Run Your Race

Call to Worship and Opening Praise

Good morning. We're going to get church underway here, so good morning. We're going to start with a Scripture reading if everyone could grab a seat.

But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

— John 4:23-24 (CSB)

Join us this morning. We may not have slides again, so we're going to start with hymn number 199. So if you'd grab the hymnboks in the pews in front of you, turn to 199: "Arise, My Soul, Arise."

Arise, my soul, arise, Shake off thy guilty fears; The bleeding Sacrifice In my behalf appears. Before the throne my Surety stands, Before the throne my Surety stands, My name is written on His hands.

He ever lives above, For me to intercede, His all-redeeming love, His precious blood to plead. His blood atoned for all our race, His blood atoned for all our race, And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds He bears, Received on Calvary; They pour effectual prayers, They strongly plead for me. "Forgive him, O forgive!" they cry, "Forgive him, O forgive!" they cry, "Nor let that ransomed sinner die!"

The Father hears Him pray, His dear Anointed One; He cannot turn away The presence of His Son. His Spirit answers to the blood, His Spirit answers to the blood, And tells me I am born of God.

My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for His child, I can no longer fear; With confidence I now draw nigh, With confidence I now draw nigh, And "Abba, Father!" cry.

My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like You. All of my days, I want to praise The wonders of Your mighty love. My comfort, my shelter, Tower of refuge and strength, Let every breath, all that I am, Never cease to worship You.

Shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing! Power and majesty, praise to the King! Mountains bow down and the seas will roar At the sound of Your name. I sing for joy at the work of Your hands. Forever I'll love You, forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have in You.

The grace of God has reached for me And pulled me from the raging sea, And I am safe on solid ground. The Lord is my salvation.

I will not fear when darkness falls; His strength will help me scale these walls. I see the dawn of the rising sun. The Lord is my salvation.

Who is like the Lord our God, Strong to save, faithful in love? My debt is paid and the victory won. The Lord is my salvation.

My hope is hidden in the Lord, He lay the promise of His word. When winter fades, I know spring will come. The Lord is my salvation.

In times of waiting, times of need, When I am lost, when I am weak, I know His grace will renew these days. The Lord is my salvation.

Who is like the Lord our God, Strong to save, faithful in love? My debt is paid and the victory won. The Lord is my salvation.

And when I reach the final day, He will not leave me in the grave. But I will rise, He will call me home. The Lord is my salvation.

Who is like the Lord our God, Strong to save, faithful in love? My debt is paid and the victory won. The Lord is my salvation.

Glory be to God the Father, Glory be to God the Son, Glory be to God the Spirit. The Lord is our salvation.

Glory be to God the Father, Glory be to God the Son, Glory be to God the Spirit. The Lord is our salvation. The Lord is our salvation. The Lord is our salvation.

Amen. Somebody praise the Lord! God is good all the time, and all the time, amen. Well, welcome to the first Sunday of no football! Praise God. Ah, praise God. Hope you all had a good week. Hope you're prepared for the rain they say is coming. Praise God.

The Promise of Renewed Strength

Turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles to Isaiah. I use this Scripture to point towards the Scripture I'll be using today—I'll be in Hebrews 12, but I want to begin in Isaiah 40. When you get to Isaiah, say "Amen." Isaiah chapter 40, drop down to the end of the chapter, verse 31. It says:

but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not become weary, they will walk and not faint.

— Isaiah 40:31 (CSB)

May the Lord add a blessing to the reading and hearing of His most precious and holy word. This passage, like all the passages in the Old Testament, points towards the cross. In other words, when you're reading the Old Testament, it's pointing to that which has come, which God is revealing.

That's why when Jesus was on the cross and He said, "It is finished," now all that work, everything that the Scriptures were pointing to, is done. Now, on the New Testament side, we understand what Scripture means in the light of Jesus Christ coming and completing the work. Understand that this passage in Isaiah is talking about future tense; it's talking about what will happen.

We look for God's answer when we're reading Scripture or in our lives. What is God saying? What is God doing? What is God expecting? Then we begin to realize that the answer is Christ. The answer is Jesus Christ; everything is through Him. Scripture points to Him, to the work that He's done, the teachings He gave, and the commands He gave us that now form the Church.

Running with Endurance

With all of that established, let's go over to Hebrews chapter 12. We don't know for sure who the author of Hebrews was, but whoever it was, they understood the Old Testament very well. They quote the Old Testament quite a bit. Some people think it was Barnabas, others think someone else, but the point is it was given to us by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I want to look at Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3:

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up.

— Hebrews 12:1-3 (CSB)

And again, the Lord add a blessing to the reading and hearing of His most precious and holy word. Let us pray.

Father, we thank You for bringing us together this morning. We thank You for those that are here, those that are on their way, those that are home recuperating, or those that are traveling, Lord. Lord, it is my prayer that You would use my mind, my will, my emotion, and infuse it into Your word, that You would be glorified this morning. Lord, again open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, and our hearts to receive what it is that You have for us. In this, we give You praise and honor and glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

The title of this message is "Run Your Race."

This week, as I was getting ready to prepare for this sermon, normally I'll just sit down with the Bible or wait until Thursday or Friday just to see what is going on, what is speaking, and how the Lord is speaking to me. Sermons for me are basically my conversation with God; what is He saying to me, and then I get to share it with you.

Early in the week, I told my wife I'm going to be preaching Sunday. She said, "I think you should preach this sermon and this passage." Normally I dismiss those kinds of suggestions because it's kind of like, "Well, I'm going to seek God myself." But this time when she said it, it resonated on the inside of me. I figured, "Ah, yeah, okay, that's a good passage," but it really stuck with me all week. By the time I sat down to prepare the sermon, I opened up that particular passage, and it just resonated with me. I say all that because if you don't like the sermon, she's sitting down here in the front, and you can talk to her afterwards! But she inspired the sermon today, as inspired by the Holy Spirit who inspires all of us, amen.

Overcoming Our Circumstances

So the title again is "Run Your Race." You see, Isaiah was pointing towards something. A time is going to come when they won't faint and they won't be weary. He's pointing to the cross; he's pointing to Jesus. We are in the "now" of Isaiah. What I mean by that is that Jesus has come, He has fulfilled that task, He went to the cross, took our sins, did the work, ascended, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit is now here to guide us in this Church age.

We are in the "now" of what Isaiah was talking about. The author of Hebrews says that we are to run, not walk. We are to run. Realize the backdrop of this: there are several athletic analogies in Scripture, and Paul uses them as well. He uses the analogy of sports. This was around the time when the Olympic Games were forming, so the idea of running, racing, and competing was in the backdrop of people's minds.

He talks about a cloud of witnesses. Now, who are the cloud of witnesses? That is in Hebrews chapter 11, the chapter right before this. It talks about those heroes of faith, those people who trusted God and believed in God. It refers to people who lived by faith in spite of their circumstances.

We also have to live by faith in spite of our circumstances—in spite of what we're going through, in spite of the medical report, in spite of what we think it's going to be, or what people say. What does God say? Sometimes we might feel like, "Well, I didn't sign up for this." We have to remember we live in a fallen, sinful world. We have to realize that we needed a Savior because we have a sin nature.

But God so loved us that He sent His only begotten Son to die on the cross for us because we are sinners. If we're willing to confess that, admit that, repent of those sins (which means to turn away), and then reach out and receive what God is extending to us through Jesus Christ—which is salvation—the result is eternal life. If we believe that to the point that we confess it to others, we are saved.

But even in our faith walk, we have so many things that we struggle with. Sometimes we have to believe God and just shut all the other noise out. In Hebrews 11, the author talks about those heroes of faith. Like Noah—think about Noah. Noah had to believe God and trust God to build the ark. If he didn't believe God, he wouldn't have built it, in spite of what it looked like. On one hand, you have to think about this: he was doing something that nobody else was doing, and believing in spite of what probably everyone else was telling him. "What are you doing, Noah? Let's go see what crazy Noah is doing today. He says he's building an ark and he's going to put all the animals in it. Crazy Noah!" He had to believe; he had to hang on. It's like people today asking you, "Why do you go to church? Why do you believe that?"

Abraham believed God. God told him, "Leave your family, leave the country that you were raised in, and go to the land that I'm showing you." God promised to make him a great nation, even though he was old and his wife was past childbearing age. He still believed God on that journey in spite of the circumstances. Did he stumble along the way? Yes, as we all do, but he still believed.

Moses believed God in spite of his circumstances. When he left Egypt, at one point he was the number two person in Egypt. Then he killed someone and fled in shame. Forty years later, God told him to go back to a country that he left in shame, where he felt they might still want to kill him. In spite of the circumstances, he had to believe God and return.

Laying Aside Every Weight

It's the same for you and me. In spite of our circumstances, we have to believe that God so loved us He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, pay the price on the cross for our sins, and if we believe that and trust God, we enter the kingdom of God. The result is that now we are called to go, to run, and to do something. He says here:

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us,

— Hebrews 12:1 (CSB)

He says basically, "Untangle yourself." We're called by God to look at ourselves and untangle those things that hinder us. "Hindrance" can be translated as "encumbrance," which means weight. Those are the things that weigh on us, those things that are heavy on us, those burdens. That's where Jesus says, "Come, take my yoke; my yoke is easy." The yoke of the world and the yoke of sin is heavy, but He says to get rid of that, take that off, and put on His yoke.

So we have to look at our lives. This is what repentance is: changing from one way of life to another, in spite of what's going on. You might have a circle of friends or family that don't believe in God, and all of a sudden God is calling you here or calling you to do something. There is going to be a pushback. There's going to be a pushback from your family and your friends. "Why are you doing this? Who do you think you are?" And when you get to the point that you want to tell them about Jesus, they're going to say, "Oh, well, I remember when you were doing such-and-such, and now you're going to tell me about God?"

We have to believe and run the race that's before us in spite of the circumstances. Because if we focus on the circumstances, we'll freeze. That's what fear does, and that's what the enemy wants to do to us—put fear in us because fear will stop you in your tracks. Think about when you were scared. What did you do? You didn't move; you were frozen. You cannot let fear dictate what's going on in your life.

Hindrance, encumbrance, that weight, that burden—you might think, "I've lived my life this way for so long, I don't know if I can be a Christian. I don't know if I can let go of those things. I don't know if I can be this new person that God is calling me to be." But He says we have to untangle ourselves from that. We have to look at our lives, see what we have been doing, and begin to let go of that old lifestyle so that we can embrace Christianity and embrace the new lifestyle. You can't put them both together; you have to get rid of one to embrace the other. You cannot serve two masters.

Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus

Our sin nature holds us back. We have a sin nature, and we have to realize that at any given time, we are all capable of sinning and doing wrong. We have to look at that rather than just saying, "Well, I'm going to heaven because God is love and He loves me, so it doesn't matter what I do." Some people believe things like this and never deal with the sin or the actual problem. We know life is not like that, and what causes us to mess up is our sin. We need to repent of those things and move forward.

Then he says, "Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us." Endurance. Christianity is not a sprint; it's a marathon.

Years ago, when I was a track coach over at John Glenn High School, we had a lot of runners who didn't want to run the longer races because they said, "It's too much work. I have to run too many laps. I just want to run the straightaway. I don't want to run the curves." But they didn't have the fast-twitch muscle fibers that made them sprinters; they had the slow-twitch muscle fibers that made them endurance runners. They could run longer than others, but they didn't want to do it because they had to change their thinking. They had to put time and effort into it.

It's the same with Christianity. We have to put time and effort into it. It's not easy being a Christian. It's not going to be a quick fix. We can't change from a sin nature to being completely righteous overnight; there is a process. That's what discipleship is all about. We receive salvation, which brings us into the kingdom of God, but now we have to learn what the kingdom of God is and what God is expecting of us. We find out here He's expecting us to run the race that lies before us.

My race, Pastor John's race, your race—they're all different. It's the race that lies before you. What is God calling you to do? In the big picture of it, Christianity is going to be a marathon. It's spending time out there, because you don't want to be a nominal Christian who is only a Christian on Sunday and lives like the devil the other six days. God doesn't play those kinds of games. He expects us to be all in, running that race set before us. Sometimes we want to dig in and say, "No, I don't want to do that," but if God is calling you to do it, you must do what He is calling you to do. What makes you a better Christian? Staying home, not reading the Bible, not praying, and not being in fellowship? No, it's getting in there and running.

Verse 2 says:

keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

— Hebrews 12:2 (CSB)

What are you focused on? What are your eyes fixed on? Is it fame and fortune, being an influencer, or is it Christ? "I have to be who God is calling me to be." That means we all must come out of our comfort zone. It means we run a race we weren't originally prepared to run, but it doesn't mean we can't run it. It just means it's going to take some work and effort to drop what we thought our lives were going to be and pick up what God says our lives are supposed to be.

We think, "This is who I am, this is what I'm going to be, and God is second place." No, God should be first place, and then who you are comes out of that. But if we never enter that race and never really embrace Christianity, we never get there because we're resisting it.

Years ago, I thought I was going to be a big businessman. I had all that stuff, but then God began to change my desires. The closer I got to Him, all that business stuff began to fade away. There is nothing wrong with being successful in business—I'm talking about my personal walk—but I realized God was calling me to something else. I didn't know what it was, but it was a race I had not run, and I was scared. "God, I don't know if I can do this."

The first thing He called me to do—and Mariano will tell you because he's heard this many times—was to go out to the front of the church and greet people as they came in. I was the shyest guy in the church. I know you don't believe that, but I am the shyest guy. I was raised as an only child; I can spend days without talking to people and be perfectly happy. I take my time when I eat because I didn't have to fight for food like big families do.

My nature was to be shy and not integrate with people, but God was calling me to something bigger than my own understanding of who I was. He said, "I want you to go out there and greet people." He was trying to break me of that shyness. As soon as I started doing it, it became fun. I enjoyed it and said, "This is great!" Then, as soon as I got comfortable with that, He said, "Okay, now you're going to do this." And I was like, "I don't know if I can do that." But once I started running that race, I found out I could do it. Then He called me to another race, and another. We gain that strength and endurance by participating. You have to build momentum, build strength, and learn what race you are supposed to run.

Fix your eyes on Jesus. Jesus is the author of our faith; He controls the narrative. As God, the Alpha and Omega, He has a definite beginning and a definite end. God has a plan, and we enter into God's plan. Sometimes we think God is supposed to co-sign our plans: "God, I want this, God, I need that, give me this." No. God says, "Come out of your comfort zone. Run this race."

You're not going to fail. We might stumble a little bit, and it might be hard. No marathoner gets up in the morning and immediately runs 26 miles. They start by seeing if they can run a block, then two blocks, then a mile, then two miles, then six miles. At some point, the vision of a marathon becomes clear. But if they had stayed in bed saying, "I don't know if I can do this," there is no chance they would ever run a marathon. It's the same as saying, "I don't know if I can teach a Bible study," or "I don't know if I can be a leader." The only way you find out is to get in there and allow God to shape you, work with you, and change you, just like He did with Noah, Abraham, and Moses. He says, "Just follow Me. Fix your eyes on Me."

We have the finished product. We don't have to look solely at Moses or the Old Testament figures; we look at Christ. He is the standard, the model. Fix your eyes on Christ. What did He do? What did He say? What did He command of us? Walk in His footsteps.

The more you study and participate, the clearer things become. On Wednesday nights, I facilitate our Bible study. A lot of times, I just ask questions. I don't just say, "It's X, Y, and Z; now say it back to me." I ask, "What do you think this passage is saying? How does this pertain to your life? How does this pertain to church life?" We go a little bit deeper, look at it, and draw out what God is showing us. It brings us into a clearer sense of who we are, a greater understanding, and we realize we are ready to engage.

When people resist Jesus, it's often because they don't have enough knowledge. When we resist God, it's because we don't have enough knowledge of who He is. It's amazing to me that anyone would reject Jesus Christ once they truly know who He is, what He has said, and the work of the Holy Spirit. God doesn't desire pain and sorrow for us; He has a kingdom and an everlasting life of goodness for us. He wants to change us and bring us out of darkness into His marvelous light, yet people say no because they don't have enough information. That's our job. When we go and share the gospel, we are giving people information: "This is who God is. You might think He is this or that, but this is who He truly is." Then people have that "aha" moment. I love those moments when you look in their eyes and you know they've got it. The Holy Spirit is there, and then it's game on. We don't save people; the Holy Spirit does. We just preach the gospel.

The Legacy of Glenn Cunningham

Focus on Christ. Even when reading the Old Testament, look at what He is saying, doing, and explaining, because it's all pointing towards the cross. It is one big body of work. Jesus said, "It is finished," and the New Testament writers are explaining what the Old Testament means in the light of the cross.

On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "You've heard it said... but I tell you this." He was doing a transforming initiative, showing us how to interpret and process Scripture. People might say, "Well, I didn't kill anybody today," but Jesus says that if you call someone a fool or harbor anger, you've committed murder in your heart. It changes the whole picture because we realize the danger in what we say and how harmful it can be. We become much more careful because our words have a great impact.

Jesus completed the work on the cross. It is finished. Now we have the Great Commission: we are to go. What does "go" look like? It looks like where you are at. If you are in Brea, you go from here. If you are in downtown LA, it's a little different. In other countries, it's a little different, but the gospel is still the same. We still have to go, and we still have to run the race God has prepared for us. We come here, we learn, we strengthen, we grow, and then we go out for God's glory.

We go because we are ambassadors for Christ. We tell people who God is and what He has said. The more we do that, the more it changes the culture. If we don't do it, the culture becomes more and more dark because that's what is out there. The world will get darker and darker. So whose responsibility is it to bring the light into the darkness? The light has already come, and that is Christ. We take that light and go out and share the gospel.

Whenever you preach the light, it will overcome any darkness. If you look into a dark room and strike the smallest match, the light overcomes the darkness. Darkness can never overcome the light. Be that flame. Overcome the darkness. Run the race that God has set for you.

For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up.

— Hebrews 12:3 (CSB)

Realize what Jesus did, how He suffered, and what He took upon Himself for us, so that we will not grow weary and we won't give up. Even on those days when it seems very hard, or you get a bad report, you can still preach Jesus. You still know that God is on the throne. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever; He will never change. He is your high tower, your strength, your provider, your hope, your comfort, and your all. No matter what you need, He is there for you, but you have to get to that place where you will not lose hope. Run that race. Knowing the way has been established gives us hope.

If you are trying to cut through a thick forest and don't know where you are going, you don't know if you'll hit a cliff or a river. But when a path has already been cleared, all you have to do is walk through it. That's what Jesus did. He opened up the throne room. When He said, "It is finished," the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom. Access to God was opened for all of us.

We as Christians don't die; we live forever. We have that blessed hope and assurance. We will never truly die. That is our hope, but we have to run the race and go through the things we must go through to get to where God is calling us.

I'm going to close with this story. Say to yourself, "As long as I live, I'm never going to forget Glenn Cunningham." I'm not talking about Richie Cunningham's dad from Happy Days! Glenn Cunningham. When I was about ten years old, I read a book about this guy, and it deeply affected me. I didn't know why then, but I understand now. There are going to be things in your life that you will have to push through, no matter what. God is not calling us to give up or live in a place of hopelessness. He calls us to hope and to be more than we think we can be in Him.

Glenn Cunningham, born in 1909 and died in 1988, was an American middle-distance runner. At the time, he was considered the greatest mile runner of all time. He received the Sullivan Award in 1933 as the top amateur athlete in the country. But that's not why I remember him.

He grew up in Kansas. When he was eight years old, his legs were badly burned in an explosion caused when his brother accidentally put gasoline instead of kerosene in a schoolhouse stove. His brother, who was thirteen at the time, died in the fire. When the doctors looked at Glenn's legs, they told his parents, "We're going to have to amputate. He will never walk again." He had lost all the flesh on his knees and shins, the toes on his left foot were gone, and his arch was completely collapsed. He had nothing to stand on.

But with determination and hours upon hours of rehabilitation, he regained the ability to walk—and then he proceeded to run. It wasn't enough for him just to be able to walk; he wanted to run. For us, it shouldn't be enough just to go to church and say, "I'm a Christian." We should want to run the race set before us.

In the summer of 1919, roughly two years after the accident, he first tried to walk again. By the time he was in high school, he was running and winning races. But before every run, he would have to spend hours massaging his legs and having others help massage them because the nerve endings had been burned away. He had to stimulate his legs to get feeling in them. He overcame in order to become.

We have to overcome our situations and circumstances to become what God wants us to be. Often we make excuses: "Well, I'm too short, I'm too old, I have this issue, I can't do this." We have to overcome that. You need to drop those excuses because Jesus overcame all of it on the cross, and we enter into that victory.

Glenn Cunningham put aside the hindrance that said he could never walk or run, and he declared, "I'm going to be an Olympic runner." Against all odds, he broke several world records and competed in both the 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games.

I will never forget Glenn Cunningham because of his positive attitude and his strong Christian faith. His favorite Bible verse was Isaiah 40:31: "but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not become weary, they will walk and not faint." Let us pray.

Lord, You've set before us the path to Christ. You showed us the way, showed us Your love, gave us Your word, and then You call us to go. You call us to run what is set before us. So Lord, help us to lay aside those things that hinder us. Help us to lay aside the "I can'ts" and the excuses, because Lord, You've called us to be overcomers. Just as Jesus overcame sin and death, we enter into that eternal life as overcomers. Help us to move forward. Show us what we need to do and how to do it. Strengthen us and send people to encourage us. Let us be encouragers to one another because we're all running a race that ends in Your throne room. In this, we give You thanks, praise, glory, and honor. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Offertory and Closing Benediction

Thank you guys for joining us. A couple of announcements before we depart. First, if you'd like to give, you can do so online or in the offering plate in the back. Let me read to you very quickly Matthew 6, verse 24, where Jesus says:

“No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

— Matthew 6:24 (CSB)

One way we get to practice that in obedience to Christ is remembering that we don't need to do anything to earn God's forgiveness—Christ accomplished everything on the cross—but when we give, we get to remind ourselves of who our true Master is. We serve the Lord, not our possessions. Let's go ahead and pray together now as we give thanks to God for our offering.

We thank You this morning for providing everything that we need in Your Son. So we pray, Lord, that You'll be able to use every penny for the advancement of Your kingdom and for Your glory. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

If you're visiting us here this morning, thank you for coming. Don't feel any obligation to give us any money; this is something that church members are called to do in obedience to Christ.

A couple of other announcements: first, you may notice that there are new Bibles in your pews. These are new pew Bibles. They are in the pews for you if you're a visitor, or especially if you're not a Christian and you don't own a Bible. Consider this our gift to you, so feel free to take it if you are actually going to read it. Now, if you are a member here and you already have a Bible, this is not a souvenir for you to just add to your bookshelf as an ornament! This is for those who don't have a Bible and would like to have one to read.

Other gathering times: we'll be meeting tonight at 5:00 p.m. for our prayer gathering. We'll sing some hymns and pray together. We'll also be reflecting on prayer. Last Sunday we looked at prayers of adoration, and tonight we'll be looking at prayers of confession in the Psalms. We also have Sunday school in the morning. We have a Bible study going through the Book of Mark at 8:40 a.m. in the library. If you're interested in learning more about the church or what membership looks like, we have a class called "Church Matters" at 9:00 a.m. in the back Bible study room. We also have Wednesday Bible studies at 7:00 p.m. Pastor Steve is continuing to walk through the commands of Jesus, so you can join us there.

And now for our benediction from 2 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 14: May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Let's stand, grab a hymnal, and open it to hymn 204 as we sing "Rock of Ages."

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy wounded side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath and make me pure.

Not the labors of my hands Can fulfill Thy law’s demands; Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress; Helpless, look to Thee for grace; Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Savior, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath, When my eyes shall close in death, When I rise to worlds unknown, And behold Thee on Thy throne, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.

Amen. Amen. Have a blessed week!