All That Hinders

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Oh my goodness, thank you so very much. It is so good to be with you again today. Some of you will remember me. Some of you will say, who is that guy? Who is that stranger in our midst? Well, I am glad to be here today and glad to share the Sunday morning worship service with you. I appreciate Drew and his invitation to be here. You probably know where we were when he asked me if I'd come. Anyone wanna take a guess? Where were we when he said, are you available January 5th? Where were we? Coffee shop. Don't you all know that? From about eight in the morning until five in the afternoon. Drew is consuming coffee. He's one of my heroes because that's kind of the way I live my life too. So Drew, thank you so very much for the opportunity to be here. I haven't always been in the ministry.

When I graduated from college, I moved with my wife to Odessa, Texas. Some of you may know it as Odepressa. That's more accurate or Odessalit. That's accurate as well. We were in Odessa, Texas and I ran into a friend. I saw his name in the newspaper. The Odessa Chamber of Commerce had hired a new fella. He had moved there from Portales, New Mexico. Gary Tonjes is his name and Gary and I sort of attended high school together. We were at different high schools in Albuquerque but shared a border. In other words, he went to El Dorado High School, I went to Manzano High School. I knew him through mutual friends. I saw his name in the paper and I said, I gotta look this guy up and reconnect with him. So I called the Chamber of Commerce. I asked to meet with Gary for lunch and we did and we just became really fast friends. I mean, we were buds. We both spent 10 years or so there

and then we moved here to the Fort Worth area to attend school. Gary moved to Joplin, Missouri to work for the Chamber of Commerce up there and then after a few years, he moved from Joplin to Albuquerque, New Mexico where we had grown up and he was working for an economic development firm there in Albuquerque. And I get a phone call one day and the phone call from Gary said, hey, I've got a job offer for you. I want you to come to Albuquerque and be the vice president of our firm.

It's a lucrative position. You'll make plenty of money. You'll live, if you choose, in the area where I live, it's a gated community on the eastern side of Albuquerque. He said, I know you're pastoring a church right now and you'll still be able to pastor because there are churches all through the valley in Albuquerque that can't afford a pastor, small churches that can't afford to hire a pastor. And so you'll be able to work from them. You will not need a paycheck from them. We'll take care of you. And so you'll be able to serve on the weekends and you'll be able to work during the week and we really want you to be here. And so I shared it with my wife because we were kind of at a little point of transition in church ministry. And I spoke with my wife and again, I had grown up in Albuquerque. It just sounded like a wonderful return back to my home and a new opportunity.

And we were living paycheck to paycheck at that time and really not doing a very good job at that. Acquiring some debt in the journey. And so it just kind of looked like a real answer to our challenges and our needs. And so I was speaking to my wife, it was a Thursday night. And every Friday morning I met with Frankie Rainey. Dr. Rainey was the pastor at Crestmont Baptist Church here in town. Dr. Rainey had been a Greek professor, both at Howard Payne University and at Southwestern Seminary. Dr. Rainey would often sow into younger ministers, kind of mentoring them along the way. And the premise was, he'd give you an assignment in the New Testament to translate from Greek to English. And so then you'd come together and you'd review that translation. But more of the time you spent just talking about life and talking about the challenges of ministry and talking about the various difficulties

that you were walking through. And Dr. Rainey would just sow into these young ministers. And so I was translating my Greek on that Thursday night for the Friday morning meeting. And my wife and I were talking and my wife Phyllis, who's right here, my wife Phyllis, she said that sometimes, and maybe you can identify with this, sometimes I wish God would just put up a great big billboard that just tells you, this is my will for your life. This is what I want you to do, that kind of an idea. So the next morning I meet with Dr. Rainey and we begin the conversation and he says, well, what's going on in your life? And I shared that I had been offered this job position. And rather than discuss it, he said to me, and I quote, well, I can't see how that's God's will, but I'll pray for you. What do you have in your Greek? And it was just, it just like caught me completely unprepared, you know, as he mentioned this text.

And so I quickly turned, as I am right now, I turn to the passage that I had translated the night before and I began to read these words. And again, when you're translating from Greek to English, a lot of times it's very wooden, you know, very, it doesn't read real well. And then you take those words and you massage them a little bit and you get a fluid presentation. So I read what I had translated and it sounded similar to this. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing in his kingdom, I give you this charge, preach the word. Be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke, and encourage, with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers

to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside the myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. And I looked up with tears on my cheeks. I looked up at Frank Urani and he said, thus sayeth the Lord. And I went home and I called my friend and I said, listen, I think I need to stay right where I am and continue to do what I have been doing for the last few years. I told him my experience of translating the Greek and he said to me, is there anything in that book of yours that says go west, young man, go west? No, I don't think so.

I'd like to give you every Bible with you to turn to Hebrews, chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12. That chapter obviously follows Hebrews chapter 11. And we all know, I would think that Hebrews 11 has been called for generations the faith hall of fame. As individuals who live their lives following God with the best of their abilities and the best of their understanding, I like to say it this way. They surrendered as much as they understood about themselves to as much as they understood about God and they just kept pressing forward in their journey with God. Chapter 11 is not filled with the names of great heroes in the sense that they had no problems, no shortcomings, no failures. In fact, person after person after person in Hebrews 11, the faith hall of fame, they are identified elsewhere in scripture as people who had great failures, people who fell, people who were challenged,

people who dropped the ball in their journey, so to speak, and yet they are set apart as people of great faith. Not because they had a perfect faith, but because they possessed faith, because they believed God and they followed God often to the very best of their ability. And then the writer of Hebrews pins chapter 12. And chapter 12 begins this way. Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, since we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, chapter 11 is a description of these men and women of faith who had gone on before us. And it's like we're in a large arena. This is not a literal thing, okay, we're not literally in some kind of an arena with these crowds around us, but the imagery that the writer gives us, the metaphor, if you will. You know, we're like in this sports event, like we're in this great coliseum and all who have gone before us

are gathered around us in the stands, cheering us on to victory. And the word since, since we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, that's not a word like if we're surrounded or if possibly we are surrounded. No, no, it's a given, it's an absolute. It is a very clear fact. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And that cloud of witnesses has grown over the centuries and has grown even in the last year. We all know people, everyone in this room could identify somebody, speak the name of somebody who passed away this last year, who has gone on from this world to the next world, gone on from this place to their reward in the presence of God. And they join that great cloud of witnesses, cheering on the church, cheering on people who are serving God with all of their ability. I've been reflecting upon that, men and women of faith who are cheering us on

towards victory. And I just found myself thinking about names in my own life that I know, I'm confident today. If I could see with spiritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears, I would see them and hear them cheering me on. Dr. James W. Bryant. Dr. Bryant was our pastor at Hofmentown Baptist Church in Albuquerque. I was 16 years old when I came to know Christ through the witness of a next door neighbor. That next door neighbor led me to Christ on a Saturday evening, encouraged me to attend church with them the next day, he and his family. And so I said, yes, I'd love to go to church with you. And they happened to be Baptists. And so I went to a Baptist church the next day. I've always said if they had been Lutheran, if they had been Presbyterian, if they had been Methodist, I would have gone to a different church that day. I'm sure I would have found my way in time,

but I joke there because I don't think God has these favorite little churches. He has the people of faith, the people of God. But I went to his church and Dr. Bryant was a pastor and boy, he took me under his wing. Dr. Bryant would encourage me to go on visitation with him. Saturday morning, he's driving a Volkswagen Beetle. He would come by my house and pick me up and we'd go out and visit people who had, attended the church the week before or whatever. He helped me with my first sermon. His wife helped me actually write the very first sermon I ever preached down in the Valley of New Mexico at a little mission church down there. The Bryant's had a huge impact on me. When we moved to Odessa, a few years later, Bailey Stone, our pastor at First Baptist Church, Odessa, loved on me and cared for me and encouraged me. When my wife and I were experiencing some significant marriage problems,

that's fair to say, right? We were having some real serious problems and there was talk within our relationship of maybe this wasn't something we needed to continue. And I saw Bailey at church one day and he looked at me right in the eye and he said, you come see me in my office tomorrow. Yes sir, Bailey said to do that, yes sir. And so not his office at the church, his office at his home, because they were church administrators, secretaries, we would have called him back in those days, who I knew, I knew very well. And he said, I know Scott's not gonna come to the church because these people, you walk in the pastor's office, what problems does that guy have, that kind of a thing. And so he said, come to my house. And we sat in his home, in his office and Bailey was listening to my story and my journey. Phil is not, we didn't have any huge problems. We just weren't happy people.

And Bailey, I remember him sitting across the table from me with his hands just like this. And tears were in his eyes as he was listening to me. And he said, Scott, you're like a big ship making its way across the ocean. And the rudder's what guides that ship. And you don't notice it when a rudder's off a degree or two. But over time, that ship ends up way, way off course. And you've been that ship, you're way off course, Scott. And that rudder in your life, it's Jesus Christ. And yes, you know Christ and yes, you serve in the church and yes, you're active with all these things, but Jesus isn't where he needs to be in your life. So get him back there.

And I went home that night. I worked at an advertising agency in those days, wore suits to work. I went home, my in-laws were there. And I said hello to him. I said, I'm gonna go change clothes, I'll be right back. I walked into a bedroom and took off the suit and I just stopped and I dropped to my knees. And I said, Lord, I don't know if Bailey is right or not, but I'm going to accept his guidance. And I want you to be back where you were. I want you to be back where you need to be. And bam, my life changed. And it was because of this man, Bailey Stone. I think Bailey Stone is in that cloud of witnesses. When I first came to Burleson to pastor a church, Gerald Elston was the pastor at Calvary Baptist Church and I followed him. Gerald asked me one day, he said, do you mind if I stay within the church?

Of course I don't mind. I want you here at the church. I had no idea that sometimes former pastors can cause problems for the new pastor. I had no idea. And Gerald was never a challenge, never a problem. He was a mentor to me. Gerald was a fellow that, you're probably never going to see his name in any publication anywhere, but I've never known a better pastor than Gerald Elston. And he helped me with funerals, and he helped me with weddings, and he helped me with all the different aspects of church ministry, and he just poured into me. I think Gerald Elston is in that cloud of witnesses saying, keep going, Scott. I think Frankie Rainey is in that cloud of witnesses. That man who encouraged me that day, I think he is still saying, Scott, don't stop running the race. And there was a young man in our church at Alsbury where I served for many years. His name was Brian Jennings.

Brian was our youth minister. Many of you are aware of the affluenza teen, the guy who is three times the legal limit, driving his car and he crashed into a group of people on the side of the road. One of those was Brian Jennings, helping a young single girl change the tire on her car. And he, along with three other people, were killed that night. I think Brian Jennings is in that great cloud of witnesses saying, Scott, don't stop. Keep running, keep going. And you have people who are cheering you on too. Now when we read this passage, when the writer says, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, he follows it, and let me read the text. 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.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer, that's what the NIV says, some translations will read the author and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. There are five specific directives that the writer gives to you and me. At the very least, they are strong encouragements. I read them as directives, as in do this. The writer of Hebrews, with the authority of the Spirit of God, is telling you and me how we are to live our lives. And he begins by saying, throw off everything that hinders. What that means is anything that restricts, anything that stops your progress, your forward motion, anything that obstructs your vision that gets in the way. Any of y'all played racquetball

or played racquetball sometime in your life? Well, in racquetball, you kind of call your own, there's no official, there's no guy in striped shirt watching over there. You call your own penalties, you call your own shortcomings. Sometimes you'll hit the bottom of the wall, it looks like a good shot, and you'll say, no, no, no, I skipped it in. I hit the floor before, and you'll let the shot go. But there's another aspect of it, it's called a hinder. If I'm playing with Drew Ivey, I guarantee Drew's gonna hinder me left and right. If I'm playing with Drew Ivey, and there's a shot coming right down the wall, and I think I might possibly be able to get to it, but Drew's between me and the shot, I'll just stop and say hinder.

You're in my way, hinder. And so you get to play it again. Sometimes you're on the other end of it, and you go, there was no hinder. You gotta play it anyway, but it's a gentleman kind of thing, okay, we'll do that. But you get to call your own shot, and you get a do-over. Well, guys in life, we don't get a do-over when we miss an opportunity, when we miss the chance to share our faith with somebody, when we miss the opportunity to represent Jesus and represent him well. We don't get to say, oh hinder, I was hindered, let me try that again, no. That's why the writers just throw off everything that hinders, like an athlete running in a track meet. They warm up with the warm-up suit on, but when it comes time to run the race, they peel all of that off. They peel down to just shorts and a singlet. They get down to the bare minimum, because the other things will trip them up,

the other things will slow their progress, the other things will get in the way, and the writer says, throw off everything that hinders. Well, what is that in our lives today? It can be so many different things. We can be focused on our careers. We can be focused on paying our bills, okay. We can be focused on our personal hobbies and interests, and so devoted to those things, that we miss the opportunity to run the race with perseverance. Those things can hinder us. When I retired from ministry, my wife worked at Lockheed Martin. She retired a few years before I did, and when we were both retired, I can't tell you the number of times people asked me, well, are you gonna travel? It's like it's presumed, you know, if you retire, you're gonna travel the world. Well, we don't have the resources to travel the world, and that's probably a good thing, because we really don't care.

I mean, there's some things I'd like to see, but at the end of the day, okay, so I see them, and my personal experience is, all these sites and places, when you get there, they're kind of disappointing. You know, they don't look the same way they look in the travel magazines, okay, and so, you know, we don't do a lot of traveling, but that could get in the way. You know, at the end of my life, when I stand before the living, let me make sure it's understood, because it's bad enough to be understood, much less misunderstood.

There's nothing wrong with traveling. Nothing wrong with going and seeing the world. Nothing wrong at all. It's not sinful, there's nothing wrong. However, does it hinder? Are there things, there's nothing wrong with working hard and making a good living and striving for promotions and raises. There's nothing wrong with that, but can it prevent me from doing the work God wants me to do? Can it hinder me? For the answer, maybe yes, and so the writer says, throw those things off, because there's something more important than all those interests that you have. Notice, throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. The verb is throw off, I mean, it's connected, so throw off everything that hinders and cast aside everything that is sinful. I would help you with the idea of sin. It's anything contrary to God's plan. Sin isn't always ugly, sin isn't always

these horrible things that we kind of hide. Sin is any time we do things our way rather than God's way. It's just that simple. Sometimes it is ugly, sometimes it is embarrassing, okay? But sin is any time we live contrary to God's plan and purpose. And I'll remind you that sin will take you farther than you wanna go. Sin will keep you longer than you wanna stay. And sin will cost you more than you wanna pay. Okay, a life that's devoted to following things that are contrary to God's plan and purpose. It's costly and we miss opportunities. And that's why the writer says, cast it off, let go of it, the sin that so easily trips us up. We get tangled in it, throw it aside. And then the third challenge, the third directive, and it's the center of the passage. Run the race marked out for us. That's what the writer says. Mark the race, I mean run the race marked out for us.

Now I would have fought, the writer would say, run the race marked out for you. But he says for us, it's a collective thing. We're all in this together. You know, Christianity, being the church, the bride of Christ, it's a team sport. Okay, we're all in this thing together. And if one person kinda drops the ball, we're not doing what Jesus has called us to do. We're not being our very, very best. It's an inclusive language. And I would remind you, we don't get to choose the particulars of our race. We don't get to choose the particulars of it. We're in this thing together and our, can I call him our coach, our Lord Jesus? He's the one that names the particulars. When I was in college, I was a part of the Wayland Baptist College Pioneer Track Team. Have you ever heard of the Pioneers? No, because it wasn't much of a track team. Okay, now we held a national title,

multiple national titles, okay, but it's a smaller division, NAIA. But I mean, it was a great track program. We had athletes from all over the world, actually. We had long distance runners from Canada. We had sprinters from Jamaica. It was actually a pretty good program. And I was on that track team. Now, let me just make it very clear. I was probably the poorest athlete on the entire team. I walked onto the track team. I threw the javelin in high school. Growing up in Albuquerque, the javelin was a part of the track program in New Mexico. It's not in Texas. You know, the javelin, the long spear, right? Typically aluminum, very sharp point on the end. My greatest claim to fame for the track team in college, was at Oklahoma Baptist University. I was getting ready to throw and there was a light rain falling. And there was a young guy marking the throws and I wanted to get my throws over

before the rain really fell and made the lead up, where you might be slipping fall. So I wanted to get my throws in, get them done. And so I told this young man, I said, hey, you need to move. And he said, no, I'm okay. And I said, no, really, I'm gonna be throwing, and he said, no, I'm gonna mark, I'm okay. And so I thought, okay, dude, it's your choice. And I don't like to think that I was aiming, but he was kind of where I wanted to hit. And so I just kept my eyes fixed and I reared back and I threw the javelin and he was like, dear cotton headlights, shoom, cried into his thigh. I speared that guy like an African gazelle hunter, okay? I remember he rolled over on the field and the javelin rolled with him. It was ugly. That is my claim to fame, okay? Maybe, I would say it's a high point, maybe it's really a low point. But there was another experience. You know, there's two track seasons,

I don't know if you know that or not, there's two track seasons, there's an outdoor season that we typically follow, but there's an indoor season too, where people run the indoor track. You've seen the wooden tracks. Well, I was a discus thrower and a javelin thrower, and you don't do those indoors. And so the coach came to one day and he says, Scott, I want you to try to throw the shot put. I said, I've never thrown the shot put. I don't look like a shot put thrower. And I said, coach, I've never done that. He said, yeah, I know you haven't, but I've been looking at the numbers and this is for the conference meet, okay? At Lubbock Christian University. And he says, I've looked at who's entered, I've looked at the teams, and if you can throw the shot put 36 feet, which is nothing, if you can throw the shot put 36 feet, I believe you can get a point, and that point could help us win the conference championship.

And so I said, all right, I'm in. And if you've ever watched shot putters, nowadays they line up in the circle and they do the spin thing, where they really get all kinds of force and they let that thing go. Back in my day, it was this leg behind you and you shuffled backwards, then you brought your body around, you threw it. I threw it like an overweight girl, okay? I just shuffled across that little thing there and threw it, but guess what? I was a little over 36 feet, I scored one point, and our team won the conference championship.

There were guys on our track team that ran the mile relay, they ran the open quarter, they ran all kinds of different things, and they might've scored 12, 13, 14, 15 points. I scored one point. But we won the conference championship and my one point was really, really important to them. And so I wanna ask you, okay, what is your contribution to the fulfillment of the Great Commission? You know, sometimes we look at our lives and we say, well, what do I do? What can I offer? And I don't have much to offer.

I didn't either, okay? But I scored that point. That was my contribution to a team championship. And though there are people who, you know, their names ended up in the newspaper and their photographs were on the front page of the Plainview Daily Herald. You know, Scott Sharman didn't get listed in anything, but I know that I was a contributor and I know that I made a difference because my coach asked me to. What is Jesus asking you to do? As an individual, what is Jesus asking you to do as a congregation? What is your contribution to fulfilling the Great Commission? All right, you understand that when we stand before Jesus one day, he's not gonna say, well, how'd you enjoy those years of traveling? He's not gonna say, you know what, you earned more and more money every year right up to the point that you retired, well done. Our commission is not to embrace American capitalism

as well as we can and to milk out every dollar we can get out of it. Our commission is to take the gospel to all people everywhere, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us, reaching and teaching, baptizing and discipling. That's what we are called to do as individuals, that's what we are called to do as congregations to reach this world in the name of Jesus. So what is your contribution? When you're looking in the past, what have you done?

The only thing that matters when we get to heaven is who did we bring with us? When you get down to the bottom line and it gets down to the brass tacks, did we bring anyone with us? I read an article one time in a magazine, it was about a couple that had achieved the American dream. They had some good investments and their investments had paid off and they sold those investments and then they took the money and they bought a little island down in the Caribbean. They owned the island, they had a little house on it and the article said that they got up every morning and they walked the seashore collecting seashells.

Living the dream. I remember thinking, is that the dream? Is that what life is about? You know, one day I'm gonna walk before God and say, look at the seashells I found. And God's gonna say, dude, I made those seashells. I'm the one who put them there. You know, we're not called to squeeze out these luxurious lifestyles. We're called to reach the world in the name of Jesus. And when we stand before Jesus, I do believe the bottom line will be, did we impact the world around us? Did we make a difference? Did we represent Jesus? Did we bring people along with us? Are people in the kingdom of God because of our lives?

If I'm wrong, we'll go to lunch and visit afterwards, okay? But I think I'm right. I think that's what the Bible tells us to do because the writer says, run the race marked out for us. Focusing upon Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith. You know a hurdler that's running in her track mate? When the hurdler is running either the 100 meter hurdles or the 400 meter hurdles, doesn't matter. The hurdler does not focus on the hurdle in front of him or her. Okay, that's not where the eyes are fixed. A hurdler, if you watch it, they run the same number of steps between every hurdle. Their stride is exactly the same. They approach it the same way. Their lead leg goes the right way. The following leg goes the right way and they just clear the hurdles and they just keep on going. You can always tell when their eyes have shifted to the hurdle because they start stagger stepping.

They start shortening their stride. They start focusing upon the hurdle. But the champion will focus upon the finish line. Clearing the hurdles, clearing the obstacles, it's a natural thing. They just do it as they go because their eyes are fixed upon the finish line. Where are our eyes fixed? Who are we fixed upon? It's easy to fix upon the challenges, to fix our sight upon the challenges, the things that are in our way, so to speak, the obstacles we're dealing with in life, the problems, the challenges, okay? But at the end of the day, what the rider is telling us to do is keep our eyes fixed upon the finish line, which is the Lord Jesus himself. The Bible teaches us that we are being shaped, we are being molded, we are being formed day in and day out with those challenges, with those difficulties. God uses all things to help us to become more and more like Jesus with each passing day.

And so we keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus, the one who began the faith in us and the one who will finish the faith in us. The one who began a good work in us and the one who will finish a good work in us. And we fix our eyes upon Jesus. We don't fix our eyes upon other people, we don't fix our eyes as a congregation, for instance, on other churches. I'll tell you a secret. There are churches in our community, there are churches all over the state that are blowing and going, okay? They're getting bigger and bigger and a lot of times we look at those places kind of in an envious attitude. We look at those places and we say, well, what are they doing? I'll tell you where most of them, what most of them are doing,

what most of them are doing is taking people from other churches and bringing them into their church. I was speaking to a denominational leader not long ago, I said, can you name me a church in Texas that is truly reaching great numbers of people with, great numbers of people with the gospel? And this denominational leader said, I can't. I don't know of a church in the state of Texas that is reaching great numbers of people with the gospel. The churches that are growing, the churches that are blowing up, the churches that seem to be doing so well, so many of them are just made up of people who came from other places. And that, my friends, is not God's plan. God's plan is to go steal sheep from other people and bring them into your fellowship. That's not God's plan. If our churches aren't reaching people and baptizing people, don't start saying our church is growing.

All right, and I hear that from people. Why are churches exploding? It's growing. Well, how many people have you baptized? Well, not that many. Well, then you're not growing. You're just reshuffling the deck, okay? You're not growing. You're not reaching people. Again, our mission is very clear. And so we don't focus on another church. Don't focus on other people that they seem to be, somewhat better than you. Just focus on what you have been called to do. Focus on the race set before us and fix your eyes upon the only one to whom we are accountable, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Fix your eyes upon him and run the race with perseverance. I had a Greek professor at Southwestern Seminary, Tommy Lee, and Tommy Lee translated that word perseverance as stick-to-ativeness. Stay with it no matter what your circumstances may be. Then the final point, be inspired by the example Jesus provides.

The writer talks about, consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, and listen to this word, so that, so that you will not grow weary, so that you will not lose heart. Any challenge we face pales insignificance compared to what Jesus is doing in us. I love the music that we sang today. It was so focused upon the Lord Jesus in us, and I can't bring you anything. A song is insufficient. I offer you my life. I give you my life, and I will serve you with all that I am. Our race, our race was promised, not to be easy, but actually to be the opposite. Jesus said, don't be surprised when you face trials in this world. The apostles, all the apostles talk about lives that are difficult and challenging and obstacles that God uses for good in our lives. So don't fix your eyes upon those challenges. Fix your eyes upon Jesus, and be inspired by the one who faced opposition from sinful men.

Be inspired so that you will not grow weary, and you will not lose heart. Let me close with this. It is easy to grow weary and to lose heart. I talked to a man yesterday who does a very menial job at a church. He volunteers for a position at the church. It's a very menial thing. No one even knows he's doing it, but it's essential. It's essential within the church family. And he says every Sunday when he gets, it's actually earlier in the week, every time he shows up to do that work, he says, I hear the devil speaking to me. What do you mean you hear the devil? And he says, devil says, how long you been doing this for? You've been doing it for years. Nobody notices. Nobody really cares. Nobody pats you on the back. Why do you keep doing it? And he said, I always respond with scripture, because I don't do it for the people who might pat me on the back. I do it for the Lord Jesus,

that people might come into a place of worship and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, and come to know him personally, and be transformed by the Spirit of God that dwells within us. It's easy to grow weary. It's easy to say, man, I've been doing that. I've been beating my head against the wall. The results haven't been there. It's easy, but the writer says, fix your eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Be encouraged by his example so that you don't grow weary, and you don't lose heart.

Thanks again for allowing me to be here with you today. I pray that you and I together will not grow weary, and that one day to come, when we stand before Jesus, we'll be able to say, hey, together we made a difference in the world. Together we represented Jesus, and together we brought glory to his name. All right, let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for the people of South Burleson Baptist Church. Thank you for the ministry of this congregation for so many different years, and for the way they have served you faithfully. And yet, Lord, I know that even in that faithful service, there are seasons that are difficult, and seasons that are challenging, and seasons in which we grow weary. I pray for Drew and his family, going away on vacation. It's not just to go have recreation. It's for a refreshing, it's for an opportunity to hear from you all over again,

and to come back inspired to continue to do the work you've called him to do right here at this place. Lord, I thank you for what you're gonna do through us. I wanna thank you for the things you're gonna do in us, and I wanna thank you for the things you're gonna do for yourself through all of us, as you bring glory to your name through the work that we do in your name. For we pray this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.