Amen. Take your Bibles and turn back
with me to Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. Entitled
this message, A Race Worth Running. A Race Worth Running. Our text will be found in verse
7. The Apostle says, you did run well. Something happened here. Who
hath hindered you? Who did hinder you that you should
not obey the truth? Now the Apostle Paul in this
previous chapter gave us an allegory. You remember that's the story
of Hagar and Sarah, how these are representative of two covenants. And then they had two sons, Hagar
had Ishmael, And Sarah had Isaac. Ishmael is a picture of all who
are under the law. Hagar is a picture of the law.
And everybody that is born of Hagar is under the law. Ishmael was a servant. He inherited
nothing and he was cast out. And so is everyone who is under
the law. Everyone who desires to be under
the law is a servant and will be cast out. Those who are born of grace. Those who are born according
to a covenant of promise like Isaac was. We are sons and heirs
of God. And so Paul tells them in chapter
5 and verse 1 to stand fast in this. Hold fast to this. This
liberty. Don't be entangled again with
the yoke of bondage because that happens to apostates. Apostates,
they stand fast in liberty only pretending. But every apostate
is entangled again with the law. And what does he say in those
verses? He said, And Christ shall profit you nothing. Verses 2
through 4, he says, Look, I don't care who you are. I don't care
what you've done and how well you've stood so far. If you go
back, then Christ gonna profit you nothing. And he says to those sons of
liberty, for we through the Spirit, we were born of the Spirit, we
who are of the Spirit, what do we do? We wait for the hope of
righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ either circumcision
availeth anything or uncircumcision, but what? Faith! Faith avails. This is the product of every
true son of God is faith. We wait in faith anticipating,
that's what the word hope means, anticipating the righteousness
that Christ promised. We have righteousness, we've
not yet fully experienced what that means. But we wait in hope. And so now Paul is going to use
another Kind of an analogy. He doesn't talk about running
a race. He said these people in Galatia, these people in Galatia,
they had run what seemed to be well. He reflects on their past
progress. He said when I came to you and
I preached the gospel to you and you believed, you believed,
And it seemed as though you were running well. Everything was
going well. Until what? Something hindered
you. He said, Who in the world hindered
you in this race? And what was the mark of their
hindrance? It was this, that they did not obey the truth. That was the mark that they were
now outside of the course. And so tonight, Those of you who are believers
in Christ, I want you to see this, you have begun to run.
You've begun to run a race. The Christian race. It all started
in the same way. We all started this race the
same way. By faith. By faith. The Spirit of God came and gave
you life and the immediate result of life was what? You believed.
You believe, that's always the result of the spirit, is that
you believe. You see, we being by nature children
of wrath and spiritually dead, we are quickened. We could not
come to Christ. We would not come to Christ.
We were running after the things of the world. We were running,
Paul says, according to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in
the children of disobedience. We all had our conversation in
time past in that, every one of us. We were running to please ourselves. But to all that run after these
things we found no peace." Isn't that true of you? You that ran
after the world, we found no peace. We found no contentment
in the lust of our flesh. The religion of our nature only
ended one way, death. Death. But the race of the believer
in Christ, friends, is a race worth running because this race
always ends in life. This race always ends in eternal
life and peace with God. So tonight I want to look at
three things concerning the Christian race. Three things concerning
the Christian race so that we might not be hindered in our
running. This church was hindered. It
is my heart's desire that every believer run the race without
hindrance. without hindrance. And so I want
to look at three things concerning this race. And so, first of all,
I want us to see the course. What is the course of our race? Secondly, I want us to see the
condition that we have to be in to run this race. And thirdly,
I want us to see the prize. Now, we know this, first of all,
that every race has a course. Every race has a course to follow.
Well, so does this race. When we are running, we are not
running aimlessly. We are running in a course, in
a certain direction. Now, all who run this course,
it must be clearly marked. I'm having an easier time with
this because Andrew, when he runs, I see him running and his
lane's marked. You can't miss it. White lines
all over the place and you know exactly where you're supposed
to be. And so it is when we run this race as a believer, our
race, our course is clearly marked. Now our course, listen, the course
that we run Varies. It varies in duration, doesn't
it? Thief on the cross. His course
was only three hours. Four, three hours, they came,
broke his legs, and he died. His course was very short. Some
courses are very, very long. They're arduous. Some courses
stretch through bloody seas. while others are charted during
times of great prosperity and peace. But no matter the length or the
terrain of our course, the Christian race is marked by one thing. Listen. Obedience of the truth. Isn't that what the text says?
They did run well, but what was their problem? What hindered
them? They did not obey the truth. They got off course. They were off the track. They
were off the reservation. They were running some other
course. So it is for us, it is clearly
marked, if we are running this race, we are obeying the truth. We are obeying the truth. He
says to those Galatians, you did run well. in the course but
something or someone hindered you. The word hindered means
turns you back. Imagine a guy running this direction
and somebody just turns him around and makes him run the other way.
You look at it and go, man, where's he going? He got to go this way. Our course is marked. He's going
the opposite way. That's what Paul noticed about
him. Somebody turns you around. And so to step outside this course and desire another course is
simply this. It is not to obey the gospel. When he says obey the truth,
this is what Paul is talking about. He's talking about obedience
to the gospel. How do I know that? Look at chapter
3 and verse 1. He tells them this. He said,
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that you should
not obey the truth? In chapter 1 and verse 9, let's
see, verse 6, He says, I marvel that you are so soon removed
from Him that called you into His grace, into the grace of
Christ, unto what? Another gospel. You see, Christ
and His gospel are in union. To move from one is to move from
the other. To not obey the truth is to move
to another gospel, which is to remove yourself from Christ. So what's our course? It is simply
this, to obey the gospel. To obey the gospel. When the
Spirit of God comes to the believer and gives us life, how does He
do that? What means does he use? He uses
means. And what's the means that the
Spirit has chosen to use? Is it not the preaching of the
gospel? It is. This is how we all believe. Paul
said, "...whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall
be saved. But how shall you call on him in whom you have not heard? And how shall you hear without
a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent?" This is the necessity. You must hear the gospel. in
order to believe it. So the Spirit uses the gospel.
What does the gospel reveal? When I say that you've got to
obey the gospel, what does that mean? Well, the gospel reveals
something to us. It reveals our sin, doesn't it?
We just sang that hymn. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
See, you're not going to have any interest in the blood unless
you have what? Sin! If you have sin, then the
blood is very valuable to you because it is the only thing
that can wash it. It's the only thing that can
cleanse it. So the Bible, the scripture reveals our sin. And then he calls us to what? To look to Jesus Christ. You
look within, you see what? Sin. You see no hope. You see no joy. You see no peace. And then what does the scripture
say? He says, don't look inside. There's no hope there. What I'd
read to you earlier, behold my servant. If you want to know
what the obedience to the gospel is, that's it. Look to Christ. Salvation is not a creed. It's
not a doctrine. It's a person. It's a person. We look to the Lord Jesus Christ
by faith. We look to His righteousness.
What does a sinner need? He needs righteousness. He don't
have any. He needs it. Where does he get
it? He gets it from Him. We believe
His righteousness is sufficient to cover my nakedness before
God. We believe in His blood. We believe
that His blood is able to satisfy God's justice against my sin. We believe in his resurrection.
We believe that he was so successful that death could not hold him.
The grave could not keep him. And God raised him from the dead
and set him on the throne of heaven. We believe the gospel. What does that mean? We believe
him. What's your hope? What is your
hope of standing before him? I believe him. Well, you're a
sinner. You're right, absolutely. You
don't have any righteousness of your own. No, not a bit. What's
your hope? Him. I believe in him. I told you this story earlier.
I thought it was a good one. The Catholic priest came a long
time ago. It was 1600, 1700, something
like that. And the priest, they came to
this village, and this lady was dying, so he comes to read her
last rites. And so he comes to this woman's
bedside. She's laying there fixing a dot.
And he says, I've come to absolve you from your sins. He said, what does absolve mean?
He said, well, I came to forgive you of your sins. The old woman
looked over and said, can I see your hands? He showed her his
hands. She said, I don't see any nail
prints there. How can you forgive my sins?
She was trusting Him, wasn't she? Her hope was in those hands,
not in some man's hands, in His hands. That's what the obedience
to the gospel is. It is to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is the course in which we
run even faith steady, constant faith, trusting in Christ. The scripture says, Whatsoever
is not of faith is sin. You got that? Whatsoever is not
of faith is sin. In other words, if you're trusting
in something you're doing, that is sin. It's not helping you,
it's hurting you. It's sin. Well, I believe on
Jesus Christ, but you know, I also believe you gotta do... No, no,
that's sin. That's not obeying the gospel. You've done God off
course. You're running in the opposite
direction. You're hindered. You're not obeying the gospel.
What is the gospel? The gospel is to believe on Jesus
Christ. This course is marked. So then, by its very nature,
it is marked. And I want you to know something
else about this course that we run. It's very narrow. Very narrow. Go to Matthew 7. Look what Jesus Christ said about
our course, about our path. Matthew chapter 7, look at verse
13. Jesus said, enter ye in at the straight gate. The word straight means two immovable
objects very close together. That's what it means. It's a
very narrow gate, kind of. Enter ye in at the straight gate,
for wide is the gate. That word means flat. It's kind
of like, I guess, our southern board, flat. There's nothing
stopping anybody going in. Flat. Wide open, isn't it? Well, that's what he means. For
wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction,
and many there be that go in thereat. Because straight is
the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few
there be that find it." The course that we run is straight
and narrow, and what do we mean by this? I don't want you to
take this off the table. It's not what it means. It's
not that the believer is to enter in this gate and walk a tightrope
into heaven. That is foolish nonsense. That's
not what he is saying here. The believer is not barely going
to make it if he just keeps his balance and doesn't fall into
sin. That's not what he means. It's
narrow in this. Jesus said it another way. I
am the Isn't that narrow? Jesus said it another way. I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to God but
by me. That's pretty narrow, isn't it?
What the world would call bigotry. Very bigotry for him to say that.
Surely there's got to be another way. No, it's this way. The believer's
course is very narrow in that it's singular. There is only
one way by which I am getting to God through Christ. Religion's way is very broad. It's very broad. Its gate accepts
everyone under one roof. In other words, everybody's opinion
matters. This is why, why do you think they like study groups? Why do you think they don't like
preaching very much? Pastor needs to just talk about 20 minutes,
shut up, and let us all get into groups. Because that's better,
right? You know why? Because everybody
has an opinion. This way, I don't care about
your opinions. And I'm not trying to give you
my opinion. You don't want mine. Just telling
you what he said. This way is narrow. Our course
is very narrow in that it's singular. Religions is very wide. You know, the Jews believed this,
so wide. Now this was pretty, it was narrow
in a sense, but for a Jew it was very wide. In other words,
if you were a Jew, you were a shoe-in for heaven. Pretty wide, isn't
it? All you had to be was a Jew.
Now everybody else was excluded. I didn't care about you. You
were Gentile. You were on the outside. You
weren't getting in. And so then you have different
denominations. They say, well, as long as you follow this wide
range of things, we'll make it as wide as we possibly can, you're
going to get into heaven. If you just come to Catholics,
if you just come and eat the Lord's Supper and make your confessions
and do the best you can, you're a Shoo-In. Pretty wide, isn't
it? Baptists say if you just make a decision for Jesus, you're
a shoo-in. Don't care what you do after
that. Just make your decision and it's all okay. Wide gate here. But the gate of our race is very
narrow in that it's only one person. You know, before we were
called Christians, we were called people of the way. You know that? In the New Testament, those are
the people of the way. They believe there's only one
way. That has mocked them and ridiculed them. Can you believe
that? They only believe there's one
way? That everybody else is wrong and they're right. Yep. That's exactly right. I'm not right because I'm smart.
I'm right because that's what God said. Let God be true and
every man a liar. That's what the people of the
way say. And one that is entered into
this way must do so continually looking
to Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the door. If
any man enter in, he shall find rest unto his soul. So then this
narrow course is one that is run only by looking to Jesus
Christ. He is a singular path. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11,
he said that he feared. concerning the church of Corinth,
lest they be moved, lest Satan move them from the simplicity
that is in Christ Jesus. The word simplicity doesn't mean
it's simple. It means it's singular. So then if we are moved from
looking to Jesus Christ, listen, we are off course. If you are
looking to anything other than Jesus Christ, you
are not on course. You're hindered. You're running
in the opposite direction. So believers, this is our course.
Let us then be determined daily, constantly, faithfully to run
this race by faith. Now, I told you that the course
is narrow, But I want you to know this, the course is not
smooth. Our course is narrow in that
there is only one way to run it, by faith. And this course
that we run is not easy. It is not smooth. It is mostly
rough and steep. This course is filled with griefs
and sorrows. If we hold fast to this course,
believing in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, this
world and its religion will set itself against us. It will set itself against us.
It has. They will constantly seek to
remove you from this course. They will constantly seek to
direct you to another course. They do this by visual things,
don't they? I mean, look how beautiful their
buildings are. Aren't they beautiful? What do
you think they do that for? They do that to allure people. The sights and sounds. I love
music, man, I do. In Lincolnwood, we had members
that were capable of playing beautiful musical instruments.
Orchestra. But you know what, they had no
desire to make a show. In the flesh, it was only to
serve, to worship, to praise God. Love music. But man, the
productions that people put on and the shows, what do they do
it for? Trying to get you off course.
Trying to appeal to your flesh. And so there's temptations of
the flesh and they get you to try to get off course by making
you look to yourselves. Look to yourselves. Look to your works as some kind
of evidence that you're on course. What believer wants to know that
they're on course? I mean, don't we want to know?
Am I on course? Have I strayed off the course?
Well, religion will tell you. Well, you want evidence and you've
got to start looking to what you're doing. Be mindful of where
you're walking. Then you'll know if you're on
course. No. This is how you know you're
on course. Do you believe on the Son of
God? Are you trusting the Son of God
in spite of how this course is rough? in spite of everything
that goes against your faith. They try to lure you off of it.
They bog you down. This type of religion will not
bring you peace and assurance. It will not bring you closer
to Christ, but rather will remove you from Him. They promise it
will bring you closer. I know this. This was very helpful
to me. I was struggling with assurance.
Who doesn't? Believers, we struggle with assurance.
And Tim James said this to me, and I thought it was wonderful.
He said, the moment you look for assurance, you lose it. You don't have it, right? If
you're looking for it, you don't have it. Because you're looking
in the wrong place. If you're looking to Christ,
you have all the assurance you need. What did this text tell
us? Wasn't this, Behold my servant,
he shall not fail nor be discouraged? Now shouldn't that give us enough
assurance? If we really believed that, we'd have all the assurance
we need. Therefore, Paul says this. Look at this,
what Paul tells the believers concerning their race in Hebrews
12. Look over to Hebrews 12. Look at verse 1, it says, Wherefore, seeing we are encompassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every
weight, and the sin that does so easily beset us, and let us
run with patience the race that is set before us. Paul says this,
if you're going to run a race, you need to lay off all your
weights. Isn't that a good idea in a physical race? Man, they got, I was looking
at some of the track suits, I said, dude, man, y'all need to cover
up with something. Andrew, track team, and I was, man, they pretty
much, they got the right idea, not wanting to weigh anything
down, but you gotta cover up a little bit. They run like those Greek boys
in the old times, they'd run without any clothes. But they
got the idea, you don't want any weight. And so what does
Paul say in our spiritual race? Lay off the weights. that easily
beset you, the cares of this life, lay them aside, the circumstances
of this course, lay them off. In other words, everything that
is contrary to faith, set it aside. How many things hinder us in
looking to Christ? And that needs to be taken and
put over here. Lay aside every weight, everything
that friends, family, is there jobs, whatever it is that hinders
you, cast it off. Anything that comes between you
and Christ. Let us be ready then to receive
the Word of God by faith without the need of our human senses. I mean, this is important. If
we're gonna run this race, you gotta cut off all ties with sense. When you touch, taste, smell,
feel, think. Those hinder us, don't they?
Well, I don't feel. Cast off that weight and believe. We have to constantly put him
off, don't we? The old man and his thoughts
and his feelings. whatever would hinder us. And he said, and the sin that
does so easily beset us. You know what the sin that easily
besets us is? Unbelief. Unbelief. That's the sin that must be laid
aside. Now, I say this, and it sounds easy,
Is it? No. Pastor, you don't know my
course. My course is too rough. The hill I'm climbing is too
steep. The cross that I'm bearing is
too heavy. I don't have the strength to
finish it. I need a sign. Know what the flesh says constantly?
I need a sign. How often do we want the heavens
to break open and a light come down and give me a light and
tell me what to do? You know what that is? It's not
faith, is it? I want something I can touch,
taste, feel, and sense. No, you need to lay that aside.
And whatever the path is, you need to believe Him. You need
to trust Him. Oftentimes we feel like we're
not gonna make it. I can't tell you how often I
feel not gonna make it. And we feel this way simply because
we are trusting in our own strength to do it. That's why you don't,
you're right. We're right. If we feel we're
not going to make it, listen, you're not going to make it.
Why? Because you're trusting in your own self. You'll never
make it. You'll never make it. And so
then we've seen the condition of our course. We've seen our
course. What is that? It is to obey the Gospels, to
run by faith. And then as we're running, and
what is to be in this course is rough. How are we going to
make it? The second thing is I want you
to look at is your conditioning. Conditioning. This is interesting. A guy broke the world record
for pull-ups. He was moving. He was fat. Did over 4,000 pull-ups. I can't do one. I just can't. They got this machine where you
stand on this little pedal thing and it helps you. So when I pull
up, I need all the help I can get. Can't do one on my own. I used to do quite a few when
I was younger, just not now. But this guy, and he said, you
know what he had to do to do 4,000? He said, in training,
I did 67,000 pull-ups in the course of my training to do 4,000
at one time. OK. As a runner of the race, if we
are to finish, we have to have the condition. We have to have
the strength, don't we? To finish, we have to have strength. So as we run this course that's
narrow, we run this course that's full of trials and troubles,
what do we need? We need endurance. We need endurance. The Christian life is not a sprint,
friends, it is a marathon. And we must endure our course
of faith. We must at all cost. But our
strength to bear our cross, the strength to run the road that
is steep, the strength to continue in faith
cannot come from ourselves. The strength to endure this race
comes from the one we trust. Faith, listen to me, faith does
not look to itself. Do not have faith in your faith.
This is modern religion's talking point. You just need to believe. Okay, believe what? They don't
know. You just need to have faith that
you're going to get through. It's all going to work out in the
end. You just need to have faith. What they're saying is you need
to have faith in your faith. Listen to me, you're not going
to make it. You're not going to make it. We have faith in an object. It is the object of our faith
that gives us strength to have faith in the object of our faith. If we were to run this race in
our own strength, we will not make it. This Galatian church
did not make it. Many of them did not make it.
Why? They had turned back looking to themselves, looking to their
works, looking to their obedience. They did not make it. But true
believers will make it simply because we receive our strength
not from ourselves. Why do you still believe? Joanne,
you have believed for a long time. Why are you still believing?
Whose strength? Was it yours? No, it's not your
strength, is it? I continually believe I'm continually
running this race because I receive my strength from the one I trust,
the one I believe in. He is the one that conditions
me, that gives me the strength to make it. Do you need strength? You that believe. When you first look to Christ,
who gave you that faith? Christ did. Paul says, it is
a gift of God. For by grace you are saved through
faith. And that faith is a gift of God,
not of works. So when you first began to run,
who gave you the strength to begin to run? Christ did. Well,
who's going to give you the strength to continue to run? Christ will. Who's going to give you the strength
to finish this race? Christ will. So our conditioning
comes from whom? From Christ. You see, every aspect
of this race is pointing to him, to him. He gives us strength. The apostle in Hebrews, if you're
still there, look at that. He tells us how to run this race.
Look at verse two. looking unto Jesus, the author
and what? Finisher. Of what? Our faith. You got to run this race by faith.
Well, guess who gives you? Who's the author of your faith?
It's Christ. Who's the finisher of your faith?
It's Christ. So in the middle, who's sustaining
you? If he's the author and the finisher, who's sustaining you?
Christ. So how do you run this race?
How do you condition yourself to continue to run this race?
Always looking to Christ. Always looking to Christ. I don't understand this. The
scripture never calls us to move on from Christ to something else.
Yet that's what men want to do. This is too simplistic for them.
I don't know. I'm telling you, I have repeated
myself constantly in this message on purpose. Have I told you to look to anybody
but Christ? How do you run this race? What's
the course of our race? What's the condition of our race? Looking
to Christ, looking to Christ, looking to Christ. See, I'm not
going to move on from that. Why? This book don't move on from
it. He said run the race, set that stuff aside. How? Looking
to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. Who for the joy
set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him
that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest
you be wearied and faint in your mind." Are you going to be wearied?
Are you weary? What do you need to do? Consider
Him. Consider Him, He who was life,
died. He who is love was hated. Isn't that a contradiction? Isn't
it? Life died. He who is love was hated. Here's
another contradiction. You and I who were worthy of
death were given life. You and I who are only sinners
are now made the righteousness of God in Him. See, He endured
contradiction so that you should have everything you need to sustain
you, to keep you. And so then let us set our affections
and faith upon him regardless of our course, regardless of
the things that come against us. And lastly, the prize. I'm
gonna hurry through this, the prize. Every race has a prize. You know, in a human race, though,
only one, this is, it's kind of, you know, I don't know about
that anymore. Used to, there was only one winner. Now it seems like everybody wins.
Everybody gets a trophy. But usually, this is how they
used to run it, when they, in Paul's day, only one person won.
He strived for mastery of it, didn't he? If you were running
in an Olympic race, you strove for mastery. Why? Why would you
strive so hard? Because there was a crown at
the end of it. There was a glory. There was
a reward. You didn't put yourself through all that for nothing.
Really it was, but you thought it was something. And those Olympic
days and that day, they give you a wreath of leaves. Old Caesar would come out with
his big golden crown and all his robes. And that guy had been
running and running and running and running. And then all of
a sudden, you see, he gave him a little leaf crown. Put it on his head. He
was so happy for that leaf crown. What happened after about a couple
of weeks? Well, they'll leave. They just died. Yet they ran
for a prize. Friends, we too are running for
a prize. But our prize is no corruptible
crown. would have a purpose in our faith,
looking to Christ. That we might receive an incorruptible
crown. An incorruptible crown. I read this, that Andrew Carnegie,
worth 347 billion dollars in our equivalent He worked real hard for that
money. What good did that do him in
the end? What did it buy him in the end? Nothing. All of his
striving, all of his earning was no real prize at all, was
it? It didn't last. But our prize is one that is
incorruptible. So Paul says, he says, Therefore
I so run, not with uncertainty. In Corinthians, he says, I run
not uncertainly. Listen, when we're running this
race, we are certain of our prize. We are sure of it. He said, I run not uncertainly. He had confidence that there
was a prize in the end and that he would receive it. We by faith
run that we may receive the prize. What is the prize? Is it heaven? Is that the prize? That's part
of the package deal, but it's really not the prize. Streets
of gold? Mansions? Is that it? Is that
what we're running for? No. I'm running this course looking
to Christ. I receive my condition from him
to keep running this race. Why am I doing this? Because
he's the prize. Heaven is heaven because he's
there. And wherever he is, is heaven. He's the prize. Paul said, I
count all things but done that I might win Christ. This whole thing of Galatians
is about a covenant promise that God gave to Abraham, wasn't it?
What was Abraham's prize? He said, I am The exceeding,
the exceeding great. Not just great, it's exceeding
great. I am the exceeding great reward. When we finish this race, I get him. And this is a good
thing about this race is that every one of his people wins. You know why? because he won. The only reason I'm getting this
is not because I did such a great job of running. I'm going to
get this because he won. Who then shall separate me from
him? I tell you this, a lot of times
I don't run well. It seems like I don't run well. But I'm so thankful that this
course was set by him. ever hard or average.