Now, in the book of Hebrews, the twelfth
chapter, verse 2, verse 2 verses, Wherefore, seeing
we also are accomplished about with so great
a cloud of witnesses, Let us lay aside
every weight and the sin which doth so
easily beset us, And let us run with
patience 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 is set down at the right
hand of the throne of God.
I want to talk today about the weights
and the race of life.
Now, the Holy Spirit, knowing our mental and
spiritual construction, sometimes lets us think of ourselves
as Christians, and lets us think of ourselves
as farmers, plowing and digging and planting and
reaping.
And again he lets us think of ourselves
as carpenters, sawing and pounding and building.
And again he lets us think of ourselves
as soldiers, wearing the strong armor of God
and going forth to fight against the enemy.
But here, the Holy Spirit refers to us
as runners on the track, runners in the
race of life.
And he's talking here about the race and
about the danger of losing the race and
what we must do to win the race.
This is the language of the Holy Ghost
as he spake by the mouth of the
writer of the book of Hebrews.
It is therefore of utter importance to us
that we listen to him as he talks
to us about the danger of losing the
race and what we can do to win
the race.
Now, about this race of life, there is
one thing that I'd like to be able
to tell you and am happy to tell
you right away.
It is that though the Christian is a
runner competing in the race of faith, he
is yet not competing against other Christians.
There is never any place in the Bible
for competition among the churches, and there is
never any place for competition among Christians.
Christians are not competitors against each other.
They are workers together and fighters together against
a common foe.
Our enemy that we run against, against whom
we compete, is not another Christian, but the
world and the flesh and the devil in
their various manifestations.
And here the Holy Spirit gives us four
ways that we can fit ourselves so that
we can run the race.
Now, I can only deal with one of
them today, but I will deal with that
one.
He says that we are to lay aside
every weight.
He says that we are to lay aside
every besetting sin.
And he says that we are to gaze
steadily at the one who is pacing us,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And then he says we are to do
this whole thing patiently, that is, with steadfastness.
In the Bible, the race of life is
never considered from its speed.
No Christian is ever told to go out
and try to break a track record.
The word of God doesn't say that we
are to run the race of life with
speed.
It says we are to run it with
patience.
That's all.
The young fellow who, at the crack of
the gun, goes tearing along at his top
speed and outdistances the rest by several yards,
is very likely, before the race is over,
to be several yards behind, because he has
given everything he had to begin with.
The race of the Christian faith is not
a hundred-yard dash.
It is not a sprint at all.
It's a long cross-country run.
Therefore, it's not the speed of the race
so much as the patience.
Speed must be coming there somewhere, finally.
But it can come by patient steadfastness.
Now, he says that in order to be
prepared to run this race and win it,
we must lay aside, I don't think the
words lay aside need any commentary at all,
but we must lay aside every weight.
And the weight here is not a sin.
You know the Greek runners, and Paul took
all his imagery from the Greek games here.
The Greek runners ran light.
In fact, they ran all but naked.
Clothing proper to them at other times couldn't
be used on the track, because every tenth
of an ounce of weight held them back
that much.
And everything that was on them that could
catch the wind, their every loose garment, even
though itself it didn't weigh a small fraction
of an ounce, yet it could catch the
wind.
They streamlined.
Before the word was invented, they streamlined themselves
so that nothing could catch the wind and
hold them back.
And whatever encumbered them had to go.
Whatever held them back in any way had
to go.
So he said, and they understood what he
meant, that we are, in running the race
of light, we are to lay aside the
thing that would hold us back and slow
us down so finally we would begin to
drag our feet and lose the race.
Now, there are hindrances in the Christian life
that are also sins.
And about that we'll have to talk at
another time.
But he does not mention sin here in
the first sentence.
He mentions hindrances which are not intrinsically sins.
The difference between a spiritual Christian and an
average Christian is that a truly spiritual Christian
knows that he's not only to be delivered
from sin, but he's to be delivered from
anything that would prevent him from winning.
And now we'll discuss these.
But I would say as I go along
that the Holy Spirit here addresses an elect
number.
He never addresses the superficial man.
This is, above all times probably in the
history of the world, the time of superficial
religion.
Religion is worn as a garment, a very
light garment.
Or it is to be considered as a
little stream that results from a storm, a
sudden thunderstorm, and it flows along and makes
a lot of racket and stirs up a
lot of dust.
But it is so thin, give it just
a little while and it'll run away and
the sun will dry up where it used
to be.
Some people's souls are like that.
And the Holy Ghost never talks to the
shallow man.
If he is shallow, he cannot hear the
voice of the Lord.
The Holy Ghost never talks to the defender,
the self-defender, the fellow who believes he's
right and will defend his right to be
what he is.
He never talks to the arguer, nor to
the flippant person, nor to the insincere.
Sincerity is an absolute prerequisite to the Christian
life.
If I am not sincere, I am ruled
out.
God runs a line through my name because
God can't have anything to do with the
persons that are insincere.
Now, whom does God address?
Well, he addresses the meek.
And what do we mean by the meek?
I don't know, translators have an awful time
with that word, meek.
But it means a kind person, and it
means a humble person, and it means a
lowly person, I would say.
A lowly person is somebody who thinks very
poorly of himself.
And a humble person is someone who thinks
poorly of himself in relation to others.
And a meek person is someone who thinks
lowly of himself, or poorly of himself, in
his relation to God.
So meekness and humility and lowliness, you know
they're not virtues that are much chosen these
days, and they're not cultivated much.
The lowly man, the meek man, the humble
man, we don't cultivate these virtues, nor desire
that kind of Christianity.
But the Holy Spirit can't talk to the
man unless he's a lowly man, thinks lightly
of himself, unless he is a humble man,
thinks poorly of himself with respect to others,
and of course before God.
That is, he's poor in spirit.
The Holy Ghost addresses the poor in spirit,
and the sincere, and the reverent persons.
And he addresses the enlightened.
One of the saddest things I know is
the development in recent times, it started in
the United States, started on the West Coast,
the type of song that is religious, but
it is flippant.
It talks about God in a plaintive, sad
way, but it can smile while it's doing
it.
It's flippant.
There is a song, for instance, that was
born in the camp meeting a long time
ago, maybe a hundred years back or a
little less.
It's called When the Saints Come Marching Home.
It's a typical camp meeting song, sung often
by our colored friends and by the white
people of the United States.
It's not a high-class hymn, but it's
a song that deals with that time when
the Saints will march home and the people
of God will, while the sun is refusing
to shine.
It's one of those dramatic little numbers that
deal with the Second Coming of Christ.
But do you know that they've taken that
and have jazzed it up now until you
don't recognize anything religious in it?
And men who don't believe in God, men
whose lives are questionable, and in some instances
not questionable, but definitely evil, sing When the
Saints Come Marching In and dance to it.
Well, this is, to my mind, a very
serious thing.
It's an affront against God, because reverence, that
is, the fear of God and the sense
of respect in the presence of God, is
fundamental to any kind of real Christianity.
If I am not a reverent man and
have not a sense of solemn respect when
I think of God or when I'm in
the presence of God, God can't speak to
me at all.
And I only give that to one song,
When the Saints Come Marching In, as an
example.
There are hundreds of them, and there are
people who have dedicated themselves to singing this
kind of thing in nightclubs and before crowds.
And they applaud and go on drinking their
cocktails and smoking their cigarettes while they applaud
this thing.
It is using religion without any reverence, without
any sincerity, without any sense of solemnity.
It's an awful thing.
God says, I would thou wert hot or
cold.
God would rather have Khrushchev with his total
unbelief than he would have this kind of
smirking patronizing of the great God Almighty.
God doesn't need our patronage, and he doesn't
need us to smile and nod toward him.
He is the great God Almighty who sits
on the circle of the earth and sees
the inhabitants thereof as but grasshoppers.
And the day will be when he will
move forth, and his son will ride down
the skies on a white horse with a
sword at his side, and on his thigh
will be written the name Faithful and True.
And in that hour when he calls the
nations to judgment and puts some on the
right hand and some on the left, those
who have taken him so lightly and irreverently
will then cry out for the rocks and
the mountains that they might be saved from
the wrath of the Lamb.
Now, what are some of these weights?
Up to now, you know, this has been
general enough that I suppose everybody agrees.
Everybody agrees while the doctor gets the syringe
ready, while he's compounding its content and sterilizing
the needle and doing those mysterious little things
they do when they're about to stick you.
Everybody's satisfied that he's a wonderful scientist, but
when it comes to saying, Now, roll up
your sleeve, that's another matter.
And so as long as a preacher preaches
simply theoretically and stays out of people's hair
and doesn't press nor insist upon it being
personal, everybody likes him and says, That's going
to hear that man, he's a fine Bible
expositor.
But brothers and sisters, we must have more
than Bible exposition, we must have Bible application.
And therefore I want to apply this thing
that I've given to you here as a
theory that we must run the race free
from impediments.
Now, what are those impediments?
What are those encumbrances?
Well, amusements, for instance.
I date back to the time when the
holiness people and the full gospel people and
the alliance people believed that the amusements of
the world were not for Christians.
And so it was understood that when you
got converted and got filled with the Spirit,
you gave up the world's amusements.
Then there was a slow change, and in
the name of fundamental Christianity, one by one,
we met those worldly amusements at the door
and sprinkled them with the holy water.
And now nobody is against them anymore much,
and we now advertise them, and they're part
of our structure.
But they're the amusements of the world.
You know, amuse means to think, and amuse
means not to think.
That little A on there makes it negative.
A fellow said, Sometimes I sit on my
front porch and think, and other times I
just sit on my front porch.
And the man who sits on his front
porch and thinks is musing.
But the man who sits on his front
porch has to be amused.
That is, he has to see something or
hear something to keep him from collapsing.
So the devil has invented the amusements to
keep us from collapsing.
Now you say, What are these amusements?
Name them now.
I shan't name them for the reason that
there's no fixed rule about it.
Christians are not alike.
They're different from each other, and therefore what
would be to one an amusement that hinders
would not hinder another.
So the rule must be, If they encumber
me, they will cause me to lose.
And rather than lose, I will lay them
aside.
Some people can't drink coffee because it keeps
them awake, but I can drink a cup
of coffee and lie down as if I
were drugged.
I don't have that problem.
So what to them would be a hindrance
isn't to me a hindrance.
And so the hundred things, I don't put
coffee as an amusement.
It's quite an American and Canadian and British
now institution.
But I say that what is hindering you
might not hinder me, and what hinders me
might not hinder you.
So everybody has to find out for himself
what am I doing by way of amusements,
what am I indulging in that hinder me.
And then don't defend yourself and find an
argument, but lay it off.
If you find you can't make time, stop
and lay off that thing that's hindering you.
Each one knows his sacred heart, and a
hundred reasons can be given why a certain
thing can be done.
A hundred things can be given, a hundred
excuses and examples of great souls who indulged
in this.
But if you can't, then you can't.
And if it bothers you, then lay it
off.
And somebody says, you're getting narrow.
Pay no attention.
Pay no attention at all.
I notice that when they send up a
rocket into the far blue and start it
around the earth, you notice how smooth it
is.
It's long and pointed and graceful and made
of chrome steel outside of it so that
there isn't anything there to catch the air
and hold it back.
After it gets out of the atmosphere, it
could be octagonal and it wouldn't make any
difference.
But while it's getting out of the atmosphere,
it has to be streamlined so that nothing
will hold it back.
Try sometime sticking your hand out the window
while you're driving along, somebody else at the
wheel, and you'll find that you actually hold
the car back.
They told me in Pittsburgh when I was
there, of a certain car.
I won't name it because it's a good
car and I see a lot of them
around here.
But this particular model had a little set
of wings on the back.
It looked very graceful as it went along,
but the police of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they said,
that is, the police department, had bought a
fleet of these automobiles and had marked police
on the side and numbered them and turned
them over to the police.
And they went all right inside the city,
but out on the highway, when a man,
for instance, they were speeding to catch a
criminal who was getting away from them at
doing 100 miles an hour or over, and
they had to do almost that much or
fully that much to keep up with him,
keep him in sight, they found that when
they got up around the 90 miles an
hour rate, that these wings in the back
began to lift the rear end of the
car so they didn't get tracked and they'd
slow down.
Then they'd speed up again and lift and
then they'd slow down.
They got rid of the whole fleet and
bought something else.
They said, that's an encumbrance.
Now, it's a pretty thing, and I can
imagine artistically and oh, I can just hear
men orating on what a beautiful thing this
is, to see a car go by with
its pretty wings, but they couldn't use it
so they just got rid of them.
Now, that's exactly what I mean.
What one fellow can argue in favor of
and says it's good and it's good and
cultural, and if it bothers you, get rid
of it, brother.
Don't waste your time.
Because if it prevents you from winning the
race of life, you'd far, far better give
it up.
Then there are friendships.
That's another.
Those are others of the way.
It's friendships.
To young Christians, I suppose it's the great
universal encumbrance.
It's great because young people are easily influenced,
and it's universal because young people love to
flock together.
They're gregarious like sheep.
So unless we're ready to change friendships, let's
wait and not say, now I accept the
Lord, and then go back to your old
friendships.
There are some friendships that you can't keep
and be a Christian.
Now, there are two ways to get rid
of friends that you know are not going
your direction.
One is, talk to them so much about
the Lord that you bore them stiff and
they leave you.
That often happens.
A new convert makes himself unwanted by his
constant talk about his newfound Christ.
I think that's quite normal.
But if some have tough hides and don't
care how you talk, and they still insist
upon being with you and influencing you to
do things that you wouldn't want to do
and hear things you wouldn't want to hear
and go places you wouldn't go of your
own self, I say you'd better break that
friendship.
A thousand times better break it than let
it slow you down.
For an unspiritual friendship is like a great
loose garment being worn by a runner.
You know what they called togas in the
old days, great big old bathrobe affairs that
went around them and were tied around the
waist by a belt.
They didn't call it a belt, they called
it, what did they call it?
The thing they put around them.
All right.
But those things, as long as you walked
they were all right, you didn't notice them.
Try to get up some speed and they
begin to flap in the breeze, hold you
back, get rid of them.
So the Greek runner didn't wear his toga,
he didn't put on his top hat, he
didn't even wear his crown of leaves if
he was an athlete because he had won
two weeks before.
He put everything off except what decency required
and raced along against the breeze, a streamlined
human body.
That's what the Holy Ghost says God's people
have to do.
And if a friendship that clings on to
you and flaps in the breeze slows you
down and holds you back, get rid of
that friendship.
Then there are social habits.
That is, habits about which there are not
full agreement, but you know them in your
heart what they are that hinder you.
Those social habits.
A rebellious heart, of course, will resent interference.
He will say, Now what?
Who does that fellow think he is?
One of the finest things I've ever done
since I've been in this church was to
send a young woman out of here storming
mad.
She was blue mad at me.
She said, That ignorant fellow, that he would
dare to say, that to be a Christian
I have to believe that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God.
She said, The idea that I have to
believe in the deity of Christ to be
a Christian, and she stamped out her high
heels clicking on the sidewalk.
I'm happy about that one.
I enjoy that one.
Because that's exactly what I'm preaching, brothers and
sisters.
That's it.
And if I don't make that clear, then
I might as well stay somewhere else.
And if I say that there are social
habits that you can't have and still be
a Christian, or at least a successful Christian,
and you get angry, I won't be happy
about it, but at least I won't lose
any sleep.
But I hope there will be none such
here today.
I hope that you will understand that the
habits that you used to have without any
question, now that you're a Christian, you've got
to get rid of.
It's all about the young man who was
in prison, about to be sent away for
a life term.
The trial was over, and he had gotten
drunk, he had been gambling, had gotten drunk
and had committed some crime, and he was
sentenced to life imprisonment.
And one of the orderlies or guards came
in with a...
I think it was a pastor, if I
remember the story correctly.
A pastor came in, bringing a bunch of
flowers, bouquets.
He said, Who are those from?
He said, Those are from your mother, son.
Your mother sent you these flowers.
And he grabbed them out of the hand
of the pastor, flung them to the floor,
and tramped them down.
And said, You go tell my mother that
I learned to gamble in our living room,
playing bridge.
Go tell my mother that I learned to
drink while I was playing cards in her
home.
And from there I went to become the
convict I am now, to spend the rest
of my remaining days of life behind the
bars of a prison.
You tell her I don't want her flowers.
Of course, he was bitter, but he was
right.
We allow habits in our homes, and we
allow habits in our lives, which maybe we
can get away with.
But somebody else will pick them up and
learn them from us and excuse them because
we do them, and they'll go to hell
over them.
A Christian can't be too careful how he
lives.
Social habits and their reading habits.
The world will smile, I know.
I have in one of my books a
little quip about Jimmy Walker.
Jimmy Walker was the mayor of New York.
He was called the Playboy Mayor.
And he was, oh, you know, always going
around in tails and gates of jar collars
and silk hats and the rest of them,
and around where the society people were and
in nightclubs and all the rest.
And they called Jimmy in one time and
asked him.
He was one of the witnesses they had
about censoring books.
And he tossed off this little quip.
He said, I never heard of anybody that
was ruined by reading a book.
And of course, they grabbed that up and
it was printed all over the world.
It was supposed to be very, very brilliant.
But it was stupid.
Completely stupid.
Of course there have been people ruined by
reading books.
Of course!
If he never heard of it, maybe he
didn't have time in between cocktails to read
up on it.
But everybody knows what books do to people.
Everybody knows what a Communist book will do
to a young fellow in college if he
gets hold of it and takes it home
and reads it and reads it again and
marks it and pretty soon he has absorbed
it and his eyes begin to blaze and
he goes out to become a Communist.
And everybody knows how a humble, simple Christian
not too well informed in the scriptures will
get a hold of a book written by
Jehovah's Witnesses falsely so called and read it
and become all confused and then buy another
one and read it and then have somebody
in to talk.
And pretty soon he's out cursing the churches,
denying the Deity of Jesus and saying that
the kingdom is coming and 144,000 will
be saved and all of this nonsense.
He got it by reading a book.
But on the other hand they can tell
you stories by the hundreds of men who
picked up tracts or who picked up a
little book or who picked up the New
Testament and were converted.
So reading habits are important.
The worldly wise will laugh and the teachers
and the soft-voiced professors will recommend that
you get acquainted with all literature.
There was a time I'm not going to
tell you the poet's name because I know
that even to mention those things it sure
stirs people to go out and get a
copy.
But as I was growing up in my
early life I came to love a poet,
a certain poet.
In English translation a very famous poem was
on religion and philosophy and life and death
and all the serious things.
But it was not written by a Christian
nor by a man who knows God at
all.
It was written by a Sufi that is
a Mohammedan mystic.
And it is so brilliantly and beautifully written
and in its English translation so beautiful, so
musical, so smooth that I used to carry
it around and memorize it.
I can repeat yards of it yet.
Later on in my life as I began
to seek God in earnest I began to
see that this book was a hindrance to
me.
If it did nothing else it set a
wrong mood.
A mood of unbelief and pessimism instead of
a mood of faith and hope.
So I have it there on this shelf.
I have four or five copies of it
indeed.
And I don't look in it once in
three years' time.
I love it.
I like it.
It's brilliant, In its poetic and musical way
it reminds me of Mozart.
But I don't read it.
And I don't read it because I can't
stand the mood, he says.
It's a hindrance to me.
I said over the air once that I
didn't read Shakespeare anymore much.
And a college professor heard me and he
lamented the fact he's too bad, he said,
for Tozer.
As if I had cancer or something.
Well, I haven't missed the old Bart of
Avon.
I look at him occasionally, once in a
great while, but very rarely anymore because I
find not Christ in him.
He was the greatest poet that ever lived,
seen from the standpoint of literature.
He was a great poet.
But by the time you wallowed through suicides
and murders and adulteries and betrayals and wars
and assassinations and fights and all the rest,
even if it is classical, it isn't good
for you.
So I just lay it aside.
I wouldn't say that nobody ought ever to
read it.
If they give it to you in school,
read it, find out what it is.
But don't make it your companion.
I have a book here that's your companion,
but that's your book.
Well, in your personal habits, my use of
money, my eating habits, just my general habits,
and my dress, somebody says, Now you're interfering.
You're meddling in private affairs.
It's none of your business.
No, it isn't, sister, but it's an awful
lot of yours.
You may laugh at me and say I'm
old-fashioned, but your feet drag.
Anything that makes your feet drag and prevents
you from making time out there on the
track, you'd better get rid of.
By far and away, you'd better get rid
of it.
Unblessed plans would be another one, but I'm
not going to develop that idea.
So many of the Lord's children have plans
that God never gave them.
They're not blessed plans.
They're their own private plans.
And to carry them out, they sacrifice themselves.
I have met men who, one time in
their lives, were happy Christians, laboring with the
church on the board, maybe leading singing and
testifying, and people looked to them as good
examples of what a Christian ought to be,
and then their business got another business.
They had to miss the prayer meeting to
keep it up, and they had to keep
missing, and pretty soon there was no glow
on their countenance and no joy in their
voice and no willingness to testify.
And while they were still Christians, they were
losing the race because they were allowing their
unblessed plans to hold them back.
Better a hundred times have less and have
God than to have more and cloud the
face of God.
So the consequences of all these things would
be to block the work of God in
your own heart and in your own home
and in your own church.
And I say you can't afford to do
it.
Time is too short, judgment is too certain,
eternity is too long, God is too wonderful,
Christ is too beautiful, and heaven is too
glorious for us to allow anything in our
lives that hold us back from winning the
race of life.
So to read the text again, Therefore, seeing
we also are encompassed about with so great
a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside
every great weight and let us run with
patience the race that is set before us.
Father, we pray thy blessing upon these words
and upon the little commentary that we have
made on them, trying to apply them to
our practical living.
We pray that thou wilt give consent of
heart and willingness to obey and a cheerful
faith to do as we are told by
the Spirit in the scriptures.
And bless us during the day and for
the afternoon and for the evening, and may
this day be a big day, a great
day.
Not a dramatic day necessarily that the newspapers
will talk about, but a day deep in
the things of the Spirit.
We give thee praise.
Amen.