Better Keep Going - May 3, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

There's a saying in the NASCAR world, Second place is really First Loser.

I don't know if Dale Earnhardt Sr. started that or if it was Ricky Bobby.

I don't know who started it, but it's part of that. And this was really clear earlier this year.

They had a marathon race in Delaware, of all places.

And I don't know if you saw this video going around. You can search it up later

on YouTube or something and check out the clip of it.

But it shows the end of the race, the leader, the guy who led the race almost

the whole way through. he was coming to the finish line.

And you could almost imagine it if you had the sound turned off that the chariots

of fire music was playing.

And maybe the guy was running in slow motion as he was coming toward the finish line.

You see, it seemed like slow motion because he slowed down at the finish line,

waving his hands to the crowd.

And as he was going to stop the timer on his watch, he did not see the man behind him.

The man behind him was in a full-on sprint 100 meters before the finish line.

And about 10 feet from the line as he's stopping his watch, the ladies holding

the tape for the winner to run through could not believe it.

But the guy that was way in the back came way in the front, and he crossed the

line before the leader of the race.

Man, how disappointing that must have been, knowing that he could have finished

the race first, but he didn't.

As we said before, he finished second place, which is first loser.

That may not be fair. I've never run a marathon. Don't know that I want to or that I could.

You might be in the same predicament there. But the fact is,

you don't get credit for almost finishing a race.

He didn't win just because he was almost to the finish line and won,

led the race most of the time.

You see, you don't get a medal for I ran most of it.

You only finish the race if you keep going all the way through.

Now, he did finish the race. He did go all the way through, but for second place.

When we think about the scripture this morning, Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

It is written to believers who have started this race, who have started their

race of faith, following the course marked out to them by our Heavenly Father.

They've learned the basics. They've done good things, but they're tempted to slow down.

They're even tempted right now to drift away or even just to walk away from it all.

Now, the message is simple this morning, and that is this. You've come too far

to ease up now. Better keep going.

You see, my point this morning is for you to be encouraged not to stall out

in your faith, but let God carry you through on to completion.

Let him finish his work in you because God's work within you, it's so valuable.

It's so incredible that Jesus died for him to finish the work that he started

within you. Will you trust him this morning?

I want you to hear the word of the Lord from Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

We're going to go 1 through 12, so it's quite lengthy.

But nevertheless, I want you to hear God's word this morning for you.

The author of Hebrews writes, Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings

about Christ and go on to maturity,

not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death and

of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands,

the resurrection of the dead,

and eternal judgment, and God permitting we will do so.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened,

who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,

who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the power of the coming

age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance,

because to their loss they're crucifying

the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace.

Land that drinks in rain, often falling on it, and produces a crop useful to

those from whom this farm receives the blessing of God, but land that produces

thorns and thistles is worthless and in danger of being cursed.

In the end, it will be burned.

Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of the better

things in your case, things that accompany salvation.

God is not unjust. He will not forget your work and the love that you have shown

Him as you have helped His people.

And continue to help them. We want each of you to show the same diligence to

the very end in order to make your hope sure.

We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who,

through faith and patience, inherit what has been promised.

Let's pray. Father, there's a lot to chew on here, God.

There's a lot in your Word, and Father, we just pray that your Spirit would break this down to us.

Lord, that you would help us to chew it over this week, God,

and to really take in all the truth. But Father, speak to our hearts right now.

Lord, show us in these moments that we have remaining, God, what you would have

us to do with your word today, what you would have us to do as we follow Jesus today.

And it is in his name that we do pray. Amen.

I thank you all. You can be seated. As we go through the scripture today,

I just want to give you three instructions, three exhortations.

The first one this morning is get going.

Don't stay in spiritual preschool.

This message, as it starts out, the scripture says, therefore,

well, what is the therefore, therefore?

It's for the sermon I preached last week, and that is, hey,

Don't get caught up in just keeping to the basics, but move on,

advance, get out of preschool and get on to the other things that God wants to teach you.

And as we come to this today, the call is still the same as this passage continues

to these Hebrew believers, first century Jewish converts to Jesus.

Here they are trying to figure out, well, how does all this mesh together?

We've got centuries, millennia of following the Jewish way in their family line.

But now this new guy, Jesus, came and he died for what he believed in.

And so we're trying to figure out how to follow Jesus now being Hebrew Christians.

That's who this was written to. But it has such an important prevalence for

us today, something to pay attention to.

You see, we are called to move from spiritual infancy, again,

not just drinking the milk like we talked about last week, but on to the meatier

things of the Word, the meatier things of life to which Scripture tells us about.

We're supposed to move on to maturity or perfection or completion as it is,

not keep repeating the same beginning lessons over and over and over again.

As the Scripture points out here, there are basics. And I got to tell you, basics are important.

What the old football coach say when his team started losing,

he says, It's time to get back to basics.

You know, when I see a new team like Boise State out there with new people in

new positions and they can't tackle worth anything, it's like it's time to get

back to some tackling drills.

Or if they're too excited to catch the ball and run down the field,

let's get back to some catching drills so they can catch the ball.

I mean, with any sports analogy you could think of, basics are important,

but you can't just stay at the basics. If Boise State had only stayed at the

basics through their career, they never would have beaten Oklahoma with some great trick plays.

And I know that's a decade or so old, but it's the truth.

You've got to advance into more ways to do what you do.

And so here are these Hebrew Christians, and it lays out what some of the basics are.

Now, remember, this is talking to people that have come from the Jewish culture,

the Jewish way of thinking.

And so while these things might mean something to us today, it meant something to these Hebrew here.

As we look back at the scripture, it says, lays them out in three different

categories, but six different ways that they're staying to their foundations.

Repentance from acts that lead to death and faith in God.

Turning, there were things the Jews had to do to show that they turned away

from sin and that they had faith in God.

We today also, there are things that we do that show that we have repented,

that we have turned away from our sin and trespasses from our old way and and

have faith in God by the way that we walk.

It says instructions about baptisms. Now, I just want to show you that that's plural there.

And to the Jew, there were several different rites of washing, of cleansing.

And if you go to the Old Testament law, you can look through that,

and you can see the different rites that they had to do to cleanse themselves.

We know there's one baptism.

And when you are baptized, that has a certain meaning for believers today,

that at this time, there were baptisms, but there was one Christian baptism.

It goes on to say the laying on of hands.

We believe that in the Church of the Nazarene. Those of you that gathered around

our friends that are getting ready to go, our members that are getting ready

to go, our fellow Christians that are getting ready to go over to Thailand and

the Philippines, there is some laying on of hands, a commissioning of sort.

But even before that was a thing with the disciples, there was a laying on hands

when it came to sacrifices, when it came to different practices like that.

And so the Hebrew hearers would have thought of that as this was going on.

It goes on to talk about the resurrection of the dead.

Hebrew believers believed that that was going to happen. At least the Pharisees

did, and those that followed that line of thought, not necessarily the Sadducees,

but also they believed in eternal judgment, and we believe in both of those today, do we not?

Okay, I've just hit all the basics that I could think of from this passage.

You see, the danger was that these Hebrew Christians had the foundations of

faith because of their Judaism, because of their belief in God from the Jewish perspective.

But God, Jesus wanted them to have so much more. There was so much more to life than just the basics.

I mean, the basics are important. They're the foundation, but that's not the house.

I mean, consider this. Say that I pitched to you the idea of a brand new sanctuary,

multi-purpose worship facility.

And we raised money. And behind us here, we laid a huge foundation that would

encompass everything we could think of for a gymnasium, a big worship center,

new classrooms all around, state-of-the-art kitchen to help us to reach out

to our community and other things.

And let's say we raised all the money enough to buy the foundation.

And we had that laying out there and we were all excited but fast forward to

30 years and say something happened and we never did anything and so that same

slab of concrete is still sitting out there three decades later,

we could say hey we got a great foundation,

but man it would be cold worshiping out there during the winter time.

See, it's good. You got to have that foundation. If you're a new believer in

Christ or new to Christ, keep learning those basics.

You've got to get down what that is all about. But God's got a goal for you in mind.

He's got a finish line tape that he wants you to run through,

and he's going to help you in that.

So you just can't stay in the basics forever.

There's a time when you're going to have to move on, when you're going to have to move forward.

The basics never go away. they're always there.

That's what you build on. You build your faith in Christ on.

But the point here is the writer of Hebrews to these Hebrew believers says, we've got to go on.

As a matter of fact, the scripture says, let us go on.

Another way that that could be translated is let us be carried forward.

Have any of you ever been surfing or bodyboarding or just any of that kind of thing in the ocean.

Hopefully in a warmer climate than the Central California coast,

that's pretty cold, or even the Oregon coast for that matter.

When you get in there, you can feel the wave wanting to push you forward.

Sometimes it wants to suck you out if you get caught in a rip current. That's never good.

But it's that idea of something pushing you forward as the wave that comes to crash upon the beach.

And people have mastered that so much that they can surf that.

They can get on a boogie board and ride that in. Some people can just surf it with their bodies.

Those that do not have a lead bottom like I do, that just sinks to the bottom.

Even with the wave, I'm just sinking.

But the point is, something pushes you. It carries you along.

And that's what God wants to do with you and your growth in Christ.

He's got a goal in mind for you, and he wants to carry you onto that.

But so many times we fight against it.

I don't know if you have the technique when you're trying to make your way out.

You're perhaps, and I would say most certainly, a better swimmer than I,

but I had to master the technique of putting my back toward the waves and walking

out because I can't swim, and I couldn't swim,

and so my lead bottom at that time would help me crash the waves as I'm walking

out until I can get a good one to ride in or try to ride in.

You see, we shouldn't fight against what God wants to do in our lives.

But we should relent. We should say, okay, God, I'm submitting to you.

Let's go this way. I don't know what's going to happen, but man, I'm going to surf it out.

I'm going to ride this wave until it crashes, until you show me something else,

until you show me a better way.

Let's go on, the scripture says.

Reminds us that spiritual growth, it's not just all up to us.

It is God's power at work within us when we're willingly cooperating with God's Holy Spirit.

It's not about just self-improvement. It's not about just self-help.

It's about trusting God to lead you one step at a time and continuing to master

those steps to where you move on in your faith.

The saying is, stop auditing Christianity 101 every semester.

It's time to declare your major and let God move you toward a deeper,

obedient, and resilient life, the kind of life that He really wants you to live,

the kind of life that blesses you, and it blesses others, and it moves the kingdom forward.

So get going if you have not yet.

Secondly, what I would tell you this morning is don't drop out.

The real danger of saying no to God is just that. It's a real danger.

As we move on in the scripture, starting in verse 4, some heavy words there. It is impossible.

It is impossible.

You know what some other things that are impossible in the scripture?

It is impossible for God to lie.

There are some things that are just impossible. And this is one of those,

that strong wording that we need to pay attention to.

Now, this passage warns about people who I believe have really encountered the

saving grace of God, God's goodness.

I mean, just look at the phrasing that is used. They have once been enlightened.

They have seen the light of Christ. They've experienced living in the light.

As 1 John said, they are walking in the light.

They're having fellowship with one another, fellowship with God.

It goes on to say they have tasted the heavenly gift.

Now, not more than just a nibble. I mean, this is imagery. The scripture says

that Jesus tasted death. Did he really die?

Yeah, he really died. So the imagery of tasting here, you see,

these people have tasted the heavenly gift.

They have bought into salvation. They have been saved because the next phrase

says, who is shared in the Holy Spirit.

They had the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within them.

You cannot have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in your life in this Christian

age unless you have forsaken your sins and turned away from that.

The scripture goes on to say who have tasted the goodness of the word of God

and the powers of the coming age.

I mean, they're living kingdom life now is what is illustrated here.

These people were one like you are as a believer in Christ.

But something happened. It says it is impossible for all those,

if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance.

Because to their loss, they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and

subjecting him to a public disgrace.

Now, I need to make a disclaimer here because the wording, if they fall away,

is that they have fallen away.

And what does that mean? It doesn't mean they just accidentally did something

that violated their Christianity.

Those of you that work with wood or work with cars, sometimes you bang your

knuckles. Sometimes you cut your finger.

Sometimes there are temptations to say certain things without thinking because you do those things.

The scripture isn't saying that if you're out there working on your car and

you bust a knuckle and a word comes out of your mouth that you knew better,

that should not be a part of your vocabulary, that that's it. It's over. You're gone.

That's not what it's saying here. What the scripture is saying and the phrasing

is saying is that these kind of people who choose to do this are choosing to reject him.

I mean, sometimes when you're working on your car, you're working on your ranch,

you're working with animals, you're not going to give up your Christian faith

because the animal's not cooperating or your ranch isn't or something else.

You're not going to give up everything for that, but these people in this hypothetical

here, this real hypothetical, if you will, it's more than just stumbling or drifting.

They have deliberately hardened their hearts and turned away from Jesus.

They've said, nope, that's it. I'm cashing out of this Christian thing.

And what the scripture says is what they're doing again is they're crucifying Christ all over again.

They're saying Jesus' sacrifice wasn't good enough. and because they've shared

God's word with others and other people knew they were a Christian,

that it puts Jesus up to a public disgrace.

That it's shaming Christ all over again.

Despicable. Because they chose that they were not going to follow Jesus anymore

because their hearts were hardened and they turned away.

I don't have to tell you to Google it because there's several examples maybe

in your own life where people have followed Christ. They were genuine believers.

Maybe they even led you to Jesus.

But at some point, something happened in life, and they just said,

forget all this. Maybe they were mad at God.

One of their relatives died, maybe a child, maybe a spouse, maybe a grandparent,

and that was the final straw for them. They could not go any further.

Maybe they never grew past the basics, and so they didn't have the ability to

understand suffering and moving and going through that kind of thing like Jesus went through.

See, it's at this point, the author of Hebrews kind of transitions a little

bit and gives us an illustration.

You see, he uses this picture of land, this metaphor of land.

He says, basically, when rain falls on the land, there's two results that can

happen. It can produce a useful crop, it's blessed, or it only grows thorns

and thistles, in which case it's torched, it's burnt up, because you can't do anything with it.

And if you dig into the metaphor a little bit, you can see that the rain that

falls on all kinds of land is like the grace of God that is available to everybody.

It's God's prevenient grace. God's grace poured out by his Holy Spirit for all

people, believer and non-believer.

And rain comes down to the land or to the soil.

And the soil is that human heart, the human heart which drinks in God's grace.

You can drink in God's grace and you can live in that.

And even if you bust your knuckles and something comes out, you wish it wouldn't

have come out, God shows you the way in that grace moment to ask for his forgiveness.

And at the same time, ask him to help fix that car that you're working on.

Plow that field that you're trying to plow. Work in your garden with all the

goat heads that have taken over.

You pray, Lord, help me with this. But we know all hearts aren't prepared the same.

And that's what this metaphor really shows. It shows the results for the heart

that was well-prepared, that had been cultivated, that had someone taking the

time to really work with that heart.

We see that that prepared soil produces a harving, it produces blessing,

it produces God's presence and maturity.

But it's that unprepared, stubborn soil where the thorns and the thistles take

root, where people's hearts really don't want to follow God's way, where they refuse.

To live in faith. They refused to obey.

And the scripture says, it's those hearts, it's those people,

it's that soil that's going to be burned up.

Again, talking to Hebrew Christians who were very well aware that there were

some people that did not enter into the promised land because of their stubbornness,

because of their refusal to submit and to follow the leadership of God expressed

in Moses, expressed in the Ten Commandments,

expressed in following what God had set out.

I just want you to know, guys, there's a difference between struggling in your

faith and slamming the door on Jesus. us.

There's a difference there. But the more you say no to God, it's easier to say no to God.

And it's easier when he comes a knocking to slam that door and say, nobody's home, go away.

But the inverse is true as well. The more you say yes to Jesus,

the more you say yes to God, and the more you obey and the more you follow in

what he's leading you in, the easier it is to throw the door wide open when

he's knocking and say, come on in, Jesus.

As a matter of fact, let me go with you wherever you're going.

The warning here is for the person who keeps saying a hard no to God after knowing better.

And that's a sad state of affairs.

So guys, what I'm telling you in this is don't drop out.

Get going. Don't drop out. And third this morning, keep going.

As the scripture says, stay diligent.

The Christian life is not for wimps. It's not for pansies. And I'm not talking about the flower.

The Christian life is hard. Maybe growing pansies is hard.

I don't know. You got to work the soil. You got to fertilize it, all that kind of thing.

But after the warning here in verse 9, the scripture says, even though we speak

like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case,

things that accompany salvation.

Ooh, that's tantalizing.

Oh, that looks exciting.

What do I get besides salvation? It's kind of like going on a game show and

you win and they start to say everything that you've won. It's a brand new car.

It's $10,000 cash. But wait, there's more. What's behind door number one?

An all exclusive, all expense paid trip to someplace you wanted to go.

And that's what the author of Hebrews is telling these Hebrew believers and

tells us today is, wait, there's more.

There's more than just salvation. If that were all, wow, that's amazing.

But God has more for you. The ability to live the life that he calls you to live,

to use the gifts and the talents that he has blessed you with that have been

activated by God's spirit living within you, to bless him and to bless others,

to do things that you could never by yourself,

especially dead in your trespasses and sins do.

The author of Hebrews was saying, there's more for you guys.

There's better things in store.

And he goes on to say, God is not unjust.

God's not going to forget the love and the service that you've shown to his people.

Your past and present service are evidence that your faith is real.

Author of Hebrews is giving them some encouragement. Hey, you may have blown

it, or you may be tempted to walk away from all this Christianity stuff because

you're getting pressured by your Jewish family.

You're getting pressured by the Jewish leaders to walk away from all this,

and you think it's too hard.

You think you have to keep the law and walk in grace, and you can't do anything.

Jesus has fulfilled the law, but let's walk in this new life of grace.

And they're trying to do this. And in trying that, it says that they are expressing

the love God has shown them in their service to Him and their service to others.

Boy, that's when you get beyond yourself, when you start to live as God wants

you to live, and you diligently continue to follow when He says yes,

to give when you don't have anything left to give, but God opens the door for

you to carry on, to keep going.

It's astounding. It's what the Scripture says here, better things.

You see, the call really is to reject spiritual laziness.

The word used here for lazy or sluggard is the same word used in verse 5 that

I talked about last week.

When the author said in chapter 5, hey, I don't want you to be lazy.

It's the same word, the same meaning here. Don't be a sluggard.

Don't know what you ought to do, but you're just sitting back on the couch not

doing it. With your bag of Oreos and your Twinkies in hand.

Hey, get up, put the Twinkies and the Oreos down.

Save them for after you do what God calls you to do. Don't be sluggish.

Don't be spiritually lazy.

And what the encouragement is to keep imitating the men and women who through

faith and patience actually inherited God's promise.

Imitate those that are living the kind of life in Christ that you want to live

or that God is calling you to live is a better way to put that.

Start copying what they do. I mean, be like that annoying younger sibling who

copied every motion you did on that road trip, who would not leave you alone.

If you lean like this, they lean like this. If you were doing this, they were doing that.

If you were saying something to your parents, they were saying the exact same

thing in a much more annoying tone.

And your parents did nothing about it. And then you got mad,

and so then they imitated you and got mad, and then it didn't end well after that.

But imitate those in faith, those that have those qualities and characteristics that you really want.

Maybe you're not a very patient person, but there's someone that you go to church

with, someone in your family that's a believer in Christ.

Maybe imitate what they do. Maybe talk to them.

We'll talk about that in a minute. but reject the spiritual laziness and keep

on going following Christ.

Be encouraged by this, that God has not forgotten a single unseen act of love

that you have done in His name.

He sees what you've done. That time you gave, you didn't let anybody else know,

but you just did, and it blessed somebody.

The time that maybe you were just out in the parking lot of a grocery store

and your wife was taken forever inside and you saw some grocery carts that need

to be put up, and so what else are you going to do with your time?

You put those grocery carts up. You bless someone by doing that,

especially if it was in McCall, and there's snow on the ground,

and there's a poor kid out there named Noah Curry having to put all the carts

away in the middle of winter.

If you were one of those people, you blessed my son.

Those things are not forgotten by God. He remembers what you've done,

those words, those notes of encouragement.

Time that you spent your own time doing something that blessed others.

God sees that, especially when you do it in His name.

So just don't coast through the Christian life.

Let God carry you along as you follow His example and follow the examples of

people who have stayed faithful to Him through horrendous and crazy,

crazy trials and temptations that they have faced.

So this morning, my encouragement has been to get going, do not drop out,

and keep going. And so how do you do that?

Well, I want to just give you four hints that you can take or leave.

I hope you take them, and I hope you use at least one of them this week to help you do all of these.

First and foremost, identify one area that you need to grow up in this week.

And if you don't know what it is and you're married, ask your spouse.

They will be clear as day and honest with you and let you know because they

have probably been praying for that for you.

And if you want to know what mine is, just ask my wife afterwards.

She could probably give you a list. Then you know how to pray for your pastor.

But before you go to bed tonight, write down that one area that you need to grow up in.

Maybe you've got a devotional journal or a little book, or maybe you get a sticky

note and you just put that in your Bible.

And so that when you do your devotion, your worship time, personal worship with

the Lord, you see that there.

And then ask God, what's one practical step I can take this week to build on

the foundation of what I already have, to move beyond the basics and put my faith into action?

A second hint I want to give you this week, suggestion even, is do a heart check.

Now, I don't mean go down to the doctor, but what I do mean is spiritually speaking, are you drifting?

Is your heart drifting and lured to other priorities other than God?

Are you struggling in some area? Is your heart hardening?

You see, if you're drifting, maybe you're distracted, you're just coasting.

You're just not really trying, but you're just trying to make it,

you know, Sunday morning's the time to go to church.

And so you come to church because if you don't, pastor or one of your Sunday

school teachers is going to be bugging you.

And you're just kind of coasting, drifting.

Maybe you're struggling. You're fighting, but you're still got some things you

don't know how to move forward on.

You're struggling in your heart. Yeah.

Struggling to know how to take what's in the Word and apply it to your life.

And yeah, you know you're struggling with this. You can't get past the basics

because you keep sinning and you keep having to go ask for forgiveness and you

can't figure out how to whoop this temptation.

Maybe your heart is struggling today or maybe your heart is on the verge of hardening.

I would say if your heart is hard, you wouldn't be here this morning.

It's a beautiful Sunday. There's other things you could be doing.

And if you have a hard heart, you wouldn't be here this morning.

If your heart is hard, you've already said no to God. And it's a firm no.

Maybe you're on the verge of that. Maybe something's going on in your life that

it's like, one more thing, one more thing, and I'm out of here.

If that one more thing happens, God, forget you, forget your church, forget your people.

I want to assure you this morning that if you're drifting or struggling,

this passage is a wake-up call. It's saying, hey, wake up.

Come on. You got to keep going. Don't drop out.

Don't ride off God. If you failed, it doesn't mean your history that God's done with you.

No, you get up, you seek forgiveness, and you take the next step of faith that you're offered.

If you're on the edge of that hardening, you're continuing to want to say no

to God's goodness. that's spiritually dangerous.

And I would urge you to repent immediately. Turn away from that in your heart, in your mind.

And say, no, I rebuked that attitude in my heart.

Lord, I give this to you. Help me to follow you. I submit to you, Father.

Help to show me the way and then be open to God showing you the way through

his word, through a brother or sister, through time spent with other believers studying the word.

So check your heart. A third suggestion this morning is replace spiritual laziness

with intentional diligence.

Remember what I said about the Christian life isn't for wimps.

This is where diligence comes in.

I would encourage you to name the area of your life where you're spiritually

sluggish, where you are, as I said before we came in, before we prayed,

where you're dogging it spiritually.

You know, you could do better, but you're just not.

Maybe it's prayerlessness. You just don't pray.

You might pray at the meal table because your family expects you to,

but maybe you're just not talking to God and allowing him to speak to you.

Maybe your worship is sporadic. And I'm not talking about here on Sunday morning

when we're all gathered, but as you're worshiping God, as you're going through the week.

And you're driving home and the sunset's beautiful and you just think about

God and you just worship God and you just thank Him.

I mean, that's one way, but maybe there's other things. It's just hit and miss.

You're just not really worshiping.

Maybe you just have not been engaging in the Word.

You're just not reading it. Oh, yeah, pastor's going to preach it to me Sunday.

That's enough. That's all I need.

Les or Eldon, they're going to be teaching Sunday school, so I'll get it then.

But the scripture says of itself that it is our bread. It's like our food.

I don't know too many in here that only eat once a week.

Some of you eat multiple times a day, at least three times.

How much are we digesting? Are we tasting? Are we swallowing and letting the

word of God become part of us?

Hey, it's easier than ever today, folks. You just take out your cell phone.

You've got the Bible app right there.

As a matter of fact, you can set it up even if you are a little bit lazy,

like some of us, and you can have it send you the Word to remind you to read.

You can have your buddies in a group, and they will remind you to read and ask you what you read.

Maybe there's just one of these spiritual habits. Maybe intentionally you've

been putting off joining a small group,

joining a Sunday school class, coming together with a group of believers,

whereas the scripture says iron sharpens iron

so does one person's countenance sharpen the countenance of

another that's what fellowship does it

sharpens us with the word so i would just say replace spiritual laziness with

intentional diligence you got to mean it choose one habit of diligence and start

or restart over the next 30 days daily scripture reading weekly worship attendance

joining a group setting a prayer time and then just do it,

and make sure you tell someone about it so that someone knows that you're doing it.

Last but not least this morning, before we partake in communion together,

and that's imitate a faithful example.

And I alluded to this earlier, so I won't spend too much time on this final point here.

But identify one believer that's living or that has already passed on and recognize

their faith and their patience in the Christian walk and choose to imitate them.

If that person is alive, and reach out to them.

Maybe call them, text them, say, hey, you want to meet for coffee or soda?

And ask them this one question.

How have you kept going when you wanted to quit?

What has kept you going when your world fell apart?

Why are you still sticking with Jesus through all of this? Just ask them that question.

If they've passed on to glory already, ask someone that knew them that same question.

Maybe they've left behind a journal or other people that have known them,

and you can read something they wrote, or you can hear a story from someone

that knew them, and just write it down.

Write down that memory in a place and practice the hints that you get from that.

It'll be a blessing to you. If you don't know anyone, you're not sure,

in a few weeks we'll be in Hebrews chapter 11, and there's a whole chapter of

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

people that you can pick out to follow,

broken people like you and like me, people that have been successful,

people that have failed miserably.

But yet it says they're in the hall of faith, the hall of fame,

if you will, of the scripture.

When we think about this this morning, just like the runner at the beginning,

you haven't come this far just to stop here.

Let God carry you forward to completion.

Refuse to walk away. Keep loving and serving Jesus all the way to the end.

And I say that this morning because that's what Jesus did for us.

Says in chapter 5, Jesus was obedient, even obedient to death, the death on a cross.

And we celebrate the communion this morning, the Lord's Supper.

I know it's just a little wafer. I know it's just a little bit of grape juice,

unfermented, but it recognizes what Jesus did for you and for me,

that he laid down his life on a cross so that we could have more than just the basics,

but folks, this is the basic.

Accepting Christ as your Savior. Following Christ as your Savior.

But it starts with the way for the bread, his body that was broken for you and me.

He suffered that weakness, Jesus did. He didn't have to, but he willingly did.

I mean, say you're going in for an appendectomy, right? And you really want to get in there.

Well, that shows the brokenness of our body even now. We still don't need healing.

We still need to be put back together. We long for that perfect body that the scripture talks about.

The body without sin, the body without that pain. The body that's promised at the end.

Jesus was broken for us and yet he rose again. Amen.

His blood was spilled out for you and for me to cover our sin, to blot out our sin.

The blood of an innocent man, a pure man, pure without sin, never sinned a day in his life.

Yet he poured out that sinless blood for you and for me to cover up our long

list of sins that we have committed throughout our life. Isn't that awesome?

That's what Jesus has done for you.

And as we come together we realize that

jesus suffered for us and that there's going

to be times maybe we're suffering it might

not be physically our blood might not being poured out but there are going to

be some yucky things you go through in life it doesn't mean that god's abandoned

you it means that jesus is understanding what you've what you're going through

because he's walked that same path and that he also has the answer to how to

overcome that deep grief that you feel,

that pain that is overwhelming,

the not understanding when things happen in life that just does not make sense.

Jesus knows. When we take this supper today, and I'll invite the ushers to come

forward, we're going to pray for these before they're distributed.

Wants you to be confident that Jesus has walked down the path that he's asking you to go down.

And so you're not going ahead ignorantly, not knowing.

Jesus knows that if you'll follow his lead, he'll lead you into the fullness

of what he's got planned for you and the fullness of really who it is to be you.

Let me pray for these. We'll distribute them and have a time of just reflection

on our life, maybe reflecting on some of these points that I brought up this morning.

Father, we do pray in this moment as we celebrate the Lord's Supper.

As we have communion with you, God, we believe this is a means of grace with

which we can grow spiritually.

That's not just some old religious ritual, but God, it has meaning for us right now in the 21st century.

And so Lord, as we partake of this here in just a few moments,

help us to reflect on our own life. Are we still running the race with you?

It doesn't matter if we're ahead or behind, as long as we finish.

Lord, help us to finish. Carry us along. We ask, Lord, that you'd bless these

elements as we partake of them together in just a few minutes.

But right now, Father, would you just speak to our hearts individually,

and Lord, just show us our continued need for you.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.