Read-along
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Morning. Morning. Yeah. Good. You guys all awake? Get your coffee. Last night, someone over here was fell asleep and was snoring so loud while I was preaching. And that's not the problem. I'm used to people falling asleep when I preach, but the snoring was terrible. Now I know why my wife kicks me every night.
And and I actually, it was so bad. I I I I could kinda hear it, and I stopped. I go, is someone snoring? And people over here was like and so then I was like, shh. Let's all leave and freak them out.
And, like, half the people just left. I mean, I guess no. No. Just kidding. But no. It's good to be here. I'm glad we're all awake. We're ready to go. But I don't know you, but I don't know what the home was like you grew up in. I I I had great parents. I I love my dad, my great dad, but my my my dad
actually had a view of what it meant to to to be in his house. And and so there was the, you know, my dad's house rules.
And he explained this way. He he called him pop. I called him pop. That's why I have my grandkids call me pop. He's original pop. And so if if if you talk to him, he's like, pop's house rules. Here's his house rule. It's pop's house, so he rules. Anybody
have that? Like and and and and and and my dad was the type, especially, like, when it came to, like, the remote control. Now when I was little, I'm old enough, they didn't have remote. I was the remote when I was a kid. Hey, Billy. Go change a channel. Fortunately, there was only three channels back then. And so it didn't take too long. But we got older, got a TV with a remote.
And it was crazy because if I would sit there and I'd be sitting there kinda watching something
and flipping the chair, and then my dad would come and sit in his chair. He had this chair in front of the TV. There was the other chair my mom would usually sit in. If he sat in that chair that's usually he's done with his work, he's done, he's gonna watch something.
So he would come sit down while I was watching something and he'd go,
like, what? He's give me the remote. But I'm watching something. And he goes, pops rule. It's pop's house. So pop rules. And I'd be, but I'm watching something. And he goes, son, here's what you need to do. You need to grow up. You need to move out. You need to save your money.
Then when you buy a house and you save your money again, you could buy a TV with your own remote, and then you can decide when you're using the remote or not. And I'm like, okay. So I hand it to him. And then and then and you fast forward years later.
I'm sitting in my house, and my dad's visiting to see his my daughter, my firstborn child. And I'm I walk in. He's sitting there watching something and watching a game or and I I go, hey, pop. What are you doing? And he goes, watching this game. I go, okay.
He goes, what? I go, Billy's rule. It's Billy's house. Billy rules. He's like, he had integrity. He knew. He's like, yep. You did what I said. Here you go, son. And then I I let him keep it. I go, no. I'm just kidding. We can watch the game. Remember, I'm cooler than you, dad.
I don't know about you if you if you had that. And and some people go, that sounds like a creepy story. What a jerk of a dad. Like, he would like, we live in a culture now that I think we have a hard time with that. And and and because we almost reject authority because we probably have had bad authority, and maybe you grew up in a home or maybe you've had people in your life or been in churches where authority was abused.
And the problem is we kind of sometimes just reject authority. Like the problem was the authority. The reality is authority is not the problem. There are moments where we need to be under authority, and there's moments where like my dad was right. It was his
He paid for it all. I was living in his house. He actually created me, and and and I was he he he fed me and clothed took care of me. It's his house. He could say this is the rule.
But I think a lot of us have seen so much bad authority that we just reject authority, and that creates a problem when it comes to God's authority in our life. Because we just instinctively are distrustful of authority. So what happens when we hear God's house rules? How do we react to that?
Our our when God says, give me the remote, what does that mean? And today, in this last sermon through this Ezekiel series, we've just been kinda topic
bouncing through it, not going through everything, because I wanna challenge you guys to go back and study the stuff in between. We're gonna look at this passage in the last section. In the last, like, 10 chapters of Ezekiel is actually some of the craziest because
he gets another vision, and it's a vision of of he talks about this country that's this Gog and Magog and how that's gonna be judged, and it's really alluding to the world system of doing things. And then he gets this he gets this vision of of this new temple.
And and it walks through, and it describes all of this stuff, and it all means very many symbolic things. And when it comes to prophecies, there's always the already not yet. So there is a there's more of a immediate fulfillment that'll happen to them, but then it's alluding to the ultimate fulfillment.
And this ultimate fulfillment, they are gonna get a temple back. God's glory is gonna come back, but the ultimate fulfillment is in the end times. It's actually alluding. This is the section that the book of Revelation quotes the most.
And so there's all this. So there's even some debate about what everything means in there because it's like talking prophetically. It's just pointing to the end. The key thing is you gotta remember that the whole idea of it follows the theme of Ezekiel, which is God is gonna do what he said he's gonna do. And
God is basically in charge. It's his universe, his rules. And that's what you need to know, because I'm not gonna go into all this deep stuff. I want you to study that yourself. But what I do wanna look at is chapter 43,
because there's a section where it first describes this temple as it's being measured out, and measured out means ownership, gonna move in, kinda that's what I meant there. When you measured something, it meant you're gonna move into it. And we kinda still do that today. Go into rooms, measure it, where am I gonna put the furniture and all that. And so what happens is God's glory comes back. We looked at that where where God's glory left the temple because the people said, we we believe in God, but they were worshiping idols and all this stuff. So guess it's alright. I'm moving out.
Well, now it comes back in. And in this little section, he then says, here is God's house rule. Here's his house rule. We're gonna see what that means for us today. What does that mean for us if we're gonna be a follower of So here we go, chapter 43,
and what we're gonna see in this, what it means for us today is this big idea. We need to start living what you've been given. I need to start living what I've been given.
That's what we'll see out of this. Here we go. After this, verse one of 43, this the man brought me back around to the East gateway. Suddenly, the glory of the Lord of the God of Israel appeared from the East.
The sound of his coming was like the roar of rushing waters, and the whole landscape shone with his glory. That must have been a pretty impressive thing to experience. The vision was just like the others I had seen. First by the Kibar River, that's the first vision he got. And then when he came to destroy Jerusalem,
I fell face down on the ground, and the glory of the Lord came into the temple through the east gateway. Then the spirit took me up and brought me into the inner courtyard.
And the glory of the Lord filled the temple, and I heard someone speaking to me from within the temple, while the man who had been measuring stood beside me. The Lord said to me, son of man, this is the place of my throne, and the place where I will rest my feet. Basically, is where I'm gonna sit, put my feet up, and have the remote control.
I will live here forever among my people of Israel. They and their kings will not defile my holy name any longer by their adulterous worship of the other gods or by honoring the relics of the kings who have died.
They put their idol altars right next to mine and then only a wall between me and them. They defiled my holy name by such detestable sins, so I consumed them in my anger.
Now let them stop worshiping other gods and honoring the relics of their kings, and I will live among them forever. Son of man, describe to the people of Israel the temple I have shown you, so they will be ashamed of all their sins. Let them study its plan, and they will be ashamed of what they have done. He's basically when you see my glory in my temple and how it works, this whole idea of the temple meaning this relationship with me and my presence and all that, when you sit next to the glory of God, you realize how far away you are from that.
When you look at God's glory, you will know how not glorious you are. That's
why we need to be able to look at our sins and see them, and the only way you do is you gotta compare it to the perfection of God. If we don't look at God, if we look around and compare ourselves to each other, we can say, I'm a good person because I'm better than this person.
But if you look at yourself compared to God, you're like, oh, wow. He goes, describe to them all the specifications of the temple, including its entrances and exits. There was something symbolic in every detail.
Tell them about its decrees and laws. Write down all these specification decrees as they watch. They will be sure to remember and follow them. And here it comes. And this is the basic law of the temple, house rules. It's God's house, God rules. And here's his rule, absolute holiness. Absolute holiness.
The entire top of the mountain where the temple is built is holy. Yes, this is the basic law of the temple. So this basic law of temple, God's presence, God's word is is absolute holiness. So his temple is gonna be absolutely holy. Well, here's the deal.
We think of the temple as this building, this structure. A lot of us still have that mentality. You think of, oh, we're at church, and you come in here and you kinda act a little bit different. You're like, oh, stuff you would say and do out there, you're like, well, we're in church. You don't do that in church. You know, the like, as if this building is the temple. This building is just the place we gather.
The truth is the Old Testament really clear after Jesus came and then he died on the cross, rose from dead, when we put our faith in Jesus, we become we get that new heart that it we've looked at a few weeks ago. See, in the Old Testament, they lived by faith too just like we do. They looked forward to what God was gonna do like we looked back to what he did.
And so the truth is, in the testament, now that we have the holy spirit, it says, hey,
guess where the temple of the holy spirit is. Guess where God's temple is now.
So you realize when you come in here and go, I better not talk like that in church, the truth is wherever you walk around, if you're a Christian, you're the church. You're the temple. So our temple, we are to be absolutely holy.
And that creates a problem because he says absolute holiness. What does that even mean? What does that look like? And what do we do with the problem that we walk around and if God says my rule is absolute holiness in my temple and we're now the temple? We have a problem, don't we?
Because everyone in this room knows you're not absolutely holy and perfect. And if you do, you need help. At least just look in a mirror. So what does this word holiness even mean? Let's take this apart and see what it means. Holiness, the Hebrew word there literally means set apart.
Now God is absolutely holy. He is the absolute most set apart one. There is no one, nothing like God in all of existence. He is the only one, alpha and omega, the first and last. He was there before all. He created all. He is all. He's all that there is. He is totally set apart,
but he calls us to be set apart. The New Testament says, be holy for I am holy. He says, the law of my temple is absolute holiness. We are the temple now.
So we're called to be set apart like he is, but we can't be perfect. So holiness means set apart. What is it not? Here's what it's not. Holiness is not just a list of do's and don'ts.
So a lot of us get this really kind of immature version of our faith that holiness just means, well, do this, don't do that. Now it comes with some things God wants us to do and not do. But you know when you're a kid and you're immature, you're like you're like, dad said we can't do that.
Dad said we should clean our room. Mom's really mad if we don't do this. And you realize the attitude and all that is you're just afraid.
You don't really see the purpose. Why mom and dad want you to do this? Why do they want you to do your homework? Why do they want you to clean up? Why do they want you? You don't get the the the the the real meaning behind it and the good that it is for you. You just know this is the rule.
And so a lot of us never get past that that immature view of what it means to follow God. Holiness is not just I I I made sure I did I did the to do list and didn't do the to don't list, because I I don't wanna get busted. That's that's it's not just that. What it is
is we're gonna see here is holiness is conforming to the character of God, meaning I was created in his image. Jesus died so I can have that image reformed and become this new creature again. I can now and I desire to be like him. That's what I was made for.
And in doing so, I will be obedient to the will of God because I want to be conformed to the image of God. I've agreed with what he died. I I I agree. He what he's given me is what I'm gonna choose to start living. I'm gonna start living what I've been given. That's what holiness is for us. That's what set apartness is for us.
In other words, it's not sinless perfection, but a surrender to be perfected. It's a surrender to be meaning, I cannot be set apart if I don't set out. I
have to set out towards it. But he says absolute holiness. So we have a problem. Like, that means we're not absolutely perfect or holy right now. No. We're not. But in one way, we are. To summarize the New Testament, say, hey. When we when we ex put our faith in Christ
and realize he died for us because God is just and he will judge sin, he will do what he promised, so we all sit under the judgment of God, Jesus took that I put my faith in him, and when I put my faith in him, kind of all the people that got baptized.
Is is when you get baptized, what you're symbolically saying is I'm committing to be set apart, and I'm identifying with Jesus. He died, was buried, and resurrected. So now I agree with that. I gave him my sin. My old life died, it's buried, and now I'm resurrected to this new life with him. And when we do that,
the bible says, and and why I learned this in in in cemetery, I mean, seminary, it is is is when we put our faith in him, God imputes Christ's righteousness. It's imputes. I don't even really know exactly what the word means. It actually means put upon. He put, took our sin, and imputed Christ's righteousness,
his set apart, his holiness onto us. So that's why I say you start living what you've been given, because in God's eyes, when he looks at you, if you know Christ, he doesn't see the sin, He sees his son. So in that sense, we already are. But the truth is we still have the shadow of our old self.
We still fought. We still sin. And so what we need to do is what the New Testament says. There's this word in the New Testament that's used over and over again that in the Greek word means exactly the same as what this Hebrew word for holiness means. It's the word sanctified. There's
another big seminary word for you. Sanctified. And what sanctified means is we need to be set apart. But instead of absolute sanctified, it's the process of being set apart. It means I'm gonna set out and start living what I've been given. I'm gonna start living
up and live the life that Jesus died to give me. And then when you understand that, it takes away the two extremes of how people approach what it means to be a Christian, that the whole New Testament is constantly battling these extremes. If you wanna read the letters and go, why are they so fixated on the law and on this and that? Because there was these two extremes.
The one extreme was the law saves you. You get your own righteousness. You can be set apart on your own. You do it all right, and now you are absolutely holy.
That doesn't work. The whole Old Testament, the law was to show God's people, you can't do this on your own. Ezekiel is saying the same thing the New Testament is saying.
God is the one that has to replace our stony stubborn hearts. God's the one that has to save us. God's the one that rescues us. So the one extreme was you can't earn it yourself. So then people, oh, so if it's God's grace,
then that means it doesn't matter what. If he already is impugued by the righteousness, if if when I sin, his grace is already there, so then what does it matter? I do whatever I want. And that's where a lot of you'll see people arguing so on Facebook. Well, I'm saved by the righteous blood of Christ, so this doesn't matter. Don't judge me on this. I go,
God didn't die so you can continue to living the life that he died to save you from.
So what it is is I've already been declared righteous, but I gotta set out with the power of the Holy Spirit and surrender to God and his word to start walking that path of being sanctified. That's what we're called to do in this life, and that's what it means. We need to be be set apart. So how does that work?
That's where I wanna I wanna turn to the New Testament now, to the book of Hebrews. This is where I wanna spend the of time to kinda give us a simple path of of what scripture says is what does that even mean? What what should I do to start
how do I set out on this journey of being set apart, so to speak? And and what we see in Hebrews chapter 12, there's a few verses I wanna read here, but I wanna set this up. Hebrews chapter 11
actually shows exactly what I was just saying, that the Old Testament faith was supposed to be one of faith too. It wasn't supposed to be do this. They they a lot of them misunderstood what the law was. They oh, we can do this. No. It's always been by faith.
And that's what this Hebrews the writer of Hebrews is presenting through the power of the holy spirit. In chapter 11, he says, you realize it's about faith. It's about that faith in Christ and the faith in him, and and that faith in what you don't see, but God has promised. It's just like he says, you will see that I'll do what I promised. You just gotta trust me. And and so the whole chapter in 11 is called the faith hall of fame, if you ever read it. And it starts listing all these old testament characters. He basically walks through the the Bible and starts pulling out it says, by faith, Abraham believed God,
and that was declared righteous to him. By faith. By faith. By faith. By faith. And then it gets to the end, and and there's two things that's interesting about it. One, when you read these stories by faith, it first says, they never fully saw what was promised, but by faith, they trusted.
What he meant by never fully saw, they didn't know they knew it was God was gonna save them like we know God is who saves us, but we know how that works. It was Jesus.
They didn't never they didn't know it was Jesus. They didn't know how it was gonna work. They just trusted. We have a clearer picture because Jesus came, we have the whole New Testament, which helps us understand what their faith was. We have a clearer idea. So they didn't forgot to see with absolute clarity,
but they did. And what's another interesting thing is when you read by faith, by faith, by faith, you know that this is a process. Because when you read some of those characters and they're like, that person's in the faith hall of fame? Samson?
Man, that guy was a if you compared it to baseball, that guy had a really low batting average. He got out most of the time. He hit one grand slam right at the end of his career. He may have won the world series, but now he's in the hall of fame. And what it's saying is,
these people in their moments of victory was when they finally got it. And by faith, they embraced this life. And through faith, they started living what they had been given.
And that's what then it goes into chapter 12, and I wanna read the first four verses because here's what it says first. It says, chapter 12 verse one says, therefore, now in seminary, I've said this before, they teach you this big, it's pay a lot of money to learn this. If you're gonna learn understand how to interpret scripture, If you read a therefore, you gotta ask what's the therefore? See?
There you go. Go there. You already got half a seminary done. What's the therefore, therefore? That means refer back to what you just read.
If life is about by faith and the power comes by faith, and this is it means that God rescued us and it's by faith. Therefore, because of that, he goes, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith,
And that's what's so beautiful. The life of faith is it's basically it's in the whole Old Testament. Every one of those characters is life of faith. That's why I love wrapping this series up with this. Because guess who's included in that huge crowd of witnesses? Ezekiel. He's one of these ones.
Ezekiel would be one of the crowd of witnesses.
He says, you're surrounded by this huge crowd of witnesses life, and what it means is they didn't get to see it all. They've now passed on. They're now it's like we're in a stadium, because he talks about a race. He can almost imagine that that that the writer here is thinking about a a race. They did a lot, you know, the Olympic games, you know, stuff like that. The the race, he he's imagining a race, and he goes, the old testament saints, the ones that by faith, they now know what this race is. They know what the finish line is. They're now in the stands,
and they're watching us run our race. And he goes, we're in this race. They're actually cheering us on, and they know. Since we're surrounded by this huge crowd of witnesses,
the life of faith, he goes, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up, and let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do that, that's the race. See, you gotta set out, it's a race. Gotta We head towards what God's asked us to head towards. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.
Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross. Think about it just real quick. Because of the joy have you ever thought, if you've read this past four, what was the joy that was awaiting him when he went to the cross? Because the cross was pretty brutal.
He said he endured it because there was a joy on the other side of it. Was the joy just him waking up three days later and he said, I'm glad that CrossFit wad going bad is over with. No. You know what it describes that what his joy was that was awaiting for him? Us. The fact that he rescued us.
The fact that he made it right for us to be able to have a relationship with him.
He sacrificed himself for the joy of his love for us. Remember, that's important at the end of this message. You're gonna have to remember that. He goes, he endured the cross disregarding its shame.
Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God's throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people, then you won't become weary and give up. After all, you've not yet given your lives in the struggle against sin.
So therefore, he gives us this how to run this race, how to start that journey of set apartness. And there's three things here, and then the how to even begin to do these three things. All right there. And and I'm gonna show you right now. The first one is if we're gonna run this race,
we need to make a commitment to run for the best.
Don't just run for alright. Don't run for good enough. Run for the best. What do I mean by that? In verse one, all three of these are in the first verse. Run for the best. Look at the highlighted part here. He says, let us strip off every weight that slows us down.
Now you're thinking, okay. So get rid of the sin. Get rid of it. No. He says, especially the sin. We'll deal with that next. So if he's saying especially the sin, that means a whole bunch of stuff he's talking about in here is not really sin.
It's not like you're doing something that's violating where God said to go. You're it's it could be a good thing, but it's not the best thing. It means it's something that will weigh you down. It will and, you know, it could be one and whatever's weighing you down, and it might not even be something you did wrong.
It's just it's still not the best way.
You're you're you're you're letting it distract you. If you're running a race, how many would go, alright, you gotta run this race. It's a matter of life and death. You're stretching. You're warming up. Then, oh, wait a minute. And you go put on one of those 50 pound weight vest to go run it. That would be dumb.
Why would we and he goes, some of us are running a race, and you're way you're you have stuff that's weighing you down. It's not the best. It could be something that's good, but it's being a distraction.
It's slowing you down. It's maybe not sin and stopping you, but it's definitely not letting you move where you should be moving. For example, when I think about this, I think about when my brother and sister-in-law got married. My son was, like, two, Jaden, he's he's right there, actually.
Stand up really quick since you're in here. There he is. Like, what, six two, four hundred pounds now? No. No. He's a big boy. His his biceps are still way smaller than his dad's, though. He big kid. When he was like two and a half, he was the ring bearer in their wedding.
And and it was crazy because they got him the full on tux. He had the full little kid tux. He looked adorable. It was awesome. A tux is a good thing, and it was very appropriate for the wedding. You know, and and he walked down, did the job brilliantly. He was awesome even his age. He he he enjoyed it. He did a good job. Well, then afterwards, we're doing the reception. It was all outdoors in San Diego, and it was out on this golf course. It was this big area to run it. Now now it's time that he wanted to relax. So as we're sitting there talking, my wife looks over, and we look over him, and and and and and he basically had stripped down to just his white shirt and his diaper.
He had taken off all of his clothes, and she goes, what are you doing? And he got up, and he's like, it's time to run. And he took off, and it was so funny because right as my wife got, the photographer got a picture of that moment.
There you are, son. And
he goes, it's time to run. And he just took off, and look at the smile on his face, man. He's like, yeah, I'm free. And he instinctive, see, he was into minimalistic barefoot running before it became a craze. He just knew it's time to run, and these dress shoes, and these pants, and this restrictive
weight coat, and this little vest, I won't be able to fully run. Now you can try. You can run with all that, and that's good stuff to wear. But if the goal was to run quicker, he knew that it was holding him back. Now none of us should just get up and take off our pants and say it's time to run.
I said we need the faith of a child, not the maturity level of a child. But some of us have some good things in our lives that if you're gonna run the race he's called you to do, it's restricting you. It's slowing you down.
And and and only I trust the holy spirit to talk you about what is it. What is the thing that you're not necessarily doing in something wrong, but it is restricting you. There's another side to this too, run for the best,
and it means something that hinders you that could be a good thing. There's also some things that hinder you that are a bad thing, but they're not your bad thing. So you still haven't sinned. It was something that happened to you.
That's another big one that holds us back in our faith. See, you didn't sin. Someone else sinned against you, and now you're hurt by it, and you're held back by it, and you don't deal with it. And you use that, you hold onto that, and it's like an anchor
that you're just dragging around, and you can't move forward. And sometimes it catches hold, and you are stuck. A good example of that is a popular word out there. I see people talking about a lot, and some of you are in this church because of it. Church hurt. Anybody heard of that phrase? You heard church hurt?
Great, this is awesome. Nobody's been hurt in this church. Well, stay in this church long enough and you'll know what it means. No. Church hurt is a common term now, especially with a lot of guys that have been in ministry. A lot of pastors are bailing out because they feel like their church has chewed them up.
And the truth is church hurt, and then you know, some guys, pastors, and people trying to defend the church says, the church didn't hurt you, people did. Well, if a pastor says that, I can understand how they're probably church hurting people.
Because why would you say that? The church what is the church? It's not the organization. A church needs to be organized just like if we have a body, we're glad our body's organized. Right? A very disorganized body is a dead body. You know? And and and so
what it means is is a person hurt you in the person, we are the church. And it can be beyond church hurt. You might be hurt by a relationship. Maybe when I maybe some of you, I I triggered a little bit when I talked about my dad. That, yeah, my dad ruled in our house.
The problem wasn't the authority. The problem is how he used the authority. The problem is you might have been abused. And whatever it is, there's this hurt that someone did to you.
Well, I've seen it over and over. People go, well, I've come to this church. I got hurt. I got chewed up, and that's why I'm not serving. I just I just can't do it. So but but serving is something we're supposed to do to move in this race. So you're letting this hurt, something that you didn't sin, something someone else did
hold you back. And we're, like, tethered to that and chained, and it's an anchor we're dragging behind us. So what are we supposed to do with that? Well, if someone hurt you, the way you let go of it is you need to forgive. Now I've done a whole series on this. I don't have time to do the whole series.
But what that means is when you heard that, if you're really anchored by hurt, what you thought I just said is you need to say it's okay what they did. You think I'm saying you need to reconcile to someone that doesn't even care about what they did. No. That's not what I said. Forgiveness does not equal reconciliation.
You can't have reconciliation without forgiveness, but reconciliation takes two. Two people willing. Person needs to be willing to ask for forgiveness, and then the person needs to be willing to forgive. That's the first step of reconciliation.
There's still some other. You gotta rebuild trust. You gotta there's all kinds of boundaries and stuff you need to set up and do if you're gonna do that. Forgiveness only takes one.
Meaning, if someone hurt you in the past and they don't even care and and you know they're moving on, again, some of you have a hard time, the person's already died, and you're letting someone who's dead that there is no chance for reconciliation. You're like, I cannot forgive,
because you instinctively, for some reason in your hurt, that anchor is making you say, if I forgive, I'm letting them off the hook. Can I tell you something in order to what scripture says? To forgive, oftentimes, you're not letting them off the hook. You're letting yourself off the hook.
You're un you're you're releasing the anchor. You're allowing yourself to move on. And you literally have to physically say, I choose to forgive. I am letting this go.
And some of us, you need more help than just doing. Some of you could just go do that and keep doing it every day. Some of you might need to talk to someone. You might need to talk to a pastor or a counselor. You might need to unpack this a little bit. But I am telling you,
so many times we let a hurt, something someone else did to us, be an anchor that keeps us from moving forward in what God asked us to do, and it sometimes ends up sounding like an excuse.
And that's the other thing you gotta analyze. Is it really the hurt, or are you just using that as an excuse because you don't wanna do what God's asked you to do? And it's like it's easier to say, I can't give because that was at a church and they abused the money,
or I can't it's like, don't use that as an excuse. Don't use that as an anchor to slow you down. Run for the best. Because if God loved us so much, the joy set before him, the love he had for us, he would do whatever it takes to make it possible to give us this life, shouldn't we trust him how we should live this life?
Don't you think his plan understands every one of our hurts? He says consider the hostility he got from people. Consider. You wanna talk about the worst church hurt of all. We're sitting in church. Right? And we believe in Jesus. If you're a Christian, guess who put him on the cross? We did.
So you don't think he understands church hurt or somebody that you should trust hurting you? It's like every one of us put him on the cross. That's why he says consider that. Because when you consider that, we're supposed to be like that, we can move past that. And we can say, I'm letting go of this.
Doesn't matter if they ever, no, reconcile or that it's never possible or they don't care, but I am gonna be done with this. And then you're free. So run for the best. Unattach that stuff, because if you run with that hurt, that'd be like hiking,
and every time you're walking, of sudden you kick some big rock, you're like, oh, that rock hurt my foot. Man, I'm so mad at that rock. I hate that rock. This is terrible, and you pick it up and put it in your backpack. Then you hit a branch. Oh, the branch scratching it. Stick that in your shirt.
Can you imagine if you kept trying to hike and you just keep picking up every rock and everything that has hurt you? You know what it's gonna do? Eventually you're gonna be, I'm too tired to hike. This hike is stupid. And you're gonna sit down and stop moving. So run for the best.
The second one is now run away from sin. That's that second part in that verse one here that we can see here. There you go. Verse one.
Verse one. There. Especially the sin that so easily trips us up. So if there's good things that aren't best things and even bad things that aren't your fault that will slow you down,
our sin, when we openly just don't listen to God's plan, when we don't obey his word, when we don't do that, and we literally we're the ones that are now doing something wrong, that doesn't just slow you down. That completely knocks you over. Now you're not able to move at all.
That's what it's describing. It's like now you've been tripped and you've fallen over, and you can't get anywhere anymore, and it's like you're not moving. And you're like, as a Christian, like if you don't address your sin, and he even said at the end, have you fought to the death in your battle against sin?
Do we really fight sin that way? Do we really look at our old self and go, hey. You know, I gotta trust Jesus. I need his power, and I need to do and what that means is I need to repent. Run away from it is what it is. What you do is you realize this, you own it, you confess it, and then what you do is you don't just say, God, I feel really bad about this, and I'm gonna start crawling and keep going the direction I'm gonna go. I repent. Repent means to turn around all
the way around. 180 degrees. Some of us turn around 360 degrees. I'm so sorry, God. It's not feel bad about what you did and then keep moving forward.
It's I need to turn around and go the way God's at. I need to get be set apart again. I need to set out again. And God's faithful. It says every time we ask for goodness, he loves us. He will forgive us every single time and help us go back the right way.
And and and it's the process that we gotta continue to do that. And here's the thing, a lot of us say, okay, I do that with most stuff, but even if you just leave that one thing.
And here's the problem about that one thing. Like I said before, a few weeks ago, we had a throw punch of all throw punches. I described it as a hockey jersey. You know, you're gonna fight, pull the jersey up over the shoulders, and then
because I I showed you some scripture where where God said, hey, if you know what you ought to do, the right thing, the thing that God and you don't do it, that's sin. And a lot of us, when we say run away from sin, you're only thinking about the bad thing you do. It's that habit you have, that hang up.
But when you sit there and look at your life and say, as as as David wrote in the Psalms, examine my heart and show me the ways that are not in alignment with yours, God. Do you consider the things we're commanded to do to be a Christian? The things he says, this is the mission I've given you?
And when I refuse to do those things, that's just as much a sin as the bad things. And that's why I think a lot of us get really complacent. You've been a Christian for a while, you're pretty good at the don't list, but you have a reason and excuse why this thing that God said to do, I don't have to do.
I don't have to honor God with my money. I don't need to give to my church. Sin. I don't have to serve and use my gifts to serve the body of Christ. Sin.
Because you're missing out on the life that Jesus died to give you. So you're assuming that's something bad. You're assuming that if I do that, I'm missing out. And God's like, no. You're missing out when you don't do this. There's a joy on the other side. Just like he said, the joy set before him for the cross. Yes. Sometimes the things he's called us to do sounds hard, sounds painful, sounds scary, sounds like not what I wanna do, but there is a better thing on the other side of trusting him. He's actually saying you're missing out on a joy.
And I've commanded you to do it because this is the way. My house, my rules. And so we need to consider this. You're like, well it's just this one thing, it's this one reason, and that's where it'll get you. That's where it'll get you.
It only takes one little thing that you leave alone, and it'll ruin the whole house. I heard this story and someone sent me another version of it last night. It's been interesting. It's been shareless. It's kind of a parable. And
the and the way I heard it was an African pastor used this, and he said there was a family that really wanted this house, but they couldn't afford it. So they went to the owner. He wasn't even living it at the time, and he had it for sale, and they they needed him to sell it a little bit cheaper.
And he's like, no. And he goes, please, please, please. He goes, okay. So he comes across like the good guy. I'll help you out. And he goes, I'll sell it to you at that price, but I get to keep one thing in the house. One part, one thing in this house is mine.
And I alright. Well, what is it? And he walks over, and there was a nail sticking out over the front door, the only way in and out of the house. He goes, I'm keeping that nail. Alright. We'll take it. He goes, no. No. No. I don't wanna take it. I wanna keep it. It's mine.
Still in this house, but that nail, I could put anything on. That's mine. And they're like, this guy is weird, but he's giving us a great deal. Okay. So they agree. Well, this guy waits. A couple years roll by. Now this house has gotten way more expensive, And the guy comes back and he goes, I wanna buy your house back
at the same price I paid you for it. And I'm like, no way. First, we don't wanna move. We love the house. Second of all, it's worth more than that. Why would we do that? He goes, well, because I just want to sell it to me. He goes, no. He goes, okay. He comes back and puts a dead dog carcass hanging on the nail.
Like, you can't do that? That's in our house. Get that out. He goes, no, it's not. It's hanging on my nail.
And he sat there and that carcass just rots and gets grosser and grosser and grosser. I mean, that's pretty disgusting, isn't it? I mean the only thing worse than that would be him hanging a Seahawks jersey off that thing.
His family tried to make it work. It lasts about a week. Seahawks jersey, you're burning the house down and moving on. Hey, don't get mad at me. Any Seahawks fans in here? Somebody walked up not knowing I was gonna say that last night, and they handed me a sympathy card for today's game. Sorry for your loss.
So don't pick on me, man. Shots fired all the time. And this is Arizona.
Anyways, if you imagine, the house becomes unlivable. So the family finally agrees. They move out of the house. They sell it. Very next day, for sale sign's back on the house. Nail's still there. This guy can just repeat it over and over and over again. That's what sin does to us, that's what the enemy does.
You leave that one nail, it'll end up with a rotting carcass on it, and it'll make the whole house, your whole life unlivable if you leave it there long enough. It will stop you. It'll trip you up and stop you in your tracks. What is your nail? What is your nail?
Go to the Lord. Run away from it. Confess it and say, I'm tired, I don't get it, but Lord I gotta turn around and I gotta run. But if I don't want that nail, that's gonna cost me more. Exactly. It'll cost you more upfront. It seems like it costs you more, but in the end it saves you and rescues you from a whole lot more death.
A whole lot more bad stinky stuff. A whole lot of more stuff that's gonna shut down your life. What is your nail? And then the third one is run with endurance.
Run with endurance. Let me finish here, right here. It says in the last part, and let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. So it's a race now, and he says, but it's not a sprint. It's more of a long distance run.
See, a lot of treat our faith like a sprint. You know, a sprint, you just need a little motivation,
and you can go. You can start well. You can then as long as you're fast. You train to be fast, but you're you're not going very long. You know? We're we're it's like, bam. You hear the gun, yeah, and you go. But if you hear the gunshot that motivates, like you're waiting, like, yeah, yeah, and all a sudden the gun goes up and you run and you sprint, but it's a marathon,
how's that gonna look in in about, I don't know, seven to ten minutes from there? You're not gonna make it. You see, it only takes a little bit of motivation, a little bit of feeling, as part like a sermon sometimes could really motivate and get us to go, yeah, you know, I feel those, those dry bones are rattling,
You know, and we get all pumped up, and that makes us see the right way. But if you only live off the sprint, if you only live off the motivation, motivation will get you to start anything, but it takes consistency and endurance to finish anything.
And so that's the problem. There are a lot of you who are really good starters. You don't finish well. You realize a lot of companies that got started and become really successful, the guy that started it and got it going is rarely the guy that's still leading it way down the road?
Because there's a lot of guys that are really good at starting something, and they're they've learned, they sell it and move on before because they can't maintain it. It's the same way with faith. We need to have endurance. We are running an endurance race here, guys. That means, yes,
there's gonna be hard days. Yes, there's gonna be days we are weighed down. We go, man, what am I doing? I gotta get rid of this weight. There's gonna be days we've literally fall over because we've sinned and we've tripped, but it takes the endurance to get back up and get back in the race.
You gotta just keep doing it over and over and over, and it takes endurance. But how does that work? He answers the question of how to have the endurance to run for the best and run away from sin, and that's what the rest of this passage talks about. Look at verse two again. We do this, this is how we do all this,
by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. And he goes on and just says he gave up for the hostility, look, so he says, how do we do this? You do it by keeping your eyes on Jesus. Keep your eyes fixed on him. We need to always look at him. Because think about it.
If you're on a road trip, say you go on a road trip with your family and it's to some of the most beautiful parts of the country, why does it stink to be the one driving? Why? You don't get to see everything everybody else sees. Or if you try to see what everybody else sees, you see it for a really short period of time, and
then you're all in the hospital, and you have a lot of car damage. You know why? There's something about our us as humans that we naturally move towards what we look at. I've told you guys so many stories of bikes and motorcycles where I've crashed and hurt myself,
and most of the time it's because I'm looking at something else and not at the trail. And when you look at something else long enough, guess where your bike goes? Towards that.
So if you're sitting here going, alright, do I consistently look at that's why we need to be in the word. That's why we need to be in community. That's why we need to be in church. That's why we need to choose to worship. That's why we need to not stand there and stare at the band while they sing and we engage. Because when I choose to use my voice
to worship God with my words, crying out the truth of who he is, it's forcing me to look at him. And some of you go, I don't wanna sing it because I'm not living it. You know why? You're not living it because you're not singing it.
It's kinda this weird you won't look at it, so you won't live it. So then when you are not living it, you don't wanna look at it.
And that's this never ending cycle that'll keep you on the ground. But if you choose to look, we gotta keep our eyes fixed on him, fixed on Jesus, and fixed on what he did for us, and really fixed on the joy that was set before him while he went to the cross. The joy is us. You have to fix your eyes on the fact that he loves you that much. When you look at the cross, you better see the God of the universe, his rules, his house, that we do not deserve this. The only thing we deserve from God is judgment,
yet he died for us. And when you see that love, if you really believe it, if you really know this is true, that should motivate you to stay in the race.
Not because, well, God said I better do that. He said I better clean my room. God said, you know, dad said, dad said, it's more like me. I look back at my dad and all those things. He challenged me to I had great parents. My mom and dad loved me, and most of the stuff I said, I better do it or I'm in trouble. I'm like, man, I wish my kids would understand
the value of doing this.
I'm doing it from the love, and I see it on the other side. Do you fix your eyes on Christ and see how much he loves you? If he loves you that much, why are you afraid to trust him with your time or your money or that relationship or or or or get in the word and talk to him every day?
Figure out what it is that's stopping you, because it's either a sin that's tripping you or something that's not necessarily bad, but it's distracting you. It's holding you back, and deal with it. And put basically your money where your mouth is. Let the rubber hit the road. Be real about this. Start living
what you've already been given. And I've known, I've said this, the bible's pretty clear. If you're like, nope, but you say you believe in Jesus and you're just gonna reject this over and over and over again, Only you know you gotta deal with this in your heart.
But the New Testament kind of implies that you might not be a Christian at all. And you gotta be real about that. Just own it. You don't really believe in Jesus.
You gotta make the decision.
And the way to do is to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and keep your eyes fixed on what the ultimate goal of life is. Because all the distractions, all the things all the things that usually distract us and trip us up are things of this world. Things that the book of Ezekiel says eventually it's ending.
Gog and Magog, the ungodly world of trying to please ourselves, trying to take us all the stuff, the accolades, the popularity, the money, the comfortableness,
to get the political system right, to make it the best for me, to get all of these things. Ultimately, that's all gonna burn up, and it's not gonna be real anymore. What's gonna be real is us and God, and where's your relationship with him? I wanna close with this.
There's a story. It's not a story. It's a real really happened. Recently, about, you know, in early two thousands, a guy named Otto van Habsburg died in Austria. He was the last crown prince, but he would never become king because his father, who died back in the nineteen thirties or whatever, was the last king
emperor of Austria. But the Habsburgs, you know, they had ruled for hundreds of years. They were very faithfully religious. Loved the Lord.
And so whenever they died, they would be buried in this church to kinda represent this is where we're ultimately gonna end up, in the house of God, with God. And the part of their ceremony, they'll have these big funerals, but then they have this ceremony where they take the body procession through the town and they go to this church.
And that's where it kinda ends. And what they have to do is they they walk up to the door, I got a picture of it, the leader of the procession walk up to the door, he knocks on the door, then he reads something off. And this is what it is. Here's what happens at these funerals. So so they walk up
and and and the guy comes up, the leader, and he knocks on the door.
And the friar inside says, who desires entry? And this is what the leaders of the funeral party says, and this is for Otto's funeral. Otto of Austria, former crown prince of Austria Hungary, Prince Royal of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galatia, Latimeria, Illyria, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow,
Duke of Lorraine, Salisburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carinola, Bukawina, Grand Prince of Transylvania, the Margrave of Moravia, duke of the Upper And Lower Silesia, Modena, Parma, Piancenza, Gustala, and Asshwyne, and Zedar of Teshin, Frauld Dubrovnik, and Zedar, princely count of Habsburg and Tyrol of Kyber, Gorizia, and Gradissa,
Prince of Trento and Brixen, the Margave of Upper And Lower Lustachia and Eustatia, Count of Ohemens, Feldrik, Bergen, Sonnenberg, Lord of Thrust, Coder, and Windrich Mark, the Grand Voivid of the Voivid ship of Serbia.
The friar responds from inside the locked door, we don't know him.
So then the guy,
Who desires entry? Doctor. Otto Van Hapsburg, president and honorary president of the Pan European Union, member and the father of the House of the European Parliament, holder of honorary doctorates from countless universities
and freemen of many communities in the Central Europe, members of numerous noble academies and institutes, bearer of high and highest awards, decorations and honors of church and state made to him in recognition of his decade long struggle for the freedom of peoples for rights and justice. We do not know him.
Who desires entry? Otto, a mortal, sinful man.
Then let him come in and they open the doors. The last act of this family is to be a reminder that it doesn't matter all the accomplishments, all the titles, all the money, all the comfort, all the privilege. It doesn't matter.
What matters is do you know you're a mortal sinful person that needs Jesus and you keep your eyes fixed on him. Everything else is either an anchor weighing you down or a sin that's tripping you up.
Father God, I thank you, Lord, that you loved us so much, that we were the joy set before. Lord, my prayer is simple for myself, for anyone in this room, anyone online, is that we would see you and see you so clearly and see your love so clearly that in comparison, just like it's said in Ezekiel, your word,
that we will see our sin when we see you. We will see the things that slow us down when we see you, but your love of seeing you, your holiness, your set apartness, and your spirit within us will give us the power to set out on this journey of being sanctified, being set apart, being holy for you are holy.
So Lord, speak to each one of us on what that means for us today. Give us the courage and the clarity and the conviction to take that step. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus, amen. Amen. Hey, I love you guys.
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