Finishing the Race

SERMON: 2017-10-01--ac17182--finishing-the-race-part-4 SOURCE DURATION: 00:49:15.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.90 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with an opening address (sermon exposition) in segment [0] and concludes with the final lines of the closing prayer/reflection in segment [531]. All material between these points is considered part of the main sermon structure. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, it's starting to feel a little bit like a marathon, but we are moving along, finishing the race, part four this morning, reading again Acts chapter 20, the verses 22 and 24. Paul is on his third missionary journey. He's on his way to Jerusalem where trials and suffering await him. Let's read those couple of verses one more time this morning. Verse 22, "And now compelled by the Spirit, I'm going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me. If only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. I consider my life worth nothing to me. If only I may finish the race and complete the task." Let's pray together. Father, again, we're grateful for your word, we're grateful for the ministry of the Apostle Paul, grateful that he valued your purposes over his own security and comfort. And Lord, as we begin to look this morning at what that might look like in terms of our own lives, we pray that you will make us so passionately in love with you and with your purposes that come hell or high water, we want to be faithful and obedient even to the end knowing that in the Lord you will grant us the victory and the kingdom and the power and the glory. So Lord, wherever we find ourselves in life's journey, help us to hear you, help us to lay hold of your grace. When we fall down, help us to get back up and help us to keep running until we stand before you in that final day and receive the ultimate prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So bless me this morning. Give me the words that I need in all of us Lord, hearts and minds and spirits to receive what it is that you say to the church and may this church by your grace fulfill its destiny and be a redemptive community, a biblically functioning community through which the redemptive purposes of God may be made known to the world. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Well so far in our reflections on Paul's speech to the Ephesian elders here in Acts chapter 20, we have considered two of three elements that I believe are worthy of our note. The first one that we looked at is the fact that Paul was led by the Holy Spirit to head towards Jerusalem. Verse 22, Paul speaking, he says, "Compelled by the Spirit, I'm going to Jerusalem not knowing what will happen to me there." And we saw together that under the terms of the new covenant, God directs his people not only through the written word which would be the law of Moses, not only through the words of others which would be the prophetic word, but also through the indwelling Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who are his children. Paul says, Romans 8 verse 14, "All who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God." Second thing that we have considered together, points to ponder, is that Paul wanted to finish well. Verse 24, "I consider my life worth nothing to me. If only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace." To finish the race, to complete the task, for Paul meant leaving out his life faithfully before God, completing the job that God had given him to do which was proclaiming the gospel to the Gentile nations and to do that despite the opposition or the obstacles or the difficulties that he experienced. And that brings us then this morning to still a third point to ponder in this particular passage. And that is this, Paul did not care what the cost would be to him personally. He didn't care how much obedience to God would cost him. Listen again to verse 24, "I consider my life worth nothing to me. If only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace." Even though Paul did not have a very clear idea of what awaited him in Jerusalem, we do know that he was aware that prison and hardships awaited him. Every place along the way, the Holy Spirit bore witness to him that this is what's going to happen. And though all his friends were saying, "Paul, this is the Holy Spirit telling you, do not go to Jerusalem, we don't want you walking into any traps, we don't want you to get hurt." Paul says, "I don't care what anybody says, I believe the Lord wants me to go to Jerusalem and even if it costs me my life, I want to be obedient to God." And as you can imagine, there is a powerful spiritual lesson there for all of us, because if we want to finish well, if we want to come to the end of life's journey and hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant." If we want to be able to say to the Lord, "Here is the task that you have given me and I have completed it," then you and I need to overcome whatever the obstacles there are that will keep us from completing the race. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Galatians, says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." And the writer to the Hebrews, he says, "Don't throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a little while, he who is coming will not delay, but my righteous one will live by faith and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." As I've often said, the road to the holy city Zion is littered with the carcasses of those who have started on the journey, but somewhere along the line they ran out of steam, the pain became too great, they threw in the towel, and they were not able to complete the journey or to complete the task. God is looking for people who, like the Apostle Paul, don't care what the price is that they have to pay, they will push through every obstacle so that they can receive the promised inheritance and the promised reward. In the time that we have this morning, I want to introduce you to the three common elements, the three common obstacles that you and I will surely face in our journey. We need to be able to identify those not only, but then later on, Lord willing, we will look at how God in Christ has made the provision so that, like the Apostle Paul, we can push through to the end and we can receive the promised inheritance that God has for us. All the obstacles that we encounter in the Christian life and Christian ministry can always be reduced to the triad of the three traditional enemies that God's people face. They are the devil, the world, and the flesh. Each one of these can trip us up. Altogether, they can be a severe undoing of the Christian life. So let me begin this morning then by talking about the one that is most closest to home and that would be what the Bible calls the flesh. Now the word flesh in the Bible is used in a number of different ways. It is used sometimes to describe the fleshly part of our bodies. We talk about flesh wounds as opposed to bone or structure. It's also used in the Bible to describe the whole human race as in the quotation from Joel on the day of Pentecost, "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh," meaning all people, men and women, boys and girls, slave and free. But in the New Testament, particularly in Paul's writings, the word flesh is most commonly used to describe our sinful self or our sinful condition, sinful human nature, if you will. And the Bible tells us that when God first created the human race and placed Adam and Eve in the garden, He created them in New Testament language with perfect knowledge, righteousness and holiness. That is to say, spiritually they were connected to God the Father. They had a relationship. Psychologically, they were capable of loving God and loving their neighbor. And physically, their bodies were yielded to the authority of God so that they were His agents of doing His work, His kingdom, if you will, on the earth. Along came the serpent. You know the story. They were deceived. They broke off their relationship with God and they fell into sin. From that day to this, every last one of us is born into the world with what the Bible calls a sinful human nature. Spiritually, we're disconnected from God. Psychologically and emotionally, we're more enamored with ourselves and our own security than we are with the well-being of God and the well-being of other people. And physically, instead of us ruling our body, the lusts, the passions, the desires of our body typically rule us. And so, for that reason, we are incapable of doing the will of God. Listen to how Paul puts it in Romans chapter 8, verses 7 and 8. "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Understand what he is saying. Every baby born into the world, apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ, is described as being in the flesh, alienated from God, unable to truly love, and incapable of being fully obedient to the will of God. So don't ever be surprised when in your life you find it hard to love God, hard to obey him, hard to do his will. Don't ever be surprised at rebellion that rises up inside you against the will of God, because that is the most natural thing in all of the world. We are conceived and born in sin. Theologically, that's known in reformed circles as the doctrine of total depravity. And total depravity doesn't mean that we're all as bad as we could possibly be. It just means that there is no part of our being that has not been corrupted by sin. And therefore, in our journey of running the race before God, outside of and apart from Jesus, guess who is your number one enemy? It is you. It is your own flesh. Your flesh will not submit to God. It doesn't want to submit to God. It needs the saving power of Jesus. That's why we talk about the need to be born again. You can go to church all your life. You can read your Bible all your life. You can make a thousand New Year's resolutions to become a good godly and holy person. You will never succeed unless you truly are born again by the Spirit of Jesus. Even the apostle Paul. Now, he was a pretty good dude, wouldn't you say? I know a lot of people don't like him, but they think he was bossy. But he loved God. Remember what he says about himself and his own journey in Romans chapter 7. These are very familiar words. I know that nothing good lives in me. That is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. The evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. That's Paul. That's Paul. Paul knew that apart from the saving grace of Jesus, he could not do what God wanted him to do, which is why he goes on a little bit later in that same passage to say in verse 24 and 25 of Romans chapter 7, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? This be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Now understand that in Christ we're more than conquerors, and that Jesus through our rebirth enables us to put to death the flesh so that we can live by the Spirit. That's the whole Christian message. That having been said, we still need to be very careful about not catering to the flesh and giving into it because at any moment our sinful flesh, our own rebelliousness against God, our alienation from him, can pop up and cause us to fail. That's why Paul says concerning himself in 1 Corinthians 9.27, "I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." See the flesh surfaces in feelings of inadequacy like, "God, I can't do this." The flesh surfaces in feelings of, "I'm not being treated fairly. I'm mad at you, Gohan." The flesh surfaces in patent and outright rebellion that says, "God, you have no business trying to tell me what to do when you're not even giving me the help how to do it." And there isn't a one of us here on the road of discipleship who won't here and there encounter the greatest sabotage to live in the Christian life, lives inside ourselves. Isn't that true? I mean, isn't it true that sometimes you just want to be mad at Gohan? Isn't it true that sometimes you think he's just treating you unfairly? And isn't it true that sometimes you just stubbornly set out to do what you want to do even though you know God doesn't want you to do it because you want what you want and you think you deserve it? I mean, remember my car in college, right? I said I needed, Lord said, "No, you don't." I said, "I'm going to get it." Lord said, "No, you won't." It was flesh versus spirit. I didn't tell you how that story ended. Some of you know it. I finally had to say, "Lord, you're the boss. I'm not going to win this one, so I'll yield to you." Rolled the clock forward. Next summer I had to go on a summer assignment to Fredericton and Brunswick and I remember I wanted the car to find my girl. Remember that? That was the motivation behind it. So I go to Fredericton, New Brunswick on my first summer assignment and I knew that I would need a vehicle and my family back in PEI by this time had a car available that they gave to me for that summer and for the year following. Well, if you remember the story of how I met Michelle, she was on a summer workshop in ministry's team of girls that came to work with us in Fredericton. She came off the plane and I said, "There's my wife." And that's exactly how it happened. I got my car and my wife and the Lord provided and I didn't have to do it. That's how it went. So the flesh is the first obstacle that you will encounter. You get tired of running the race, you get tired of doing what God wants you to do and you want to cater to the flesh and you want to say, "I just want to feel good for a while." Goes on, we not only fight the flesh, but we fight the world. And again, the word world is used in different ways in scripture and it's very important to keep these distinctions straight because otherwise you really get confused. On the one hand, the word world describes the planet, the whole earth, if you will. It's also used to describe the nations of the world. But in the New Testament, particularly in John's writings, it is used to describe the system of organized humanity that is at odds with God and the purposes of God. And when John says, "Do not love the world or the things of the world," that's what he's talking about. Do not love the mass of humanity that hates God, that is organized in rebellion against God and that does not want to do the will of God. And so, even if we push through our own resistance to obedience, pleading for God's grace and mercy to overcome the flesh, there's not only the flesh that we contend with, there's also the world, that is to say, people around us who have a vested interest in keeping us from moving forward with God. And if Paul struggled with his own flesh in being obedient to God and had to pummel it into obedience and submission, he had huge opposition, as you will recall, from other people, particularly the religious Jews. Listen to what he says earlier on in his speech to the Ephesian elders. Verse 19 of this chapter, he said, "I serve the Lord with great humility and with tears, although I was severely tested by the plots of the Jews." And if you know his history up to this and the history beyond this, you'll know that wherever Paul went preaching the gospel, he was followed by Jews who took a dislike to his message of grace and who tried to make his life impossible. And as the passage goes on beyond Acts chapter 20, as he gets to Jerusalem, guess what happens? He's barely in Jerusalem when the Jews that have followed him around raise a ruckus, create a city-wide riot because they think he has come into the temple and he has brought unclean Jews into the temple, which wasn't true at all. And as a result, he gets arrested by the Roman soldiers and that starts his journey towards imprisonment and trial and eventually leads him to appealing to the Roman emperor and stating his case there. And the trials and the difficulties that he talks about were very much the result of his enemies who did everything they could to kill him. When you read those stories, you ask yourself, why in the world were they so vehement? And why does the world hate the church so much? If you learn nothing else from me in my years of ministry with you here, please learn this and learn it well. Why does the world hate you? Why do Christians get persecuted? Why do the nations rage against the Lord and his anointed? It's all caught up in how you receive the inheritance that God has for his people. Let me try to explain it to you this way. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, "It is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast." We're familiar with the story of salvation, how God created us in relationship with him. We loved him and we loved each other. Life was paradise. We sinned against God, came under Satan's authority. We live in a fallen world. And if you don't believe that we live in a fallen world, just listen to the news a few times and you'll get an idea of how nasty the world can get. So the big cry of humanity for generations and generations and centuries has been, "How do we get back to paradise lost?" And this is where the world's version and the biblical version are totally at odds with each other. The biblical version says, "You have brought this on yourself by sinning against God, putting yourself under Satan's authority, and the way back is to own your sin, return to God, have your sins forgiven, be restored to him in relationship, and trust him to be your Redeemer." That's the message of the Bible, a message that comes to completion in the person of Jesus Christ, dies on the cross, overcomes death and hell, sits at the right hand of God the Father, pours out his Holy Spirit, so that when by faith we are joined to Jesus, we become the children of God, God becomes our Father, he grants us grace, which means he blesses us, he brings us into our inheritance, our place in the world in the here and now, and he guarantees that in Christ we are co-heirs and heirs of God in the age that is to come. You've heard it many, many times, don't ever forget it, because that's the heart of the message. How does the world want paradise regained? How does the world want to fix things up? Is it Jesus? Well, he is the stone by the builders rejected, is he not? Mention the name of Jesus and everybody, especially in Western culture today, has hissy-fed, because we don't want to be religious, God forbid, you'd never know that, how often they take his name in vain, but that's another thing. How does the world solve its problems? Well, can't call on God because we don't trust him and we don't know him, so we have to find the resources in here to try to get back over there. And fundamentally, whether it's democracy or education or science and technology or sociology or all the clever inventions of humankind that will ease our pain and bring us back into the kingdom, the bottom line is always this, it depends on me. And so in the world, who gets the inheritance? People who are smart, people who are strong, people who are gifted, people who run the race. We admire human strength and ability, and there's nothing wrong with that if it gives glory to God, but it's always done without God's glory. So here you have a situation where God says you're saved by grace through faith. That is the least and the lost and the least to whom I give my blessing, and the world says why should you get the blessing when I'm the one who most deserves it? And as you know, the clearest example of that, just to really nail that down, is of course the story of the relationship between the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15 and the elder brother. From the elder brother's perspective, the return of his prodigal son and the party that he gets and the fact that he gets the father's blessing is totally unjust and unfair. Is that not true? He hates it, why? Because he's been there all along, he has worked hard, and he's never had the party that he has longed for. And there you have, in a microcosm, the difference between those who live by grace, I don't deserve it, and those who think they deserve it. And so whenever the gospel comes, and whenever God is at work among his people and he saves the last and the lost and the least and he blesses them, those who are not in relationship with him are offended. They feel an injustice is done. They feel jealous and they feel resentful and ultimately they become angry to the point where they want to kill because it is Satan's anger against God for not allowing Satan to have the kingdom when he thought he deserved it. And so the spirit of Cain is always a spirit of rejection and it's always a spirit that wants to kill. Am I making any sense here? Let me put it this way, to the degree to which you follow Jesus and live by grace and thus experience the favor and the blessing of God on your life, and to the degree to which the people around you live by the values of the world, do not receive the favor and the blessing of God in the same way, to that degree they're going to hate you and it doesn't matter how nice a person you are. It doesn't matter because there is a spirit behind it which comes from hell itself. Jesus put it this way in John chapter 15, the verses 18 to 21. He says, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you. No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me." And to the degree our Western culture is rejecting Biblical values, to that degree their anger and their resentment towards God's people is increasing and out of that comes the kind of persecution that put Jesus on the cross and that has caused great harm to the Apostle Paul by the Jews who prided themselves in keeping the law. And so see, if you spent your whole lifetime keeping the law and thinking that you're better than the Gentiles and now along comes this apostle and all these dirty people come into the kingdom and they don't have to become as good and clean as you are, that would make you mad too, wouldn't it? Not fair. Grace is never fair. Because you know what fair is? Fair is going to hell because of all our sin. Grace says you don't have to go there because Jesus took the penalty for you. That's the gospel. Don't be surprised if there are people in your life who just don't like you for no other reason than that you follow Jesus. Doesn't mean you have to go antagonizing them, doesn't mean you have to bring it on yourself, I've often talked about that, but there was nobody better than Jesus and there was nobody they hated more because his very presence was a condemnation of everything they stood for and everything they valued. So there's the flesh, there's the world, and then of course there is the devil himself. Peter talks about him, 1 Peter 5, 8, "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." Paul in Ephesians 6, classic passage in spiritual warfare, "A struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Satan is not just a figment of somebody's imagination, he's not just the collective awareness of the dark side of the human race, he is from all appearances in scripture a fallen angel who was created as one of the most powerful of all angels, mounted a palace rebellion against God, got cast out of heaven, and hates God passionately and hates the purposes of God passionately. And if God wants a people with whom he can have a love relationship and a people who will do his will and who will manifest his character among themselves in their relationships with each other, then Satan wants to do nothing more than to destroy that life. He is passionate about his hatred and he is resentful and ruthless in trying to make sure that God does not build his kingdom and he tries to get hold of you and me, bring us under his power, so that we can do what he wants us to do. And just really very quickly, he does that in four ways for our purposes this morning. I talk about this in a lot more detail in I believe chapter 21 of my new book, When Trouble Strikes, Handling the Losses in Your Life, but Satan can't just go barging into your life. He cannot just go barging into your world and make you do his thing. He's got to win your approval. The gate has to be opened wide. How does he do that? One way in which he does it is deception. Paul writing to the Second Corinthians 11.3, "But I am afraid that as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ." To be deceived is to be lied to. Satan is the great deceiver and he deceives people about God. He deceives people about themselves. He deceives people about heaven and hell and eternity. And you can see how incredibly successful he is because you go to the average North American funeral, it doesn't matter how that person has lived, what he believed or what he practiced, everybody still thinks he's going to go to heaven, isn't that true? That's deception. It's not so. Only those who are in Christ are going to be saved. Temptation. He's not only known as the deceiver, but he also tries to lure us in to sin. I was afraid that in some way Paul says to the Thessalonians, "The tempter might have tempted you, and our efforts might have been useless." To gain access. And again I talk about this in my book about Satan using bait to snare God's people. He tries to find what you're hungry for. And then he offers that to you, whether that be fame or whether that be money or whether that be a happy life or a good life. He dangles the bait out there. He looks like he's going to supply your need and you take the bait and you discover it's got a hook in it because he wants to kill you. That's what he did with Adam and Eve. As God said, "You shall not eat from any of the trees of the garden," no, that's not what God said at all. The implication is God is holding out on you. God doesn't want you to be like him. So here's an opportunity to have your cake and eat it too. You can have the blessings of paradise and still be independent. You don't have to submit to God or listen to his authority. You can live your own way. Well doesn't that appeal to every human being? You ask any kid, "Can I do what I want to do?" Before you know it, we're snared and the result is destruction and disaster. Then there's accusation. The book of Revelation 12, 10, the accuser of our brothers who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down. The accuser of our brethren. I believe Satan accuses us at two levels. He accuses us before God. Every time your subject and my subject comes up before God the Father, the devil would like to stand there and he would say, "Well, I often think of him as a Protestant prosecutor in the court. He loves to remind the judge about all the charges that are against you because he wants to appeal to the justice of God that God can't have the likes of you and me around him because we would spoil his holiness because the devil is really interested in the holiness of God as you can imagine. See? But he appeals to the holiness of God, the holiness of the angels, and the sinfulness of our condition to say that we're not worthy to be there. Good thing we have an advocate. Everybody who stands up and says, "Excuse me, Judge, let me tell you, I died for that dude or that dude's death and Satan can't have him and you've got to let him in because I love him." Not only that, not only accusing us before God, but he accuses us to us. Have you ever noticed? He tempts you into sin, gets you to do things that you ought not to be doing, then he'll turn around and say, "Aha, see, what kind of Christian do you think you are? Do you think God could ever love you? Do you think you could ever have a plan or a purpose in God's life? How do you even dare go to church, lift your head, because you are just a foolish jerk and nothing good will ever come of you." Ever hear those words? Accusation, accusation, the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down. One final one just very quickly and then we'll wind up this morning. Not one that we think of very often, but he's also the agent of destruction. Listen to this verse in Revelation 9, 11. Talking about the nations of the world, "Ahead is king over them, the angel of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abandon, Abeddon, and in Greek is Apollyon." And the translation of Apollyon is destroyer. Satan is the ultimate destroyer. If God is the ultimate creator, Satan is the ultimate destroyer. He was, said Jesus, a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. And if God is pro-life, and if God wants to create life, and if God wants to create order out of chaos, and if God wants people to flourish and to be happy and to receive the kingdom, then Satan wants to do the opposite. But if you ever want to see what that looks like when it gets full reign and full power, then look at the nations of the world when evil dictators take over. I've been watching a Netflix series, just the last little while, called World War II in Color. I don't know if any of you have seen it. It's a colorized version of war footage from the war with a narrative overlay, fascinating, but horrifying because war is a terrible thing. And when you see the violence that is perpetrated, the number of Jews they herded into the gas chambers and all that kind of stuff, Stalin doing what he did to the Ukraine, millions upon millions of people deliberately starved to death, you get a picture of what evil looks like. And that's the evil that is arrayed against you and me. And as I said earlier, any one of those three, the flesh, the world, and the devil, alone is enough to wipe us out together, humanly speaking, insurmountable. Who in the world can run the race and remain faithful? And of course, the answer is Jesus. And next time, when we come back to this, we'll look at that in more detail, how he is the author and the finisher of our faith has made full provision, full provision, that we can run the race, complete the task, and receive the inheritance. And preparation for that, three things I want each of us to ponder. Look at your own life and ask yourself the question, where is my flesh my greatest hindrance? What is there in me, body, mind, or spirit that makes it so hard for me to love God above all of my neighbor as myself? It'll be different for each one of us, but there will be similarities. Secondly, ask yourself the question, who is there in my life, in my relationships, in the world around me who keeps me from going all out with Jesus? Who am I afraid to displease? And then number three, where do you encounter Satan's opposition the most clearly? Is it in deception? Is it in temptation? Is it in accusation? Is it in destruction? Do you feel that he's trying to pull the rug out from underneath you and make a mess of your life? And then when we get back together, let's celebrate the victory of Jesus in whom we are more than conquerors. And God's people agreed and said amen and amen. Let's stand for closing prayer. Thank you, Father. That Paul, when he gets to the end of his life, he's able to say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have completed my journey, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness." And thank you that history is filled with men, women, boys, and girls who, when push came to shove, overcame the flesh, overcame the world, and overcame the devil. Not because they were giants, not because they were good, righteous, or holy in and of themselves, but because they knew they weren't. And they knew they needed Jesus and they clung to him with everything they had. Oh Lord, help us to do the same and help us to run with perseverance the race that is set before us, knowing that the author and the finisher of our faith received the inheritance and wants to share it with each of his children for God's glory. Thank you for hearing us. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:49:09.600; remove through 00:49:15.000] [BLANK [CUT]_AUDIO] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:49:15.000; resume after this marked segment]