Run With Endurance

[00:00:01] Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our father and from our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:09] Are there any students in our school here this morning? Can you raise your hand? [00:00:15] All right. [00:00:17] Yeah, a bunch of them. [00:00:20] Okay. Are there any teachers here? Would you raise your hand? [00:00:25] Yeah. [00:00:27] Daniel, you're a teacher. [00:00:31] He's like, school year's about to start. Things are gonna. [00:00:40] Well, things are heating up. They're speeding up, and all of a sudden, it's gonna be here. You're gonna be going to school with your backpack and sitting in your desk. It's go time. [00:00:54] We're sitting at your big teacher desk. It's go time. [00:01:01] Finish, then. Thy new creation, pure and spotless, let us be. [00:01:09] Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee, changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise. [00:01:24] This is what the school year is about. [00:01:27] This is what our lives are about. [00:01:31] We are being changed from glory to glory as Jesus works in us by his spirit, until in heaven, we take our place. [00:01:42] That's where we're headed. That's our destination. But there's a journey to be undergone between now and then, and that's what this is about. When you get in your desk at school, think this is. This is the journey. This is the christian faith. We're going to be growing in Jesus. That's always the goal. When you go home today and sit down, think that, right? That's what this is about. [00:02:08] Till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise. The beautiful thing is that following Jesus at the end, like the destination, we're going to have crowns, not because we deserve it, but just because God is that generous, just because God sent his son Jesus to work in us, to forgive us, to glorify us for his sake. [00:02:40] That's the road that Elijah's on in our reading. [00:02:46] You see Elijah? Afraid so, Elijah. [00:02:49] Students, you remember the story where Elijah has a contest with the prophets of Baal? [00:02:57] Remember that story? [00:03:00] Elijah and the prophets of Baal are competing. They're saying, all right, whose God is going to send down fire on the sacrifice? The prophets of Baal, they're trying. Trying nothing, Elijah. And then Elijah does it, and boom, fire comes down from heaven, right? It's a big deal. [00:03:22] Elijah was doing that by faith. That was his job. He was God's prophet to show people the true goddess, and he did by faith. [00:03:32] He was living by faith and doing God's will. For the sake of others. See, he was running his race. You have a race to run students and teachers, right? Just like Elijah. You're probably not praying for fire from heaven to consume a sacrifice, right? But what are you doing? [00:03:55] You're serving your friends and your family and those around you. You're living by faith and resisting temptation and all of that, right? How? [00:04:09] Living by faith. Looking to Jesus. [00:04:14] So here's the theme verse for the year. Students, you probably haven't heard what the theme is yet for the school year. You get a jump on it. Teachers, most of you have probably heard it. [00:04:28] Here we go. [00:04:29] Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, people who have gone before us, people around us who are living by faith like Elijah or like your parents or your teachers. [00:04:43] Since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. [00:05:19] Now, there are many things in life for students and teachers and everybody here. [00:05:25] Many things in life that could make us lose heart. Lots of different kinds of difficulties and suffering that we undergo as human beings. I was just visiting some of our wonderful members who are at home kind of permanently or for a time because of health difficulties. And boy, you know, we all go through difficult things and they come. And that's the time when we live by faith, trusting in God and his promises, looking to that destination that we're on a journey and the destination is heaven as we live by faith, consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. [00:06:19] Teachers, think about the opposition that you will face from sinful human beings this year. [00:06:26] Just kidding, little human. [00:06:30] Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you also may not grow weary as teachers. This year. You're going to experience struggles, difficulties, challenges, right? Maybe the grind of teaching and maintaining discipline in a classroom or whatever it is, but not just in the classroom, right? You've got struggles at home, right? In your personal life just like we all do. And so the goal this year is to run the race with endurance. Looking to Jesus, that's where you find strength no matter what happens, students, you can look to your teachers. Your teachers love you, and they are there to train you. So you can watch them, watch their example as they follow Christ. Follow them as they follow Christ. [00:07:30] Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. [00:07:36] This is our goal this year as a school and as a church and as church and school together is to fix our eyes on Jesus no matter what comes. [00:07:47] Now, Elijah, in our Old Testament reading, he's facing boy danger. [00:07:56] Jezebel is the queen, and she has threatened to kill Elijah there. She says. She actually says, may the gods do to me, like, kill me. You know, what's happened to the priests of Baal? If I don't make you like them, if I don't kill you by tomorrow. Okay, that's pretty intense. [00:08:14] Elijah is faced with Jezebel wanting to destroy him, and he runs away. And he's actually. I mean, he's really brought low by this. He asks God that maybe he would die because he's just like his father's and he doesn't have the strength for this. And what does God do? He gives him bread. He gives him a cake, right, baked on stones. And then that twice. That sustains him on his 40 day journey to Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb. Mount Sinai, where he ascends the mountain. And then remember, he hears God in the still, small voice. Remember that 40 day journeys are always about. They're always a little picture of all of life, like Jesus fasting and praying in the wilderness, like Lent, 40 days in the wilderness with God. We had this last spring school. [00:09:10] It's not really 40 days, but, you know, this life. We are all on this journey together. And this year we have the opportunity in our school to look to Jesus together and to receive from him, to be transformed from glory to glory, to be headed on that race toward our heavenly destination. And not just in our school, but all of us together. Not just all of us here, right? But those who are in their homes, who can't be with us in person right now. We all together looking to Jesus. And that takes. That takes every one of us. [00:09:50] There are going to be difficulties and challenges of all kinds. Temptations to despair or to be divided to attack one another, whatever it is, right? The devil comes in and he tries to create division and move us apart. [00:10:07] We have Jesus to look to, and he. He brings us together. He holds us together in unified manner, all of us together looking to Jesus in order to transform us and take us to our destination. [00:10:22] Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men that you also may not grow weary. [00:10:33] Receive from Jesus the bread of life to strengthen you for the journey. [00:10:42] I'm excited. I'm so excited for this school year, for you students and all the other students and their families and teachers together. [00:10:51] Like, when we're in that school building together, we're a family. [00:10:55] And, like, we're not running this race alone. I mean, we never were, right? We're running the race with Jesus, but together, you and I, all of us, together, church and school together, we're running this race together. We're training together, you know, for the Olympics. [00:11:15] Most Olympians probably train together. I don't know. Do you train together for ping pong? Like, probably, right? [00:11:23] Most olympians are training together because we're stronger together. Like, we're a team and we're a family. We're a family in Christ. And so that means when difficulties come up, when struggles between each other come up or whatever it is, we're not isolated. [00:11:42] And so we point each other to Jesus. Look, Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith, like the one who gave you faith in him, to be running the race of faith, like all those people before us. And who is the perfecter of our faith, the one who brings it to completion, who's there all along on the race as we run together, looking to him, who's there completing it, holding us in faith. [00:12:11] That's the difference. [00:12:12] Now, there's no guarantee this is going to happen, right? Can we look away from Jesus and this all falls apart? Like, yeah, you know, that's not going to happen. [00:12:21] We all are going to be determined together. We're going to be a team. We're going to hold together church and school, and God's going to bless us through that because he always does, because he gives strength for the journey, strength for your life and your life in faith, no matter what happens. [00:12:39] If you want encouragement in that, just go visit some of our members at home. I'll just tell you, if you want encouragement to endure in faith through suffering, go and ask them questions and let them speak about their faith to you or those here, too. It's not just those who are at home. I'm looking out at faces of people who have been redeemed by Jesus and who look to Jesus and run that race in faith. [00:13:09] It is such a blessing to do it together. [00:13:12] And what's more, in our school, we even get to, like, we gather children from our community and their families and we say, hey, come on, run along with us. Like, run this race with us. Yeah. You know who we're looking to? We're looking to Jesus. Let me tell you why. Like, we get to do that every Wednesday in chapel and in our, in our religion classes. [00:13:33] It is such a joy to get to bring other families along with us. [00:13:40] The other day, Gary Clipp was saying, we gotta be doing this in our community, too. You know, like, coach a sport, right? And bring families along in this race. Like, it's in our school that we're doing this and it's in our life, each one of you and all of us together, a few of you together, whatever it is. But we are running this race in faith and pointing to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, the one who gives us strength, the one who's come down from heaven for the life of the world. And we get to say, hey, come on along with us, like, run the race to eternal life in Jesus. [00:14:20] In a few moments, we're going to install the teachers, and then in between services, we're going to just celebrate our teachers and our school here at the, at the beginning as we embark on this special, particular kind of mini version of the race of life this year in school. So I encourage you to get to know our teachers, have a conversation with them, and I'm sure there's limited time, sort of this morning, but get to know them so that all of us are running this race together. Encourage them. And then maybe throughout the year, there's a way that you can encourage them or get involved in this ministry that we're all doing together. [00:15:05] And I pray that God would bless us this year, that he would keep us, keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, that he would build us up together as his body even more closely all the time. [00:15:17] In Jesus name, amen.