Good morning. It's good to be
back over here again. If you would, turn your Bibles
over to Hebrews 12. Brother read Psalm 62 earlier. You can preach the same message
out of Psalm 62, that's Hebrews chapter 12. Let me let me read
something here in verse one says, truly, my soul waiteth upon God. Is that true? We wait upon God. From him cometh my salvation. He only this is the only song. That's what it is. It's got the
word only in it quite a few times. I didn't bother counting, but
the word only in it is in it a lot. And that word only should
speak something to us. It needs to tell us something
that this song is talking about Christ. He only is my rock. See, Jesus could only say that. His rock was his father. His
rock was God. Jesus is God. But on this earth,
the rock that he stood upon was his father and the sovereignty
of his father and the rightness of his father. And he only looked
to him. He never, ever did he look in
another direction. He never did. He only is my rock
and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not
be greatly moved. See that? Now us, what the Lord
is doing in the lives of His people is He's teaching us more
and more of that truth right there. That Jesus Christ is our
only. We must reside in Him. He is
our defense. He is our strength. He is our
hope. He is our all. And the more we
grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and we're going
to look at this this morning, being perfected, that's growing
up, growing in the love of God. We just sang about it this morning.
Our sister sang about the love of God. It's growing in that
it's it's the love of God being perfected within us. See, what
does that mean? How does that? How does that
happen? How does that work? How does
God the Father become only in our lives? How does that work?
See, we need to ask that. But you'd ask that question.
A lot of times the best thing we can do when we come to scripture
is asking questions. Why is it saying this? Now in
Hebrews chapter 12, I want you to listen. I'm just going to
read the first three verses. We're going to, we're going to
look at some more of them here, but I want you to listen to these
first three verses. It says in Hebrews chapter 12,
wherefore seeing we are also, we also are compassed about with
so great a cloud of witnesses. So the first thing we must do
is we must see. Seeing, see. Singing, we also
are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us
lay aside every weight. There's something we must do.
I know when I come over here, I kind of hound on this, I do,
but there is some some things that we must do, and this one
of them, it says it right here. Let us lay aside every weight. And the sin which so easily besets
us, let us see that Something else. Let us run with patience,
the race that is set before us. I thought there was nothing for
me to do. Well, according to this, we're to we're to do a
few things here. We must. What else are we going
to do? What else do we must? What else
must we do? It wasn't looking at the Jesus.
The author. and the finisher of our faith
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God. Here's another one for consider
him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest
ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Let's have a word of prayer. Dear Lord and Heavenly Father,
Father, we do thank you. We do thank you for your great
love wherewith you have loved us and. And how we see that love
in the face of our Jesus. Precious Jesus, we thank you
for coming. And humbling yourself and walking
upon this earth. and taking our sins upon yourself
and going to the cross of Calvary and shedding your blood and taking our sins away. Precious Holy Spirit, we thank
you for your work. We thank you that you've not
left us to ourselves. Precious Spirit, come, we pray,
and work mightily in us. Teach us more of the love of
God. Teach us more of this great love that we look at and we hope
in and we long for. Teach us more, Father, we pray,
by Your Word this morning. We pray that You would come with
power into our lives. Strip us, Father, of ourselves. of this flesh, the love of idols
in our lives that would take away from seeing Jesus, the author
and the finisher of our faith. Father, work mightily in us,
we pray, and we ask these things in the name of our precious Jesus.
Amen. When we speak of this perfecting
love, when we talk about progression in the Christian life, progress
being made, growing in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. I think a lot of times the trouble
that we have is there are many that would view progression or
growing in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, they
would view it more as an elevator system. OK, so you hop on floor
one or maybe in the basement. If you're that bad a person,
I mean, you know, you might have to get on in the basement and
then you work your way up. You know, you just keep pressing
on the upward way, new heights I'm gaining every day. See? And
so you're getting higher and higher and higher. And you sometimes
you get to, you know, to a floor and you might be there a while,
but then you then you push forward a little more and you get a little
higher and you get a little closer to God. See? That's that's not
the progression that spoke of in the scriptures, you see. We
need to understand the growing and the grace and the knowledge
of Jesus Christ. We're very visual people, I know.
I know I am. I need to see these things. And
so I want you not to look at progression as an elevator system,
but as a wheel. God has put this in creation
that we might see it. If we look at the world, it's
round. See, we're not flat earthers. The world is round, right? And
God made it that way to show us something, to teach us something
of the cyclical cycle of life. You live and you die. And there's
a morning and there's a night. And so we see the earth rotating
on its axis and how it is that the seasons change. And now we're
in the fall season. And so we see the leaves dying
and the colors of the season. are red. It's the color of blood,
right? And you see the death is so often
that's the end of life and it's the shedding of blood. And so
we see the cyclical cycle of it, we see the round, the circle. I want you to see this progression
as a wheel. And so as we enter into Hebrews
chapter 12, this is the way we enter into it. We don't enter
into this like we're just going to read this and we're going
to get through it and we get to the other side of it. We don't
need to come back to the first part of Hebrews chapter 12 because
we have it. You see, we've already learned
it. So we go on to something else. Well, no, it's the continuum. Paul said, I mean, everything
he said was very, very important, but for this message, I want
you to hear what he said. He said, I die daily. He didn't
say I just die one time and then the rest of the time I'm living.
No, he said I die daily. He said another thing that we
need to understand here this morning. He said for me to live
is Christ and to die is gain. And so often when we look at
that text and we when we examine that text, what we what we consider
in that is we think, well, for me to live is Christ, to live
on this earth is Jesus Christ. And for me to die is gain. I'm
going to heaven. Well, that's true. But we're
missing a lot in that. We're missing the very life that
we have daily in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that life is made
known to us in the death that we die. See, we live and we die
daily. That's what Paul taught. It's
cyclical. It's a circle. You see, we are
going around and around and around. And the movement forward is that. It's not going up. It's going
this way. You can attest to that, right?
You know what I'm talking about, right? You say, well, I still
see sin, and of course you see sin in you. That's God's gift
to you. It's taking you down. So you've
got to come down before you can come up. You've got to see your
sin before you can be made alive in Christ. You say that happened
to me once. That's good enough. No, it must
happen daily. The more we come to this understanding
of dying, the heights and depths of mercy, the length and breadth
of life and love in Jesus, the more we're going to understand
life in Christ. We're going to have a knowledge
of this. And that's growing in grace and in the knowledge of
Jesus Christ. You're going to find that you're
not going to be getting a whole lot better in the flesh. Right? I mean, you've got to find that
out. Oh, but the growth in the Jesus Christ, in knowing that
He is our only. Right? Knowing that the perfection
that we have is in Christ Jesus and in nowhere else. That we
stand perfect in Him. It's growing in that. See? It's
got to be stripped before that's ever going to be made real to
you. Daily, we must be stripped of ourselves. And I'm going to
I'm going to try to show you that here in this text if we can.
So let's move on from chapter from verse three. Let's go down.
See, verse four is very important. Listen to this. You have not
yet resisted under blood striving against sin. So my question this
morning is this. Why do we look to Jesus? There's
a reason why you're going to be found looking to Jesus. So
you got you got to be made to look to Jesus. We're not just
going to look to Jesus just to be looking at Jesus. You've got
to be made to look to Jesus. God's sovereign hand of mercy
must come out and draw us to himself. He said, No man cometh
to me except the Father who sent me draws him. See, he's got to
reach out and he's going to grab us and he's going to bring them
to us to himself. And so he goes on in verse four,
it says, You have not resisted unto blood striving against sin. Oh, we would see Jesus in that
text. that we would know him to perfection. Verse five goes
on and he says, You have forgotten the exhortation. Now, who's that
speaking to? He said, well, it's speaking
to these Hebrews right here. Well, no, this text is for you. It's
for you and for me and for those that are going to come after
us in the faith. You have forgotten the exhortation. Well, I haven't forgotten anything.
If you haven't forgotten, you didn't know anything. Because
you've forgotten it. We all forget it. Isaiah wasn't
kidding around when he said, all we like sheep have gone astray.
The minute you walk out that door, you're going to forget.
You may have already forgot. You may not even have any idea
why you're sitting here. And I'm serious. I'm not telling
you. I'm serious. There's a lot of people that's
already checked out. You've already fainted in your mind. You're
gone. You're off. You're off somewhere
else. What are we going to have for dinner? What am I going to
do Monday for work on Monday morning? What's happening in
my life? What's going on? No. You've forgotten. See? And when I'm preaching to
you, I say this all the time, when I'm preaching to you, I
got one finger pointing to you, I got three more back at me. I'm not just preaching
to you. I preach this message to myself
all week. And you have forgotten the exhortation, which speaketh
unto you as unto children. My son, despise not thou the
chastening of the Lord. The first thing we got to understand
is when it says my son, we must look to Jesus. We must consider
him. Who never once despised the chastening
of his father. Never once. Never once. Now, what does that tell us?
What does it say about us? We always do it. I've got this
picture of my sisters. They're not here. I said this
actually over there in Bainbridge. I probably shouldn't have, but
they were there. But I'm just going to tell you,
I get this picture in my mind of this. When my sisters were
probably, I don't know, maybe 16, maybe Grace would have been
younger, 10 maybe. I just see them running up the
driveway and my mom chasing them up the driveway with a broom
in her hand. That's what when I read this, and of course, that's
my son, but I see my sisters and I'm not looking at me, right?
We're good at that. We can point it out in others,
but it says my son despised not thou the chasing of Lord. So
why were they running up the driveway? My mom was going to discipline
them. There was a problem. Something had taken place. I
don't know. I'm not sure what it was, but they made mom mad
and mom was running up after him. She was going to if she
ever got a hold of him, she was going to she couldn't run very
fast. But she would have took care of it. So why were they
running? Well, I'll tell you why they're
running. They really didn't think that they either deserve the
punishment that they were going to get or they didn't. They thought
that that that what mom was doing wasn't being done out of love.
And so they were running from her. Well, that's me. That's me. My son despised not
the chastening of the Lord. I think there's something very
important in this, and it goes to us as parents. You see, the scripture, it says,
to fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. And when we consider, why do
we discipline our children? I've got to ask myself that.
Why do I discipline my children? And I know the answer for that.
I want to look good. That's so often the reason why
I discipline my children. Now, I'm just going to be honest
with you. I think we all need to be honest.
See, we when they do something wrong, it speaks something bad
about me. It says something bad. See, they
don't respect me or they don't love me or they don't. You know,
there's something wrong here. So I discipline my children like
that. OK, that's the way we do it. God doesn't do it like that.
That's not the way the father disciplines his children. Those that are his, you see.
God disciplines his children in love. Sometimes we would look
at the chastening of God, and we're going to get into this
in a moment. It says, for whom the Lord loveth, he chastened.
Let's just go ahead and read it. My son despised not thou
the chastening of the Lord and fainted. nor faint when thou
art rebuked of him. For whom the Lord loveth, he
chasteneth, verse six, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. So we've got to ask ourselves,
what do we see in this son whom he's receiving? See, this one
that he's chastened and he has scourged out of love. What do we see when he receives
this son to himself? Do we see a God who is angry
with this son of his? Do we see a God that's punishing
this one who comes for, or do we see the prodigal returning
to his father? Do we see him with arms open
and love? See, is that what we see? I think so often we see that God
is a God when he chastens or when he scourges, that it's punishment
metered out on us for what we have done. That's already taken
place and it took place on the cross of Calvary. If you're one
of God's people this morning, if you're a child of the king,
every sin that has ever been committed in your life and ever
will be committed in your life were taken on Jesus on the cross. And that was perfectly put away.
The punishment was metered out perfectly on the Lord Jesus Christ.
We see this, he endured the cross. Despising the shame. He endured it all. in our place
for me. And so when we look at this chastening
of God and the scourging of God to every son, it's love. It's love worked out. The Scripture says it is of the
Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. But what does that
mean? What does that mean? Let me let
me show you. Like I said, we're visible. Our visual learners
to turn over to Luke. The gospel of Luke for a moment.
Let me just show you what I mean by this story. Luke chapter 22. Luke chapter 22. Now, here's the back story of
what's happening here. We're going to start in verse
54, but Jesus is being taken before Pilate. The first time,
you know, Pilate will accuse him and send him over to Herod
and Herod will mock him and then he'll send him back over to Pilate. Well, this is when Jesus is being
taken to Pilate the first time. In verse 54, it says, Then took
they him. That's Jesus and led him. This is Luke 22 verse 54 and
led him and brought him into the high priest's house. Now,
listen to this. This is very, very important.
If we're going to understand the chasing and scourging of
the Lord, we have to understand why it is that God is doing these
things in our lives. It says, and Peter followed afar
off. Afar off. See, God's going to
deal with this. Peter's a far off for a reason.
There's a reason why Peter is standing back. It's because Peter
has made an idol out of himself. OK, Peter just told the Lord,
he told Jesus, Jesus said, You're all going to leave me. Every
one of you are going to forsake me. And Peter stood right in
his face and he said, These other guys over here. They might forsake
you. And I'm, they very well could,
but I'll never leave you. See, I'll never leave you. Peter
has made an idol out of himself. He's dealing, God is going to,
out of love, now listen to me. You gotta see this. It's out
of love that God is going to enter into Peter's life here,
and he's going to teach him something of this idolatry that would keep
him far off from Christ, you see, not looking unto Jesus,
but looking to himself. And it's love in our lives worked
out. God is working out his love in
our lives by bringing us near him. That's life. It's nearness
to God. It's life in Jesus. It's union
with Christ. Do we believe that? Or do we
think that life is just on all the things out here in the world
that we can go grab a hold of and hold on to with a death grip? God's going to deal with that
in His sons. Because that's not life. Those things are perishing.
Those things are going to be gone tomorrow. They're going
to be gone. They're going to fly away. They've
got wings. Don't trust in them. He's going to turn us and He's
going to lead us to Himself. That's love. And that's the chastening
and scourging of the Lord. Him working this out. Now I want
us to think about the wheel. When we read this. He goes on. Look at verse 55. And every time I come here, I
gotta stand farther back. My eyes are going. 55. And when
they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall. If you were
to go over to Isaiah 44, you'd see that what they're dealing
with in Isaiah 44, what the Lord is dealing with in the children
of Israel is idolatry. You're going to see what they're
doing. They're carving their little idols out of wood. And
then they're taking the scraps and they're building the fire
and they're warming themselves inside. Do you see, Peter? It's
all here. We have eyes to see it. We'll
see it. God is dealing with idolatry here in Peter's life. And if
he deals with you, that's exactly what he's dealing with. You say,
well, I don't have any idolatry in my life. Well, I pray you'll
be merciful to you because that's that's what's going to draw you
to him. Now, watch this. When they kindled a fire in the
midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down
among them, among the idolaters. Verse 56, but a certain maid,
a certain maid, you know what Hagar,
Abraham had, Sarah was his wife and Hagar was his handmaid, right? Well, Paul shows us what that
is. Sarah is a picture of grace.
She's a picture of the true Israel of God. Hagar's law, right? The maid that was to point the
points to Sarah, right? Well, what does this maid do?
She looks right at Peter. She stares him down, looks right
through him, sees right into the inner. You know what the
Word of God does? by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Oh, that the Holy Spirit would come down and take this word
this morning and apply it to our lives and pierce us, pierce
us through that we might see it. And a certain may beheld
him as he sat by the fire and as he warmed himself by that
fire of his own making and earnestly looked upon him. Oh, that we
check that word earnestly out and see what that means. He earnestly
looked upon him and said, This man was also with him. And he
denied him. He denied Jesus. Saying, Woman,
I know him not. I know him not. Verse 58, And
after a little while, another saw him and said, Thou art also
of him. And Peter said, Man, I am not.
This is the one who just stood in front of Peter. or stood in
front of the Lord. He said, I'll never, I'll never
leave you. I tell you, there might be someone
out here that's smart and said, I'll never leave Jesus. I'll
never leave him. You walk out that door. I just
said it. You walk out the door. Do me a favor. Well, you can
do it if you want. If you've got a phone, I know
most everybody does, you should throw them in the trash. But
we got them. And so you take them and you were to punch in
like an hour from now and set an alarm. And when that alarm
goes off, you ask yourself, what am I thinking about? What's going
through my head right now? All we like sheep have gone astray. Goes on, 59. In about the space
of one hour, after another confidently affirmed, just kept coming to
him, three. Three witnesses, right? So that's the space of an hour. Another confidently affirms,
saying of a truth, this fellow also was with him, for he is
a Galilean. And Peter said, man, I know not
what thou sayest. And immediately, immediately. While he yet spoke, the cock
crew. What do you think went through
his head? I know exactly what went through
his head. He said, man, I'm in trouble. I did it, didn't I? I failed
him. I failed him. I'm worthless.
I'm nothing. I failed him. And you know what
he, you know, I know what was going through Peter's head. He
said, I'm going to take one look at him. And you know what I'm going to
see? This is what it says. Listen.
And Peter, it says, And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. He looked upon him. And Peter
remembered the word of the Lord, how he said unto him, before
the cock crew thou shalt deny me thrice. I would ask you this,
what do you think Peter saw when he looked at Jesus? Do you think
he saw Jesus dowling at him? Looking at him like, you wretched
filth. You think that's what he was
doing? No, no, no. I tell you what, if that's what
you think, you've never looked at Jesus. You've never seen him. When he looked at Jesus, he saw
love. He saw the love of God in the
face of Jesus Christ. He knew forgiveness of his sins.
He knew he had sinned against love. He hadn't sinned against
law. He had sinned against love. That one who is love and light
and life, and he had sinned against it and it broke his heart. You
see the wheel. Peter was in the upper room.
He was right there with Jesus. He said, I'll never leave you.
When do we leave Christ? 1201. And what are the mercy? Well, I just I just said it's
of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. What would
we do? You see the wheel? Sovereignty
of God is that hub holding us in that place. Well, what do
we do? We're going to run off, right? Do we deny it? That's what we do. All we like
sheep have gone astray. We're going to go out. It's the
mercies of God that he would reach out and bring us back,
draw us back. The chastening of God, the scourging
of God is the scourge of love in our lives, drawing us to that,
drawing us to his love. And that's what he did with Peter.
He says he went and he wept bitterly over his sin through repentance. Repentance isn't preached on
anymore. It just isn't. Why? Because they don't understand
the love of God. It's by repentance that we are
led to faith. Faith is that which reveals the
love of God in our lives. It teaches us of Him. It's the
faith of Christ. Peter went out and wept bitterly.
Oh, that we would know that. That we would know that. Well,
let me show you the opposite of that. Turn back over to Hebrews
12. Let's go on in the text for a moment. Because we've got to
see the wheel. Peter's brought down. He's brought to death.
And he's raised again with Christ. Up here, right? To go back again. See? Living, dying, let me bring. My strength, my soul is from
this spring, for he who lives to be my king, once died to be
my savior. See? Oh, that we might know true
growing in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. And
it goes on in verse seven. If ye endure chastening, you
see? Peter endured chastening. God's people will endure chastening. But if you don't endure chastening,
what is that saying? What does it say? We got to ask
ourselves, Judas didn't endure chastening. He didn't. There's another man that we're
going to read about down here. He's not going to endure chastening.
If you endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons.
For what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if he be without chastisement,
verse eight, wherefore, all are partakers, all of God's children
are partakers. You're bastards. And not sons. Furthermore, we have had fathers
of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in
subjection unto the father of spirits and live for they barely
for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure to make them
look good. But he, for our profit, that
we might be partakers of his holiness, oh, that we could father
like that. Now, no chastening for the present
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous nevertheless afterward, yielding
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised
thereby. Wherefore, lift up the hands
which hang down and the feeble knees. It's only looking to Jesus
that'll do. Hadn't it? and make straight
paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of
the way, but let it rather be healed." We want to be healed
without going through the pain of it. Like this week, well,
it's been a couple weeks, I've had this terrible pain in the
neck. It's a stiff neck. I can't already turn one way
or turn the other. We were coming over here this
morning, I was driving and I told Jess, look and see if there's
somebody coming. I'm not looking. I can't turn around. I'm going.
You told me to tell me to go. I'm going. I was looking this
way. It's on this side. I'm going
to be all right. But but I had, I got to stick
to that. And I've got to ask myself, what's the mercy in that? There's mercy there. The scripture
says his mercies are new every morning. The question is, are
they new? K-N-E-W. Do we know them? See? Do we know the mercies of God?
And so, really, the flesh would say that the mercy would be the
stiff neck goes away, right? And so often, that's how we look
at mercy. We'd say, well, I'm feeling good
now. I'm feeling real good. God's
merciful. But what'd you learn in the stiff neck? Did you take
it back over here in the Old Testament and read about the
stiff-necked people and why they were stiff-necked? And maybe
God's showing you why you're stiff-necked? You see? You know why they were stiff-necked? Well, I think the reason why
I got the stiff-necked is because the kids were doing this thing
with a broom handle and they were trying to go through the
handle. And it's like you've got to contort your body all
around to try to get through this handle. I was trying to
act like a child. When you're a child, you act
like a child. And so I was trying to do that, and so I got all
contorted, and I think that's what messed me up. But another
way I think was messed up is the other day on the tractor,
I was grading out the drive, and I spent a lot of time with
my head turned back. See? And my body was facing this
way, but my head was turned this way. See, what does that teach
us? The children of Israel was stiff-necked
for a reason. The reason was their mouth was
talking to God, saying, I love you, I love you, I love you,
and their body's going this way, you see? And so they were stiff-necked
people. And that's the mercy, that God
would take this stiff neck and He would show me in my life how
stiff-necked I am and the reason why I am. See, a lot of times,
I say a lot of times, all the time, My mouth is saying how
much I love Him, and my body's going the other way. See, true
repentance is God turning the body the same way as the head
is, and we're going to God, see. The flesh wants to turn the head
that way and just go. Do we know that about ourselves?
Do we know it's only of God's mercies that we are not consumed
by the things of this world? That our head just doesn't turn
this way and just go? Because that's what the flesh
wants. Praise Him. He is so good to us. Isn't it
a wonder that this building right here has these people sitting
in it? And we're actually listening
to a message about the love of God. That's a wonder of His grace. It is. Well, listen, we'll go
on. We've got to get going. It says in verse 13, to make
straight paths for your feet, let that which is lame be turned
out of the way, but let it rather be healed. Verse 14, follow peace
with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Oh, that we would see that, you
know, one day we're going to stand in his presence and we're
going to see him as he is. You know why we're going to be
able to do that. Because we're going to be just like Him. See,
we can only see Him through a glass darkly now. If we were to lay
eyes on Jesus, it would knock us to our feet. We wouldn't even
be able to walk. He shows us, little by little,
His holiness, and His perfection, and His beauty, that we might
grow thereby. See? But one day, we'll stand
in His presence, and we'll see Him perfectly as He is. And we're
going to be just like Him. Just like Him. That's the reason
we'll see Him. Follow peace with all men and
holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. 15. Looking
diligently. Now listen to this. Lest any
man faileth. Fail of the grace of God. Lest
any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many
be defiled. lest there be any fornicator
or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his
birthright." So you got Peter, who grace reached out and grabbed
him. Mercy reached out and drew him
in. You have Esau. Doesn't happen in his life. You
say, why? Why? It's the grace of God. It's the grace of God, the sovereign
grace of Almighty God is electing love. He's chosen a people to
set his love upon and to reach out and grab. Should not just
drop us to our knees. Is there any room for boasting
in that? That apart from his grace, we'd
all be Esau's and we'd be seeking repentance, but with tears and
we'd never find it. That's what it says. For you
know how that afterward. When he would have Inherited
the blessing, he was rejected for he found no place of repentance,
though he sought it carefully with tears. And then it goes on, verse 18,
for ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched and
that burned with fire, nor into blackness and darkness and tempest
and the sound of trumpet and the voice of words, Which voice
that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to
them anymore, for they could not endure that which was commanded. And if so much as a beast touched
the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart.
And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly
fear and quake. What do we see? Sit on Mount
Sinai, what do we see? We see Jesus. We see Jesus. Go back, cyclical, go back. Wherefore, verse one, seeing
we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight. What is that weight? It's idolatry. It's unbelief. Let us lay aside
every weight and the sin which so how do you lay it aside? How
do you do it? It's dying. We die in Christ, right? Where
was it put away? It was put away perfectly in
the Lord Jesus Christ. We've got to be brought to that.
We've got to see that, that our only hope is in Christ. Lay it
at his feet. See it put away by the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we're raised again. We're
raised again. Life in Christ. You see that? Let us lay aside every weight
and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience
the race that is set before us." You see that wheel's moving.
It's moving. It's moving. Looking unto Jesus, the author
and the finisher of our faith. See, there's a reason why we
look to Jesus. There's a reason why. And the Lord is merciful
and he's good and he's kind to his children. And he loves them. He loves them. And he draws us
to himself. And we are found looking unto
Jesus. I was thinking about this, and
I hope that this week, as you walk through this week, you would pick up these smooth
stones. Remember David when he went to
fight Goliath? He went down that creek there
and he picked up those smooth stones. And when you think of
a smooth stone, what do you think of? I mean, a lot of times we'll
pick up a nice smooth stone, we'll put it in our pocket and
we'll rub it. It brings a little peace and comfort, doesn't it?
Well, these smooth stones that David picked up, they're types,
they're mercies of God in our lives that are truly going to
bring comfort to us. We've got to quit looking at
all these things out here in the world is what's going to
bring us comfort. And we must look to the mercies of God that
he brings in our lives, the stiff neck, the slow coffee pot that
just might teach us some patience, you know. just might lead us
to the patience of God and the long-suffering of our Savior.
These small, smooth stones, and that we would walk through the
week, and we'd pick them up, and we'd put them in our pocket,
and they would be effectual in our lives, you see? And when
the tempter comes, and that's what Goliath, well, he was Satan,
see? David was a type of Christ. And
he took those smooth stones, he put them in that swing and
he slung them at him and knocked him flat. And we would take those
smooth stones out and we would look at him. And we would know
our victory in Jesus Christ. We would know. Because His mercies
are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness. We're looking to Jesus. Right? We're looking to Jesus. All that
we would be found doing it. That it wouldn't be just talk,
that we wouldn't just be talking about Christ and our bodies are
going this way. Lord, help us. Well, we're out
of time. Lord bless you.