've gone through. Consider how they've struggled. Consider the trials they've gone through, the challenges that they've faced, the things that would have kept them from keeping faith in Christ. They're there now cheering you on. They're cheering you on as you go. That's so important for us to keep in our heart to mind. Another one of the books that I've bought is called the Ultimate Guide to Marathon and it rates all of the Marathons in the United States and tells you which ones are the best ones to run. They have a number of different criteria for doing that but one of the biggest things that they rate the races on is the crowd support. There are certain Marathons that they say, don't run this race unless you're an introvert who likes to be alone for a long time because you'll be out in the middle of nowhere and the only person you'll see is maybe one person giving you a couple water at mile 13. But otherwise there's nobody there but they say if you really want to run a great race, go to New York City where four million people line the course from beginning to end and they tell you write your name on your arm because if you do every person you run by will scream out, go Paul go and the crowd enables you and strengthens you as you run the race. I'm looking forward to that when I run I'm going to write Pastor Paul and I'm going to count on everyone cheering loudly for me as I run. But you know what? The author Hebrew is saying to us there's a great cloud of witnesses that surround us. There are men and women of faith who have gone before us, who have run the race in spite of everything that would keep them from it and they have made it to the goal. They have come to experience the presence of Christ. So we are in the race and we have a great cloud of witnesses around us. The next thing that the author says in the text to us is to throw off the things that hinder us. Throw off the things that hinder us. Another thing that I have done since I started running was starting to get catalogued and I tell you what, I thought you know running would be a cheap thing to do. Well my wife would say I've already spent most of our money on book but besides books there's every kind of gadget and clothing and specialty item for runners that you can imagine. You could run a race with a special belt that carries protein gels and a backpack that carries water and super slim tights that enable you to go, I mean you would not believe all of the stuff that is available for runners. Just this past week when I was running the 10K we were getting ready for the race. Phyllis was there with me and we were standing in the parking lot and I saw this guy get out of his car and he was strapping on a large backpack full of water. And I said Phyllis this is only a six mile race, what if he needed that backpack of water for it? He'll never be able to run with that thing on. Well I ran the race and I finished until it's not water around Disney for a few minutes and then we got the car and we began driving and when we were about halfway back to the course here came the guy with his backpack of water on, sucking away on the straw, trying to keep of his energy. But that was a hindrance to him in some fashion. He couldn't have run the race fast carrying all that water on his back. And that's the kind of saying that the apostle is saying to us, the author is saying to us, throw off those things. Matter of fact when he was writing that letter to the Hebrews he was probably imagining the Olympic Games that took place at that time and if you know anything about the history of the games all of those athletes competed very stripped down. Matter of fact completely stripped down. They competed naked. Now I can promise he was your pastor. I will not run naked next week. But I am going to try and rid myself of the hindrances that would keep me from running the race well. And that's what he's talking about in our lives here. We can't win the race as Paul has encouraged us to do when he says in Corinthians, not in such a way as to win the prize. So what do we have to do? Throw off those things that hindrance and I think the things that he's talking about here are the cares of this life that way it sounds. The cares of life, the worries of life. The ambitions of our hearts, the anger that we hold, the greed and selfish desires, the pride and fear of men that hinder us from following after Christ. And he's saying to us, if you're going to run in such a way as to win the prize, throw off those things and then run. Next thing he says to us is also to put away sin. We must put away sin if we're going to run the race that has been laid out for us. We're going to run with perseverance, the race that God has called us to. We've got to get rid of sin in our lives. You see sin is like an ill-fitting garment. Now again, one of the things that you'll see if you watch the Olympics is they are really designing clothes now in such a way that they are practically like a second skin. And you can't imagine someone running a race with an ill-fitting garment. Can you imagine Mary and Jones coming up to the starting block of the 100 meter dash with a size 42 waist pair of trousers, trying to hold them up like this and get ready to run that 100 meter dash? Well, as soon as she took off and let go, they'd fall around her ankles and she'd fall flat on her face. That's what sin is like as we try to run the race. It's an ill-fitting garment that will always trip us up. It will keep us from reaching the goal, from accomplishing what Christ calls us to in the race of faith. We cannot make it into heaven wearing sinful garments. Book of Revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ, the John, describes heaven and what it will be like. And in verse 25 we read, on no day will its gates ever be shut, the gates of heaven, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. We've got to get rid of the sin. We've got to take it off and set it aside in order to run the race that we've been called to. But where does that leave us, then? Where does that leave us this morning as we consider the race that we've been called to? As we think about, the challenges that the author has given us here. Quite often, when I tell people I'm going to run a marathon, nine times out of 10, the response is something like, oh, I can't even imagine doing something like that. I could never do that. I couldn't go out and run a mile, much less 26 miles. Quite often, that's what we're confronted with when we see the call to the race. When we think about laying aside everything that hinders, when we consider putting away every sin, we're left with those same thoughts. How can I rid myself of sin? How can I get out of my life that the care is the worries, the ambitions of my life? I can't do it. Reminds me of one of the things that Tommy said to the men on the men's retreat, in dealing with the sermon on the Mount, in Jesus laying out the law and the call of the law on our life and even Jesus' words to be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Where does that leave you? It leaves you with three possible responses. Number one, try hard. Try as hard as you can to do those things. And what happens when we do that? We fail. When we try to do it in our own strength, trying to do complete, fulfill the law on our own is absolutely utterly doomed for failure. Even as much as if all of you went with me next Sunday not having trained and tried to run the marathon, trying as hard as you could wouldn't cut it, wouldn't make it. What's the other option then? Well probably the one most of you would take in that case is don't try at all. There's no way I could do it so I'm not even going to try. That's quite often what happens in our Christian life. We think I just can't cut it, I can't do everything God wants me to do so I'm not even going to try. And the final thing is despair. I despair of any hope and that's the answer. That's the answer because it takes us to the point where we need to be. It's exactly what our text should do for us this morning because it's where the author leads us. Let me read to you what Charles Spurgeon said in a sermon on this text as he was dealing with the first verse and leading to the second. He said do I not hear you say may God help us. This must be a tough race which requires such stripping as this. If every weight of care must be laid aside and every rag of sin who is sufficient for these things, how can we pour limping mortals running such a race as this? Even the starting is beyond us. How much more must perseverance and it outreach our strength? See my brother in how we are driven to free grace. How we are driven to the power of the Holy Spirit. The race which is set before us most clearly reveals our helplessness and our hopelessness apart from divine grace. The race of holiness and patience while it demands our vigor, displays our weakness. We are compelled even before we take a step in the running to bow the knee and to cry unto the strong for strength. We dare not retreat from the contest but how can we begin a struggle for which we are so unfitted? Who will help us? To whom shall we look? And the answer is in the text in verse 2 which says let us fix our eyes on Jesus. If we are to have any hope of running the race, if we are to have any hope of following after Christ, it is only in so much as we fix our eyes on Jesus. We cannot miss the importance of keeping ourselves focused on the goal. As I mentioned I ran 10k last week at Disney and I had never been to Epcot before I had never been to Disney MGM and when I finished the race still has said what do you think of the park? I did not notice anything, I was too busy running, I was too focused on the step in front of me to notice the great space ship earth, to notice the different buildings and sights around me. I glimpsed a few of them but I did not take time to stop and look at the things around me because I was intent upon the goal that was before me and it is the same way as we run the race of faith. We have got to fix our eyes on Jesus. An act illustration may be one you have heard before but it is like when you are plowing and you have heard it said of those who would plow and when they set their hands to the plow they look at the blade as they go along and when they get to the end of the row they find that the row that they plowed is quite crooked and then you find one who plowed a straight row and you said how did you do that and you said I look between my two horses at the tree at the end and I kept my eyes on the goal and as I kept my eyes on the goal at the end the row was straight. In the same way in our lives as we run we have to keep our eyes on Jesus in order to run straight in order to come to the finish line and experience the reward that he has for us. Jesus is the beginning and the end of our faith. Let me just quickly run through a few things about the Lord Jesus. The text tells us that he is the author of our faith, the author, the beginner, the one who gives us faith. We see that in what he has done for us. The text tells us very clearly what he has done for us. What did he do? He endured the cross. He endured the cross and scored its shame so as we consider the beginning of the race as we consider how Christ has authored the race for us we see it in his enduring the cross bearing in his body the punishment that we deserve. The sin that we deserve to die for Jesus paid the penalty for. He is the author of our faith. He endured what we should have had to endure and we can never begin the race of faith unless we look to the one who took our place, who took our place on the cross. And it's interesting as we look at the word there in the text that we translate as look in the Greek. It's a much fuller word that we can't really capture in English. The word contains a preposition which turns the look away from everything else. It's not just a looking to Jesus, but it's a look that ignores everything but the object inside. And that's what we're called to do, to look only to Jesus when we think about looking to the author of our faith. What it's saying in the text is don't look to anything else, don't look to your own righteousness. If you're considering running the race on the basis of your own strength, your own ability, your own good works, your own anything you're going to fail. Look only to Jesus, the one who endured for us. The other thing we see is Jesus, our author of our faith, is what he has done in us. By his death, by his bearing in his body, our punishment. He's taken away our filthy rags. In a certain sense, all of those things, the sin that so easily entangles have been removed by Jesus. When we come to him in faith, when we look to Jesus as the author of our faith, what he does is he comes and takes off those ill-fitting garments. He removes the filthy garments of our own righteousness. He removes the garments of sin, and he clothes us in the beautiful robe of his own righteousness. He is the author of our faith. And if we're going to run the race, we have to start. And starting the race is dependent upon starting in the proper way, looking to Jesus. In John Bunyan's book Pilgrim's Progress, a number of times throughout the story, he mentions his characters who try to get into the story, get into the journey by means other than the gate, by means other than Jesus. Somehow they tumble over a wall or they wander in, and yet those who come in by any way but the gate, those who start the journey by any other means in Jesus, never come to the end. They never make it to the celestial city. And in our lives, it's the same. If we're going to run the race of faith, we have to begin with Jesus, the author of our faith. But he's also the finisher of our faith. Just as Jesus there at the beginning, starting us on the race, he's there at the end. He's there at the finish line, compelling us to come. He waits us at the end with our reward. I appreciated the prayer, joyous offer, during the time of prayer, talking about God, give us a vision for the reward that awaits us, the kingdom of heaven and the glory that is ours with Christ. And we see it in the text. We see in the text what happened after Jesus endured cross and suffered the shame. What did he do? He sat down at the right hand of his father in heaven. There is Jesus and all of his glory having finished and accomplished what we could never do. He's the finisher of our faith. Everything we need to run the race has been done over accomplished. The Lord Jesus himself has done it. And when we begin by considering his life as we finish by looking to his glorious victory, they are compelled to run the race. I think as we look to Jesus, we see a number of things, and I think he's the pattern for our lives. Jesus is the pattern for us as we run the race. First of all, in our lives, what is our motivation for running the race? The text tells us Jesus' motivation, Jesus is our model. What was his motivation? The text says, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfector of our faith. Who for the joy? It was set before him. Jesus knew the joy of accomplishing the Father's will of bringing glory to God the Father. And in doing that, Jesus was motivated by a source of joy and bringing glory to God. Our should be the same. Our lives running the race should be motivated out of a joy that comes by glorifying God in our lives. And by being an example to others, that others might come to know Christ, that others would see the great hope of the glorious gospel as we run. The next thing we can see in Jesus is the pattern for our faith is how he endured. The race is going to be long and tough. It's a long, hard race. What did Jesus do? He endured the cross, it says. He endured the cross. He went through what was necessary to bring glory to God. He accomplished the Father's purposes. And in our lives, he's the pattern for us as well. As we encounter things in life, as we come to the time and life where we don't know how we can go on any further, fix your eyes upon Jesus. Look to him. But what he endured for your sake, and trust him for the ability to continue. And then consider his perseverance. For our lives, the perseverance to finish the race, we looked at Jesus and how he sat down. How he sat down at the right hand of the Father, having accomplished everything that he set out to do. That's our goal in life as well. To follow after Jesus, to look to him to the end, so we finish the race that we've been called to. In our Texas morning, we have beautiful, beautiful passage, which encourages us to fix our eyes on Jesus, that we might see more of him, that we might grow to be more like him, that we might come nearer to him as we run the race of faith. You know, for me to run a race like the Marine Corps Marathon next week is one of the most insignificant things in the world compared to each one of us as we seek to run after Christ. To know and follow hard after him, to run the race, to fight the good fight, to win the prize of the high calling of Jesus Christ. I would encourage you this morning as you do it, to fix your eyes on Jesus. That's great. Amen.