Maybe you think of the Christian life like this. The Christian life is a gentle path. One that winds through meadows and beautiful scenery. One where the weather around you isn't too hot and isn't too cold. It feels just right. And in the distance you can see storm clouds, but your path goes nowhere near them. On this path, there are no predators, no hazards, no places to miss your step, no steep drops on either side of the path. The birds chirp softly. In fact, all the sounds are pleasing. And the way in front of you is clearly lit. You're not sure how long the path is, but you're not worried. Your legs feel fine. And you know that you have enough energy to last the whole way. Sometimes you walk, sometimes you run, but you're never weary. Now, beloved, if that is your view of the Christian life, I invite you this morning to throw it in the dumpster. And I set before you instead John Bunyan's story of the character in Pilgrim's Progress. A character whose journey took him to the heavenly city, but down a path much different than the one I described. Paul says in the book of Acts, through many trials and suffering and tribulations, we enter the kingdom of God. And not long into Bunyan's character, Christian, his journey, He comes quickly to a swamp of despondency, and he encounters characters like Mr. Worldly Wise Man, and Mr. Legality, and a man named Hypocrisy, and his journey takes him to the hill of difficulty, and through the valley of humiliation, and he travels through the wilderness known as the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and he must resist the sinful allurements of Vanity Fair, and eventually a giant name despair, imprisons him in doubting castle. And that's not the end of his journey. For though he escapes that castle, he heads toward that heavenly city, but must face the dark river. Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress the way he did because the Christian life is fraught with difficulties. Life is hard. In the years when you get near the end may seem but few. because death is coming for us all. And the devil is a roaring lion seeking to devour. The opening description I gave you didn't mention his character, but the Bible does. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against heavenly powers and principalities. The spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh, and the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Jesus says, in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world. Paul promises that our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. But along the path of the Christian life, we encounter those who may prove to be a hindrance, a stumbling block, spiritual progress impeded, and maybe life derailed into folly and sin. The Galatian believers had encountered such obstacles False teachers had infiltrated their region and had corrupted the gospel of Christ. They had begun to insist that you have to work your way to be righteous before God. Christ might have done something, but you have to work. You got to do the law of Moses in order for God to accept you. Got to make sure your works count so that God looks at you and says they've done enough. They had enough striving and tried long enough. I'll accept them. Galatian believers are peddling. Or I should say the false teachers are peddling to the Galatian believers this false gospel. Paul's writing Galatians to warn about this false message because false gospels hurt people. Because false gospels don't save sinners. So if you don't get Christ and the cross clear, Right. According to the word of God, you might believe something and call yourself a believer, but it's not the Christ of the word of God or of reality. Or gospel that would save you. So Paul is warning his readers and is very exercised, including some of the way he ended our passage today in the scripture reading, there's a shock to his voice, a tone of urgency and alarm that is there. The message of the false teachers distorted what the gospel taught about Christ on the cross and how sinners are justified. If God is holy and sinners are going to be counted right before this God, how does that happen? Is it because of my work? Is it because he finally looks upon me and says, you've done enough, you tried enough. And when I'm looking at the end, the scales balance in favor of your work. So welcome in. Is that how it happens? Paul's message in Galatians devastates that idea. You can't read Galatians in an honest, even surface reading way and get the impression that Paul's okay with that line of thinking. He thinks nobody could ever do enough. But he says Christ has done enough. His message is Christ has done what it took. And Christ was necessary because we could not do what it took. And so the gospel of Christ is at stake. And Paul preaches to them through this letter and to us 2,000 years later, begging them not to turn from it. He says in verses seven to nine words that we could categorize as the disruption by these false teachers. And so with a few metaphors in verses seven to nine, we're gonna see the disruption that has provoked Paul. He opens with verse seven. with an affirmation of their past. He says, you were running well. And I think that tense is interesting because there's a present problem, a problem that did not always exist for them spiritually, they were running well. And then he unpacks with a question what I think it means to run well in this context. Other places use athletic metaphors and running well in that context might mean something differently. But here the question clarifies for us that obeying and following and holding to the truth, that's what it means to run well. So in verse 7 he says, who hindered you? from obeying the truth. So instead of saying, who hindered you from running well? He replaces running well with asking this question, who hindered you from obeying the truth? What it means to run well is to hold to the truth of the gospel. Everybody's circumstances are different. Paths in our lives go through all kinds of different sufferings and trials under the sun. Running well, no matter what the details of the life looks like and the nuance of the circumstances, is holding to the Christ of the Word of God. That's what running well is. Paul says you were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? He's in a day and age in the first century A.D. where athletic imagery was very common in Greek rhetoric and orders and speeches and writings. People loved to talk about exceeding and accomplishing virtue and intellectual progress in terms of running the race well. Well, Paul takes familiar athletic imagery and he says, I want you to know what it means to run well. The God of heaven and earth has revealed Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ. You want to run well? It doesn't matter what all the other things you might be curious about and intellectually committed to, you're not running well in the way that matters most if you don't know Christ and hold to Him. And here He says you were running well. Who hindered you? This race is an image that He uses in 1 Corinthians 9, for example. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run, that you may obtain it. Hebrews 12.1, the writer of Hebrews, uses an imagery that Paul employs. The writer of Hebrews says, let's run with endurance the race that is before us in Hebrews 12.1. So to think a moment about how the Galatians were running well, Paul had preached to them and they believed the gospel. He explained to them who Christ was, that God had promised in the Old Testament days to send a rescuer to desperate, needy sinners. And God sent Him in the fullness of time. Christ was born of a woman, and He was without sin His entire life. And Christ kept the Law. He was good enough and obeyed the Word of the Father. He did everything the Father gave Him to do. He said everything the Father gave Him to say. And when He died on the cross, it was for sins not His own. But instead, on the cross, our sins counted to Him in our place. This rescuer performed his rescuing work by becoming a substitute so that instead of sinners receiving the wrath that we deserved on the cross, God gave his son in our place, for he so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. That if you believe in the son, if you hold to this Christ, if you look to him with the empty hands of faith, saying, Jesus, I want you to save me. The Bible says he will not turn you away. He will receive you as his own. Though you do not deserve it, Christ has done the work in our place. And the gospel is about Christ and what he has done. And they were running well, which means they believed it. They've been holding to it. But that shocking question is following that phrase, isn't it? Who hindered you? This is a revealing point. We must soberly think through this here. We can be hindered. The Galatians were who hindered you. And friends, Paul loves them enough to ask them that question. He cares for what matters most, which is the state of their soul before God. And they might disagree on other things, but for Paul, nothing is more important than the state of a sinner before a holy God. And he says, you were running well, but now you've been hindered. Who has shown up in this race? and has now begun to cut in on you. The language is to literally cut in. You were running well, but somebody's like jumped ahead of you. And in Paul's ancient world, There were Greek races, athletic competitions, and there were understandable rules. And it makes sense in our day as well. You were not supposed to break or trip the stride of another runner. That was unsportsmanlike conduct. And spiritually speaking, Paul is accusing the infiltrators in Galatia of unsportsmanlike conduct spiritually. The race had been run well by the Galatians. They'd been believing in Christ, holding to the gospel, but then these other people have shown up. and they've begun to influence them away from Christ. Friends, think clearly with me today. We can be running well and people in our lives, maybe they're family members, maybe they're neighbors, maybe they're co-workers, maybe they're friends, maybe people we've known all our lives may hinder us spiritually and lead us away from following Christ. That is possible. This doesn't mean we don't love the unbeliever and look for their good and befriend them and all of that. I'm talking about who shapes our lives and determines our priorities and convictions. We can be hindered. Is anybody hindering you this day? Did you come on August the 20th, 2017, having run well, but being presently hindered? Are you following Christ with a zeal and a passion that is worthy with the gospel's message and of which Christ is worthy and should be honored with? Or are you being hindered in your life? There's a story in the 1930s about a man named Louis Zamperini. He was a famous runner. And in the 20th century, there were these championships in Minneapolis he was going to attend in 1938. And at these championships, everybody knew that Louis Zamperini was the guy to beat. And so coaches from rival schools did the unthinkable. They ordered their runners to sharpen the spikes on their shoes and to slash Louis as they were running. In her 2014 biography of Louis Zamperini, Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand says, of that 1938 race, Halfway through the race, just as Louis was about to move ahead for the lead, several runners began to shoulder around him, boxing him in. Louis tried repeatedly to break loose, but he couldn't get around the other men. And then suddenly, a man beside him swerved in and stomped on his foot, impaling his toe with a spike. And a moment later, a man ahead of him began kicking his foot backward, cutting up Louis' shins. And a third man elbowed Louis' chest so hard that it cracked his rib. That's the Christian life. That is a more accurate picture of following Christ in the race where there are snares and hindrances all the life long with the world, the flesh and the devil that says, worship and long for me. And we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, but our vision can be so obscured in looking to Jesus because people can hinder us. Paul says you were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? Sometimes our own progress can frustrate us. You can think about your Christian walk and think, I wish I were more patient, more loving. You can think about even when the Lord saved you and think, I just expect more of myself. And even this very day, I wish there were more progress in my knowing of Christ. Martin Luther has an interesting observation here in his commentary on Galatians. Luther says, what may seem to us a life slow in Christian development, may seem to God a life of rapid progression in grace. Maybe we don't evaluate our souls as accurately as we think we do before God. In our race, sometimes it may not feel like we're even running as Christians. It may feel like we are struggling, jogging, walking, stumbling forward, crawling. trying to obey the Lord, seeking the kingdom of God, fraught with difficulties around us. And it may not feel like we are making much progress in grace and we feel like we are crawling. And I wonder if the Lord says, look at him run, look at him run. Maybe our perspective on things should be affected by and shaped by a greater truth of the gospel's grace and the gospel's certain accomplishment in our life, that what God began in us, He will complete. He doesn't fail. This is good, gracious news for us. So Paul says in verse 8, this persuasion, this thinking that you've now adopted, which you've been convinced of, this persuasion is not from him who calls you. He's talking here about the false teacher's message that came with arguments, maybe even Bible characters or verses. Sometimes people use the Bible to conclude absurd things. And so maybe even these infiltrators were relying on some Old Testament passages about circumcision and the law of Moses, trying to make a case for something that ended up minimizing the cross and distorting the gospel. Paul says this particular persuasion, there is an origin to it. It's not from God. The Him who calls you, there is God. God calls sinners, summons them from death to life and darkness to light. He is sovereign over them. His love and grace accomplishes His will in their lives and He awakens them to know this Christ and to want from their hearts to know and honor and worship and glorify this Christ. And so he says, this thing right now that's in Galatia, this persuasion, this teaching, that's not from God. Not everything passed in the name of God is from God. It should be categorically rejected because if it's not from God, what other origin might it be from? I think by implication here, Paul is casting a suspicious eye over the whole agenda of those false teachers. And it seems like it might not have been a big deal even initially. But things that start small can have a tremendous effect. Sometimes we don't know what hinders us until time starts to pass. And a leaven that's introduced into a loaf of bread becomes so much more. Look in verse 9. This proverbial saying here is one Paul uses in 1 Corinthians and other places because leaven was what you needed to insert into the dough in order to make the bread rise. And all you needed was a little bit of leaven. All you needed was a little bit of leaven and it would work its way through. You just need to give it some time. And he says here in verse nine, I think talking about the same idea that people can hinder us, that false gospels can hurt us, he says, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. We can underestimate the things in our lives that tie us up and weigh us down and trip us in the race. It might look like, well, that's just a little leaven, but Paul wants you to see from his authoritative, spirit-inspired word here, that we underestimate the effects of things a lot in our lives. The little leaven leavens the whole lump. It's a symbol here of evil corrupting influences and teachings and relationships. There can be a great influence in the end that started in what seemed very insignificant. And so again, I ask you this question to apply this text out loud this morning with me talking, obviously, with your thinking of this question though, I mentioned it earlier, what influences are hindering you? Are you running well? Are you holding to Christ and the gospel? Are there relationships, friends, people that you are dating, neighbors? Are there habits and encumbrances that you can think about now thinking, I was running really well until Yeah, I can pinpoint it. I know I'm not running well. Well, then we're at a fork in the road. What will we do? Don't you want to run well? Don't you want to run the race? Don't you want to pursue the prize? Are we convinced that the little leaven that can be symbolizing all sorts of influences and corrupting behavior and mindsets and worldviews, don't we see that that destroys our love for God and affects our love for others and diminishes our joy that we should have in God, leaving us less satisfied in God and more morally broken and bankrupt over the promises of sin unkempt? Paul is convinced that if they listen to these words, here's what's going to happen. They're going to believe him. Because the people of God need the warnings in scripture. Because the warnings in scripture are like guardrails that help get us to the end. The warnings of God are necessary, not because in the end somebody's gonna be unsaved after being saved. This isn't a reversal of spiritual status. The Christian faith teaches that when we're in Christ, this is a supernatural work of God. We are a new creation. That's not a thing that you did to you, and that's not a thing you undo to you, okay? God's acted upon you, and you are a new creation, and the warnings of scripture are a means of God keeping us. God works through means. And one of the means that the Lord uses are such warnings. In verses 10 to 12, we see Paul's confidence and warning. He says in verse 10, I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine. Paul's convinced that if they will hear him out, if they will read this letter, they will be able to say, there are counterfeits among us. There is a false message among us. It needs to be rooted out. It needs to be exposed. It needs to be rejected for the sake of Christ and the souls of sinners. We need to act. We're just going to sit by and let this happen. So in verse 10, Paul is not worried that these people who might be truly saved will in some way be unsafe. He thinks that if they know the Lord, Paul's confident in the Lord, they're going to hear him. They're going to hear this letter. They're going to receive his warnings, his instruction, his exhortation, and they're going to respond rightly. That's what he means by saying, I have confidence in the Lord. that you will take no other view than mine. Why? Because the power of the gospel is superior to false gospels. The true gospel that they have believed and the Christ to whom they hold will not lose them. He cannot lose you and you will not be snatched from him because we are supernaturally united with Christ by faith in him alone. Faith. Through faith alone, in Christ alone. That is what we must respond with to the Gospel message. Believe in Christ with the empty hands of faith that He has done the work and that I want to follow Him. Yes, He has hard things. People in John 6 recognized that. Many of them turned away. They didn't want anything to do with somebody who demanded hard things from them. or who spoke sayings that made them uncomfortable. They left. They wanted somebody that tickled their ears. That's not the agenda Jesus operated by in the Gospels. And so he says to a smaller group of disciples, he says, what about you? Do you want to leave too? And they said, well, where else are we going to go? You alone have the words of eternal life. I mean, the question isn't whether Jesus's words make everybody comfortable. The question is whether Jesus is true. And Jesus says, are you going to go too? And they say, you've got the words of life. Where else are we going to go? Maybe to someone who can tickle our ears, but they don't got life to give. If you're the bread from heaven and you've got living water, then we'd rather have you and life than the delusion of sin and folly and rebellion and idolatry. What a tragedy that is. Oh, God, help us to be delivered from that by his grace, that our eyes would see the glory of Christ and the cross and say, none but that, none but him. He is the savior and redeemer of sinners. Paul's warning in verse 10 is this. The one who's troubling you, meaning one of the peddling false teachers who are leading people away from Christ, one of these corrupting influences, what will be their end? Paul's very honest. He says the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty. Whoever he is. But he meant well, whoever he is. Because he's denying Christ and he's leading other people to fall away from Christ. So whoever this is, and however many they are, they will face judgment from God. That's how Paul opens his letter in Galatians 1, 6. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. He says in verse 8, if we or an angel from heaven preached to you a gospel contrary to what we preached, let him be accursed. In verse nine, I say it again, if anyone's preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you receive, let him be accursed. Paul is not a man pleaser. He's interested ultimately in the glory of God and the message of the gospel for the sake of sinners. And the church has this stewardship, a precious stewardship, to preserve, guard, and make clear the gospel. We're not trying to be vague. We're not trying to say, Jesus is whoever you want him to be. No. If what the Bible says about Jesus is not true, then we should all go home. But if what the Bible says about Jesus is true, then it's not about a Jesus that we're comfortable with or made in our own image. It's about recognizing that on the cross, He took our sins. On the third day, He rises from the dead, and the Lord has installed Him as Lord of lords and King of kings. And he's not asking to sort of be like on the periphery of your life and to sort of put his arm around you and being like, hey, I want to, you've got lots of interesting things going on. And if ever you want to give me some attention, you know, whenever you feel like it, whenever it's convenient, I don't want to be a bother. Christ said, if any man wants to come after me, because he's not following you, if any man wants to come after me, he's got to deny himself, take up his cross and come after me. It's paradigm shifting. This Christ says, all in, follow me, look to me, bread of life, living water, light of the world. There's none like him, friends. Your idols, all the things you worship, the things that sinners prize above God, your idols will not save you from your sins. Your idols will not die for you. But the living God who's made you for his glory did not leave us to perish, but sent his son. What an expression of loving kindness. What could be greater than the work of God and sending Christ on behalf of sinners? Paul's confident. Those who hold to the Gospel will heed the warnings of Scripture. So the reason we need these warnings and to hear the alarm that Paul feels is because it should make us want to tighten our grip and dig in our heels. Paul says in Galatians 5.1, For freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore. We don't want slippery feet when it comes to who Christ is in the Gospel. We want to be able to stand firm. That's what he's saying here. He seems to be confronting a rumor and he needs to set the record straight. What if the people are saying, hey, this gospel plus law, this Christ plus all of these works to be acceptable for God? You know, Paul's a Jew. He understands the importance of circumcision. I mean, he understands the importance of it. And you know, maybe he preaches it. Maybe they're even saying, you know, this is important to Paul and it would be important to you. Now Paul, as a Jew, would have a history where he would certainly have emphasized it. And when he says, brothers, if I still preach circumcision, he's probably referring to that time before knowing Christ, where he would say in Philippians 3, 4, and 6, I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of Hebrews. And as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal of persecutor, as to righteousness under the law, I looked blameless. But then Paul says, but I consider that all a loss for the sake of knowing Christ. So therefore, this idea of him maybe preaching a gospel that's in line with these false teachers, Paul says, if I still preach that, here's a good question for you. In verse 11, why am I being persecuted? He's not persecuted because he's saying the same things they are. He's persecuted because he's saying Christ is the Savior and Redeemer and has done all these things the Old Testament was pointing forward to, and it's grace alone and Christ alone, faith alone. That's the gospel for sinners. And he said that that's why I'm being persecuted. They hate that message. Why? Because he says that there is an offense of the cross. The gospel carries with it an offense, not because there's something wrong with the cross. The gospel carries an offense because there's something wrong with us. There's nothing wrong with the cross, but there's an offense in the cross that provokes people. What is it that does this? He says, in that case, if I were still preaching circumcision, the offense of the cross would be removed. For Paul, the circumcision is like shorthand wording to refer to the entirety of the law. Circumcision was often the last thing that adult converts to Judaism did. They would follow other aspects of the law, and then Gentiles would go the rest of the way in fulfilling the law requirements at least outwardly. And here, Paul seems to be tying this idea of circumcision to the law as the one path, and then speaking about the offense of the cross, he doesn't think they coexist peacefully. You cannot at the same time say, Christ was right when he said, it is finished, and then to say, but it's about my work's righteousness before God, so that God looks at what I can do, and then I'm acceptable. Friends, it's one or the other, it can't be both. Either Christ did it all, or you've gotta complete it. And so Paul says here, there's an offense of the cross that would be removed if I still preach circumcision. That's not why I'm being persecuted. I'm being persecuted because I'm preaching the gospel and it outrages people. He was a former persecutor. He knows what it's like to hate the Christian faith. He sought after people to jail them. And on one of his recruiting trips, the Lord saved him in Acts 9. So Paul says that this other message is a way of avoiding the scandal of the cross. the offense of it. And as one writer said, the cross cuts the ground from under every thought of personal achievement or merit where salvation is in view. There's an offense to the cross because it says to you and I, we are guilty before a holy God. And it took his son who was without sin to take ours. We were helpless. We were needy. and we could not save ourselves. And that sort of God-exalting and self-debasing message offends people. It's very natural to the human condition to want to think well of oneself and what oneself can do. But the gospel is not self-exalting. The gospel is cross-exalting and Christ-upholding, and it levels all sinners before it. The offense of the cross here seems to have in mind the need for human beings to give up all means of trying to secure their own status before God. It's an indictment of all the religions of the world. Because the religions of the world say, here's the path to follow, here are the steps to take, here's the formula, here's what you need to memorize, here are the trips you need to take, here are your pilgrimages, here's this and here's that. These things you must do. It's a common denominator among all these faiths. Well, here's what Paul says in Galatians 2. He says, if righteousness were through the law or through any means of obedience, then Christ died for no purpose. So there's this sense in which the cross, the very fact that historically God sent his son to a cross, it's an indictment against all other ways to God. The cross is a way of saying you couldn't get to God through any other way. It had to be this way. It took this. There is no other way. Jesus said in John 14, six, I am the way, the truth and the life. And no one comes to the father except through me. These other paths lead you away from Christ. These other worldviews and other religions lead you into idolatry. And they encumber you, their hindrances in the race. Only the gospel of Christ and holding to this gospel shows oneself to be a disciple of Christ who's been saved by him and heading to a life prepared for the saints of God. Then there's this last verse, verse 12. He says, I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Wow. And he's playing on the idea, of course, that circumcision is very important to them. And it seems that they're making so much of circumcision that Paul says, well, then why just stop with a cut? If it's so important to you, and if works, righteousness, and keeping the law is such a big deal, well, then. And this also has in mind, perhaps, something that would trigger both a cultural context in their day and an Old Testament scripture. Consider this, that number one, there is a cult of Sybil in their pagan culture, a goddess in Asia Minor that people would have been familiar with because of the territory. And every year, male worshipers would castrate themselves and make themselves eunuchs for the sake of their devotion, that there's something I need to do to appease the gods, or at least Sybil. And this kind of reality may say to them that what these false teachers are wanting you to do to earn your way before God, it's just like paganism. Call it the cult of Sybil, call it trying to enslave yourself under the law of Moses, whatever way, this sort of cutting and law-keeping for the sake of being acceptable before God, nonsense. They might as well go all the way. There's also an Old Testament illusion. In Deuteronomy 23.1, someone with this outcome, if they follow the instructions here in verse 12, it says here in Deuteronomy 23.1, they would be cut off from the assembly of the Lord. There was a sense in which this condition would put you outside the community of the people of God in Israel. This may be Paul's way of saying, playing on not just a cultural idea, but the Old Testament allusion to Deuteronomy 23.1, Let's let them show themselves outside the people of God like they already are with their teaching. Let it be known. Let it be clear. Let them know that with their desire to do all the cutting, they're actually cut off from the people of God. Strong tone and language. I don't imagine Paul would whisper verse 12. People can read it and think, wow, I mean, he's not mincing any words. And this would have been jarring. Think for a moment that this is a Jew, a Jewish background, saying this about the practice of circumcision that had such importance in the Old Testament. Wow. What kind of supremacy of Christ must Paul be convinced of to say this? He had just said earlier in Galatians 5, 6, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. That's amazing. In other words, your status before God, it's not about what you do. And it's not about what you avoid. It's about what Christ has done and looking to Him by faith to be a new creation in Christ. You can't work your way. You can't say, well, these people do these, but I'm not doing these things. So therefore I'll probably be OK. You're not OK before the cross. The cross is an indictment against all of our works and all other paths to God. The cross says it's Christ alone or we perish in our sins. The truthfulness of the gospel is eternally important. This last Sunday night when we were starting our series in 2 John, we looked at verse 2 together as part of our passage and it says, that the truth of the gospel abides in us and will be with us forever. And what we were thinking about with that verse, there's nothing more relevant than what lasts forever. A lot of things that last for a while. What could be more relevant than what's eternal? Which means there's nothing more relevant to the sinner than the gospel message of Jesus Christ. It's eternally relevant. It never expires in usefulness or application. In the 1900s, A man named Francis Schaeffer was a very well-known apologist and defender of Christian truth and doctrine, and his wife's name was Edith. And somebody asked his wife one day, Edith, why should someone believe in the Christian faith? And she said, because it is true. Because it is true. We want to follow what is true and believe what is true. Not just looking for things that are comfortable or interesting or confirm the ideas or assumptions about life that I already have. The issue, what it comes down to is, if that grave was empty because on the third day, a man who was crucified rose from the dead, vindicating his claims as the God-sent Son of God and Rescuer, then we better pay attention to who he is and what he has claimed. Because all of a sudden there's nothing more important than what he has to say about life and eternal life nonetheless. Nothing is more relevant than the gospel. Nothing is more important than what lasts forever. So friends, in closing this morning, these questions are just on my mind. How are you running? Would Paul say to you, you were running well. But this morning, what's hindered you? What has affected your footing? Are you standing firm in the gospel? And I'm not saying that from your perspective, subjectively, things might not be hard. You might feel like the image of running would be better replaced with like crawling and clawing your way forward. Let Luther's words be a comfort to you, that God will complete what he has begun in us. And what if the Lord lives looking down and says instead, look at him run, look at her run. And for us, it may seem hard and light and momentary and troubles that are all consuming. But are you holding fast to the truth of the gospel? That's what it looks like to run well. Who Jesus is and what he has done, and believing that with arms wide open, saying, I want Christ because of who he is. In 2 Timothy 4, 7, and 8, I would love if all of us came to the end of our life and could say these words with Paul. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. And henceforth it was laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will give me on that day. And not only to me, but to all who love his appearance.