No. 55 - DIRT, WATER AND AIR By: John J. Blanchard Tuesday, October 05, 2004 Day six of the Feast of Tabernacles This morning I want to turn to the very beginning of the Bible and start talking a little bit about Genesis. We are going to read the story of Cain and Abel and see if we can gain some insights that will help us. Turn, if you would, to Genesis chapter 4 and read verses 1-7. Some translations say, “master it.” You should master or rule over sin. Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s was not. Why? Of course, we can look at the plan of God. The Lamb, Jesus Christ, was the first sacrifice totally accepted by God. The fruits of the earth, the people, were second. God had a chronological aspect He was looking at here. But there is also another problem here with Cain’s offering. He had a glaring personality fault. He had an anger problem. LEARNING FROM CAIN’S FAULT If you go back to verse 5, we see God did not respect Cain and his offering. Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. Can you imagine being angry at God and mad at the situation? I think it shows us there was a great fault in Cain, because God said eventually your offering will be accepted if you are in the right frame of mind, just not this time, basically. He was not overcoming this particular fault. We can see proof. Go to verse 8. “Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.” It was the first murder. Obviously after God had warned him about anger, he did not deal with that problem, and he killed his own brother. Therefore we see a principle here: unrepentant sin will not only block our sacrifice but will lead us to do some evil things. Unrepentant sin is sin that we have not ruled over or mastered, which is what God told him. “Sin lies at the door,” and you must master it. I want to look at a New Testament example now where Christ talks about a sacrifice, an offering and a brother. Turn, if you would, to Matthew chapter 5. We are going to start reading in Matthew 5:21. “‘You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.” But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, “Raca!” shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, “You fool!” shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.’” Isn’t that the same principle that we saw in Genesis chapter 4? If you have a problem with your brother, do not bring Me an offering, God told Cain. You have an anger problem. You have to fix that because sin lies at the door if you do not. He did not listen to his very God in a conversation and shortly thereafter murdered his brother. So we can take that and expand on it in many different directions. If we have faults and they harm people and we know about our faults, we must work on those faults before we go to God with a sacrifice. We know we are a sacrifice. Our life is a sacrifice. Therefore, if we want our offering to be accepted by Christ, we better be doing something about our glaring faults. That is something we can glean from the story of Cain and Abel. But there is more. DUST OF THE EARTH Cain’s situation is in essence a microcosm of mankind’s dilemma. What was Cain? The same thing Adam was, the same thing his brother Abel was, and the same thing you and I are. He was a pile of dust. Turn to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis 2, verse 7: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” So God, as it were, took a pile of dust and put it together in the shape of a man. He gave it life by breathing into his nostrils. From that man all mankind has descended. Therefore, Cain and Abel were both dust just like you and I are dust. If you go just over a page to Genesis 3:19 there is a scripture that is often read at funerals. “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” Mankind has understood for quite some time and religions of the world know we are made of dust. When we die, we go back to dust, non-living dust. We become dry powdered dust with no breath of life. That word dust comes from the Hebrew aphar which means dust as a powdered gray substance, hence clay or earth or mud. If you were to take a piece of clay or rock or a chunk of the ground and pound it into fine fragments, you would have the dust of the earth. That is what composes you and me. It is the same thing Cain and Abel were composed of, the dust of the earth. To that dust we shall return when our physical life is over. God knows how He made us. Without a doubt He was the One who made us there in Genesis. But let’s turn to Psalm 103 because sometimes we can accuse God of not remembering what it is to be a human being. It is very interesting here because we need to keep in our mind that God knows what He created when He made man. Psalm 103, verse11: “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” So God is willing to take our transgressions and move them from us as far as east is from west. Because it says, “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” God remembers we have a few short years of life and that we were made of dirt. He knows what our frame is composed of. Cain was a pile of dust but a body formed out of that dirt. He was not dry dirt until the day he died and dried out. He was powder that had been coalesced together to form the shape of Cain, just as you and I are each formed in the shape of the person we are, and that is an image and likeness of God. Mankind is, as it were, an admixture. We are an admixture of 90 percent water, and ten percent the solids of the earth. That is a mixture of minerals and such things that come together with that water to make you stick together, as it were, in the shape that you are. All that needs to be added is the air, the breath of life. God put it initially into Adam, and it gets passed down through the ages. That is what turns the admixture that is just dust or powdered rock into a living stone. You and I are living stones. We have been put together in the shape of a stone that looks like God. Isn’t that a remarkable thought! That is what the scripture says. God took this powdered earth, mixed water and air and made it into an image of Him! It is a wonderful concept that God came up with. It is a wonderful process. Even in our physical lives and spiritual lives it is mirrored there. We are made in the image and likeness of God. In verse 14 it said the phrase that God knows our frame. When we speak of our frame, we speak of our bones and skeleton. It is the frame that our flesh hangs on. If you were to analyze that, your flesh floats around your frame. The bones are not actually part of the flesh. You couldn’t move. It is all made to float so to speak, fluid. That is because the water, the oils in your joints and the way God designed the body allow us to be able to move it in any direction we want. It is a wonderful thing, but that frame (your skeleton and my skeleton) is basically the same thing as cement. If you go outside and look at a sidewalk or a concrete block like what this building is made out of, it is the same consistency basically of your skeleton. It is sand, water and calcium (calcium like lime). If you look at the ingredients of concrete you see sand, water and lime. The strength of your bones is exactly the same as concrete, which is why you don’t break a muscle but you break a bone. It will break like concrete. If too much stress is applied to your frame, it will break because it is like concrete. But it has the strength to hold the rest of you up so you can go about your daily life. Your body is essentially composed of building materials, which is why God calls us His house. If you were to look around this building right here, you see there is dry wall, there is brick and mortar and concrete. There is wood here, which we know comes from the dust of the ground, as well. Even the ceiling tiles are composed of gypsum which is lime. Your buildings you dwell in are like your own house. It is made of the same physical material that your body is made of. The same nutrients that make your body, build our homes! That is why God can call us, His home, living stones. It is a remarkable thing, but if you were to take dry wall compound that has a lot of lime in it and put water in it, it makes a thin cement-like plaster layer. It is a type of concrete. That is what the body is composed of. BUILDING MATERIALS IN GOD’S PLAN We want to look now at the purpose of these building materials in God’s plan. Turn to Galatians chapter 4. Read Galatians 4:1-7. We could do a whole sermon on being a son of God. We do not need to do that because we understand. But that is the purpose of the building materials that have composed our physical body. God is creating children, the sons of God. Let’s look deeper into this by turning to I Peter 2. I Peter 2, verse 4: “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Our purpose is to become living stones and living sacrifices to be offered up to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the first or the cornerstone (as it says in verse 6). Verse 6: “Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.’” There you see why God at the very beginning of the holy scriptures wanted to accept Abel’s sacrifice first. First must come the Lamb of God and then the living stones. So He was going to get around to Cain’s sacrifice. His offering was going to get accepted eventually. But He said you have one problem. You have an anger problem. You have a serious fault that you are not dealing with. As long as you do not master that sin, I will never be able to accept your offering. You have to work on this problem. We understand, because we are of this dispensation of the Christian era, that all of us sin, and we will never get to be accepted by God except by the blood of Christ. That does not mean we do not work on our faults. In order to bear fruit and carry a nice offering to God and give it to Him, we have to be mastering sin. That is what we are being taught here by God. We have to master sin. We have the same problems that faced the first piles of dust that God gave the breath of life to. We are no different. We have to do something with what God has given us, and that is to produce fruit for God as living stones. BE HOLY Let’s back up in I Peter chapter 1. Sometimes we read too small of a portion of a certain set of scriptures, and we only get a portion of what God is trying to say here. Let’s read verse 13: “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children…” (as obedient stones) “…not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct…” Each of us as a pile of dust is getting the same admonition that Cain received. Make sure you are holy in your conduct if you want to be a living stone and a living sacrifice. Work on these things. Verse 16: “…because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’ And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work , conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Once we have been saved, so to speak to use the common language, we have to continue to bear fruit. We cannot say, “I accept the sacrifice of Christ and that is all I am dong with it.” No, we have to master sin and go on and bear fruit. Read I Peter 1:19-25. If you mow your grass and you put the clippings in a pile, and go back and look at them next year, they are dirt. They will have gone back to dirt. Read I Peter 2:1-3. Once we have tasted the fact that God has removed our sins and life is much better when we are close to God, we must go forth and master sin, which is difficult. It is very difficult, but we have the blood of Christ to help us. We have work to do just like Cain had work to do, only he did not do it. We need to follow through on our commitments and bear fruit for God. In other words, it is a case of master it or be mastered by it. Master our sins or be mastered by them. THE CURSE ON SATAN I want to look now at the enemy’s curse, because Satan received a curse for all the trouble he has caused mankind. Let’s go back to the beginning in Genesis chapter 3. Sometimes this is called the chapter of the fall of man. We want to glean some information from here, and see what happened to Satan from this and why he is our bitter enemy. Read Genesis 3:1-13. Everybody is passing the buck. They are not lying in this particular case. They are passing the buck where it came from. Verse 14: “So the Lord God said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.’” A tremendous curse was put on Satan. What was that curse? It was to eat the dust and to have to consume dust to keep going. What is dust? People, humanity is dust. So the curse on Satan is that he must continue to beat mankind. Some versions say, “lick the dust,” which basically is the same thing if you look it up. It is to consume or to eat the dust. His curse is being forced to beat man. He must gain victory over man to continue in his current position, to have a viable government, to be a ruler and to be a free spirit. Even though being evil, to be a free spirit, his only hope is to defeat mankind. That makes him our bitter and mortal enemy. But look at Satan’s position for a moment. Satan and the demons are in constant fear of mankind. If you were to look into that subject, they were terrified of Jesus Christ. When He would go up to a demon-possessed individual, they would often cry out, “Why are you here to torment us before the time?” They are afraid because they know if mankind defeats them, they are done! That is a horrible thing to face when you see mankind keeps marching on. Can you imagine, Satan has for 6,000 years tried to defeat mankind any way he can. Every generation gives birth to more. No matter how many wars he has caused, no matter how many disease epidemics sweep the earth, no matter how many hurricanes and storms he hits the earth with, people keep coming. It is an enemy that will not quit. Put yourself in their shoes. This is terrifying because it is like being a soldier with unlimited ammunition, but you have an unlimited number of the enemy coming at you all of the time. His only hope is to consume them as they keep coming, and keep getting them to sin and fail. He was successful until Jesus Christ. Finally there came a living stone that he could not beat! He could not defeat that living stone. He knew from that point forward his days were numbered and his time was short. SATAN’S ONLY HOPE His next best hope is to keep the body of Christ from getting ready as the bride. He wants to cause those stones to sin and fail so that he can extend his reign, thereby changing times and seasons. We do not have time to look at that today, but consider the concept of Satan trying to consume the dust. He wants to prevent this dust from bearing righteous individuals who have taken on the blood of Christ and who cannot be beaten. It is a horrifying thought. How would you like to fight an enemy that you cannot put down. No matter how many times you hit them, they get back up! That is Satan and the demon’s position and they are terrified. That is not to say our job is easy, because we know how hard it is to overcome. We have to work at it and fight Satan. We know he is our mortal enemy. He goes about as a devouring lion, devouring the dust which is us. He wants to get us. He will throw everything he can at us like he did with Jesus Christ. It is tough for the Church to give birth to a new world order to be the bride of Christ. It is tough for us to bear fruit. Let’s go back to Genesis for a moment. Read Genesis 3:16-19. Picture here the Church, the sons of God and the woman that is the Church. What happens to mankind physically is only mirroring what it is like to be spiritual. It is difficult to procreate, give birth and raise children. It is difficult for a man or woman to provide for the family today, but spiritually it is many times over harder. We produce thorns and thistles in our lives. Satan is always coming up as a weed in our life, as a tare, as a thorn, as a bristle. If you have ever walked through burdock or some of those pricker bushes, you know they stick to you like glue. They get in your hair like Velcro which is where Velcro was invented, by the way. They looked at how thorns and thistles latch on to your hair. They are hard to get rid of in our hair (our righteous acts and our service to God). The hair that we are trying to produce for Him is another subject, but Satan is always trying to get thorns and thistles into our flesh and into our lives. That is what we are being told. We are told to bear fruit and grow in holy righteous character. We are going to be plucking thorns and thistles until the day we die or Jesus Christ returns, whichever happens first. We better get ahead of the game and produce a good crop of 30, 60 or hundred-fold and have very, very few weeds in our character if we want a decent reward at all. In some cases, it is a matter of being saved at the end. We can undo what God is trying to do if we are not careful. We have to master sin. We have no choice. As Satan has no choice but to consume the flesh that comes before him, we have no choice but to end up reigning over him. We have to overcome or be overcome. We have a lot of help on our side. We have a far greater power and far greater strength than Satan has at his disposal. But we have no choice. We have covenanted with God at baptism to go forward. We promised to go forward, to be His house, to be His building material where He can dwell. He wants a clean house, and He wants the weeds, thistles and thorns out so we can bear a crop for God. THE POTTER AND THE CLAY I want to now look at the concept of the potter working with the clay because that is what a pot is made out of. It is dust with water mixed in it to form something useful for the potter. The first place I want to turn is in Job chapter 38. Job is a good place to look for information. If you were to go to James 5 it says if you want to understand the beginning from the end, go to Job. Job is replete with information to help us understand what is going on with mankind. Read Job 38:34-38. The clouds are angels bringing us the water from God from His bottles that He has in heaven. It is His Spirit, and He mixes that water with the dust of the ground. It is the dust that hardens into clumps. What are those clumps? They are us. If you were to look up these terms, you would find that God’s water, His liquid, comes from His bottles and mixes with the gray powder to form mortar. You take that mortar and shape it into stones. The lumps, the clods, are the lumps of clay put together to form life in the image and likeness of God. Let’s pursue that course just a little bit more. Go back to Job 10. You are going to see before you here in these few verses a description of God’s plan. Job 10, verse 1: “My soul loathes my life; I will give free course to my complaint, I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.” This is Job speaking and pleading with God. Continue reading Job 10:2-12. There is so much here in these verses because Job is saying, can’t you remember I am flesh? You made me and You do not know what it is like to have physical life. You do not know what it is like to use my eyes, to use my flesh and my bones, that the wicked is always after me to sin. Why are You always looking for my sin? You know if You find it, You are going to destroy me. Yet I know somehow You are going to preserve me. Those words, if we said them today, would be a rejection of Jesus Christ because He walked in human flesh. He had human bones. He used human eyesight and overcame the wicked one. He won! So man can defeat Satan. On our own, we could never do it, but God could do it as a man and He did. He gave His life for us. That is that blood that can help our living stones be an acceptable sacrifice to God. God now works through the body of Christ, continuing the building project to build a home He calls His temple. If you would please, turn to Isaiah chapter 45. God started this project and He is going to continue it. He is going to win. He will totally defeat Satan eventually. Read Isaiah 45, verses 8-13. God says, I make it rain on the earth. I put the water into the dust. I will make the dust righteousness, and I will make it form the city of My Son Jesus Christ. I will make it into a temple to rule over the earth and totally master and defeat Satan the devil. I will do this. The Church of God that goes back into history is living proof that God can indeed take the dust of the earth, mix it with His water (the Holy Spirit) and make a malleable clay. From this He can make people into the image and likeness of God and His character. Not just a physical look alike but a character look alike. He can do this, and He is doing it. But we have to cooperate. Of our own free will, we have to pluck the thorns and thistles out. We have to remove the imperfections. We have to master our faults and not be like Cain. Don’t be told by God one day that you have a problem, and if you do not master it, it will master you if your problem is anger and hatred. It could have been the very next day. We do not know. He turned around and killed his brother. Now we are being told, you living stones, remove your faults so I can give a reward. That reward is to be in the temple and to help rule the earth and the entire universe. You will help Jesus Christ, My Son, bring peace to the entire universe by mastering this horrible being who has introduced sin into the universe, into the earth and into the human race. Join Me in this fight to beat him. Let My Son dwell in You. As He overcame, you can also overcome by His blood. You can build a reward and help Us rule if you work on your character. That is what we are told. That is the story of the Bible. It is certainly the story of our time. If you would, turn to Isaiah chapter 64. Read Isaiah 64:8-12. They are begging God. Back then in the Old Testament the physical temple was a wreck. Today, the story of our time, the spiritual temple is a wreck. They ask God, will You hold back peace from us forever or are we always going to be a mess? Have mercy on us! God tells the Laodiceans admit that you are naked, and let My Son’s blood and His garments cover you. When sin entered Adam and Eve they were naked. They had to be covered. We have all sinned. If sin is a form of spiritual nakedness, before God we are a wreck and need to be covered. This Church needs the blood of Christ like never before, because we have covenanted with God and then we became ruined. Now we need real mercy all over again, so to speak. We need to beg God to help us cleanse ourselves so we have spiritual garments before Christ returns, which is imminent. We do not have a lot of time to take the thorns and the thistles out of our lives. We have to get about the job and bear fruit for God as quickly as possible. The story continues with the same vein of thought in Jeremiah chapter 18. Read verses 1-11. God did the same thing over again to His spiritual Church. He chastised it and allowed Satan to overrun it and destroy it, in order that we would see ourselves for what we were. He wanted us to repent and do good. It is just like the potter who formed something and said this is not good. It is marred. I will break it and reform it into something else. The Church has been broken. The living stones have been broken down again. God says now I will fix it. I can make this into something useful. That is God’s prerogative. Spiritually we need to get to the point where we realize God is not going to keep refashioning us forever. He has to finish working with the clay, in order to have a bride ready for His Son to come to and marry so that we can reign with Him. There is a finish line. If anything, that finish line moves up shorter! We have to work on our character and allow God, as the potter, to help us along. Then we can produce good fruit and make us a vessel that He can use. Turn, if you would, to Romans chapter 9:14. “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not!” Is it that God is unfair here in some way? Continue reading in Romans 9:15-26. If God had cut everything off every time a sin entered, He would never have advanced His plan. He must for a time allow evil to exist, and call and have mercy on those He will call, and have mercy on the firstfruits in the way He chooses. We are not to argue with Him. Moses was called and not Pharaoh. God will call those people eventually, and He will call the world. He has to have a government in place first. Continue reading in Romans 9:27-33. They had to go through the physical so we could understand the spiritual. We should not condemn them for their failures. We certainly should condemn ourselves if we continue to fail. We have all of this knowledge, we have the Holy Spirit, we have the help of God and we understand the plan of God. We have to keep going forward understanding that God is doing a work on the earth, and He is going to accomplish it through the Seed, that is Jesus Christ. The potter puts the seed in the soil to grow. Christ in the parable of the sower of the seed clearly shows the seed gets scattered. God knows whom He is going to allow Himself to grow in. When He chooses us to grow a crop in, we better start producing fruit. We accepted by our own free will the covenant with God. We better keep to it and continue to bear fruit. Christ was the first of the first fruits, but He, being God, did not demand of us something He was not willing to do first. THE FIRST DUST THAT SATAN COULD NOT DEFEAT Turn to Psalms chapter 22:14. “I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; it has melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws; you have brought Me to the dust of death.” This is a prophecy of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross. If you were to continue, it speaks of Him being pierced in His hands and His feet. The point I want to make is He gave His body (the dust that God had given Him) that the rest of us would have a chance to have the hope of life. He did that as a perfect sacrifice. He went first, lived a perfect life in the physical flesh, and His flesh died. It dried up like a potsherd, so to speak, He said. I am all dried up. There is no more liquid left in Me. That was His physical life waning away. His body was never broken. There were no broken bones, thus fulfilling the prophecy. Our physical body may get broken and totally spent also, but God is not demanding something from us that He did not already willingly do Himself. He says I have overcome the world so be of good cheer. I will help you overcome. Let Me work with you as a potter working with clay. Let Me dwell in a clean house, and I will make of you great things. But you must willingly cooperate, bear fruit, work and help master sin. Even though He died, it is our hope. That is why Satan tried so hard to get Jesus Christ to sin before He died. He had to defeat that pile of dust. He could not do it. It was the first living pile of dust he could not defeat, and it only took one to get this whole thing rolling. It took one perfect sacrifice. Now God is working with the rest of the firstfruits. This generation is the last of a long wave of many people that God has used to pick and choose a few. These are the ones He gave the Holy Spirit to in order to fight Satan. They will be part of the firstfruits. Billions and billions of people have come and gone. We are down to the end of the 144,000 being formed! What an awesome thing it is to even be understanding this, let alone have a chance of being a part of it! For us to fulfill our destiny, we need to bear fruit. That is our job to bear fruit and overcome. WE SHALL OVERCOME If you would turn to Matthew chapter 16, we have some promises. God did not embark on this project to lose so we should take great encouragement. Matthew 16, verse 18: “‘And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.’” In whatever condition we see the Church today, let’s realize there is a promise here. Satan will not prevail against the Church. Have hope and take courage from this promise. God does not want any snatched from His hand. Satan wants to snatch us from His hand. It is pretty hard to get out of the grip of Jesus Christ and God the Father. It is very hard. We need to cooperate with that one. God says I will not even let you cooperate easily. When you sin, I am going to chastise you. When you consistently sin, I will consistently chastise you for I love every son. I love every pile of dust that I am working with. I am going to help you overcome. I am going to help you master that sin and bear a wonderful crop. Sometimes we find our trials overwhelming, and we get despondent and depressed. We need those trials because that is what makes us look inward at ourselves. Then we see the faults we need to overcome and master so that God can say well done, good and faithful servant. I accept what you are offering. Romans 8 continues the promise. Turn, if you would, to Romans chapter 8 and read verses 31-33. Would you want to be Satan, trying to go to God all of the time and say I finally got this person to sin? He is in Your Church. I would not want that job, not with Christ’s blood in the Church and Christ’s sacrifice here. I would not want that job. Satan is in a horrible position and he knows it. Continue reading in Romans 8:34. “Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.” Satan can accuse, but Jesus Christ is right there saying I covered that one, Father, they are okay. Continue reading Romans 8:35-39. We have tremendous help in this battle. Avail ourselves of it. God is there, wanting us just like a loving parent to do the very best we can. We just need to cooperate and do our part and work along with Him. Give Him a clean house, as clean as we can get it. Remove the thorns and the briers. Turn to Hebrews chapter 12:1 for our final scripture. “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Let us lay aside every sin and the weight that encumbers us. Do not try to run a race carrying our sins. You would never want to try to run a race carrying a l00 lb. weight in your hand. You are doomed to defeat! It is the same spiritually. As we identify sin in our lives, master it so we are not running all encumbered with these weights. Get rid of them. Christ started this. He is the author and will be the finisher. He will finish successfully. Satan will be defeated, and we will leave Satan in the dust. Christ and His Church will reign. They will be the masters! They will win! We will conclude, but we will add a second part to this sermon later in the Feast.