“Laying Aside Every Weight” One Part Only

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 904 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Ron Peters: Praise God! I still feel like shouting. God is good. He’s worthy of praise. I just have two scriptures. I’m gonna read ‘em. Then I’ll be out of the way. It won’t be long at all. While the song service was going on I just had a real desire in my heart to help God’s people because we’re cut out of the same cloth and we all go through the same things. We experience the same things. I believe God wants to deliver us from carrying some of the weights that we carry because of religion and because of things that we’ve just inherently grown up under. God wants us to be free. He wants us to realize that we are free just like the songs the youth chorus sang.

( congregational amens ).

 It’s a done deal. It’s done. It’s complete and the only thing that keeps us from entering there is just faith, just believing God, just simply believing what He’s promised and what He’s said. I got two scriptures. I don’t really know which one to read first. I’m gonna read this one over in Hebrews chapter 12 first, and I’ll just make a couple of comments while I read it.

In verse one it says, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed 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.” (KJV). Now I always read this and I thought about the sin there that it says, let us lay this sin aside as just don’t do it anymore. Now I believe that God’s gonna deliver us from a lot of things that have held us in captivity and in bondage all our lives. He’s in the process of doing that.

I believe He’s gonna do that but see it’s gonna be Him that does it. It’s not gonna be us in ourselves that does it. I’ve come to that conclusion. I can’t do anything. I’m dependent on Him to help me make it through. But what’s He talking about? I believe this is what He’s talking about, the “sin which doth so easily beset us,” when we do something that we know displeases the Lord.

Over in Ephesians it says, if we sin we grieve the Holy Ghost that dwells within us. But I’m gonna tell you, there’s an enemy too. There’s a devil. As much as I believe in God, I believe there’s a devil and he’s living and he’s active too. And he wants to condemn God’s people. And the “sin that doth so easily beset us,” is the fact that we lose sight of what the Lord has done when we do something that we know God’s not pleased with and we let the enemy come with his lies and condemn us and bring us down.

Because I’m gonna tell you something. When you’re condemned you’ve been beset. God doesn’t want us to be beset. He wants us to thank Him for the blood of Jesus Christ. He wants us by faith to take hold of what He did through the sacrifice of Calvary. It’s sufficient. It was enough.

( congregational amens ).

And not let things that happen to us bring us down. The other scripture I wanted to read is over in Romans chapter seven because Paul went through this. And I was thinking about this when I was thinking about Paul. I mean here’s Paul. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I mean this was a good guy naturally speaking. He was a good guy. And yet you read this chapter here and you go, how could he feel this way? Well I’m gonna tell you, there’s none good.

( congregational amens ).

And this became revelation to Paul. There’s none good. Nobody in this building, nobody on the face of this earth is good. There’s no goodness to us. The only goodness that there is is Jesus Christ and the Father. But he says, “Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law....”

I’m gonna skip on down. I don’t want to read all this. Let’s skip down to verse 12. “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” The law is good. The law is good because it shows us our need. It shows us that we can’t measure up. The law is a schoolmaster. It’s a tutor. The law was given to help us understand that we’re not gonna make it. We’re not gonna make it without a Savior. We’re not gonna make it without something outside of our self.

But it says, “Was them that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.” What he’s saying here is that this sin, because the law magnified the sin, it made it even exceeding great. You see, even Paul, the good guy Paul, there were things in his life that the law magnified and said you’re guilty. And he was able to see that he needed a Savior. He needed something that he didn’t have.

He says, “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.” All of us can say that. We’re carnal. We’re sold unto sin. It wasn’t our doing. It was Adam and Eve. But it doesn’t matter. It passed on to all men. And I’m guilty. I stand up here guilty before God except for the blood of Jesus Christ. And it says, “For that which I do I allow not:” In other words, I do things but I don’t want to do them. I don’t want to do these things. “I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.”

And a lot of us can say that. We do things that we hate we do ‘em. We want to please God. We want to honor Him with our lives and yet we’re carnal. We’re sold unto sin. You see, we’ve got this nature to deal with here that has to be dealt with. Let me put it that way. I want to rephrase that. We have this nature that has to be dealt with.

It says, “If then I do that which I would not, I consent to the law that it was good.” In other words, when I feel guilty because I do something that I know the law says I shouldn’t then I’m consenting the law is good and I’m the one that’s bad. You see what I’m saying? It says, “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.”

You see, because of the law, because of this that was given Paul is now able to see that. In my flesh there dwells no good thing. There’s nothing good in any of us. It says, “...dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” You see the frustration that’s building here in Paul, the battle he’s going through, the struggle? It’s the same one we’re going through. There’s no difference. We’re going through it too.

“For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:” Because of Christ inside we love the law. We want to honor God. We want to honor Him with our lives.

“But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Who’s gonna deliver us? “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with flesh the law of sin.”

And he goes right down into chapter eight and says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,” Now I think in the original it’s period. There is no condemnation. Once Christ and the blood has been applied to you, that is gone. That is gone forever, not just for today, not just ‘til the next time you sin and come short but it’s gone forever.

( congregational amens ).

God wants us to come to this place. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

( congregational amens ).

And not be easily beset because if you read the next verse over here in chapter 12 it says, “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...” how? “Looking unto Jesus.”

( congregational amens ).

“Looking unto Jesus.” It’s Jesus that’s gonna complete the work. It’s Jesus that’s promised to complete the work that He’s started unto the day of His coming and His appearing. I gonna tell you, God wants us not to be beset by the sin that easily besets you. Like I said, I believe God’s gonna deliver us but it’s gonna be Him. And He’s gonna do it in His time and what do we live by? We live by the hope that He’s gonna do it. We live by the faith of Jesus Christ that He gave us and Paul said, “I frustrate not the grace of God.” You know how you frustrate it? It’s when you don’t agree with it.

When grace is given it’s taken care of. We frustrate it because we think we still gotta do something. We still gotta overcome. We’ve messed up instead of just accepting the peace and the grace and the love of God to us through Jesus Christ through the blood that was shed. It is done beloved.

( congregational amens ).

It is done and it’s finished. God wants us to be free this morning. He wants us to be free to rejoice. Now I’m not saying that like I said we grieve the Holy Ghost and there’s something that goes on when you do that. But I’m gonna tell you, we don’t have to live there. We don’t have to dwell there. We can point the devil to the Cross when he comes to condemn us and to bring us down. God wants us to be free. He wants us to be a happy, rejoicing people in Him. He’s worthy of praise.

( congregational praise ).

He’s worthy of our praise this morning.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: We’re called as Paul said in Timothy to, “fight the good fight of faith.” That’s a pretty good description of the Christian life. It has everything to do with faith and unbelief. I’ll refer to the scripture I’ve used a number of times in the past in Galatians where Paul says, you who’ve received the spirit, how did you receive the spirit? Was it by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? And of course we know the answer. It has nothing to do with what we do. It has everything to do with believing something that God has promised and as a result of believing that we receive the fruit of that promise.

And that is the heart of everything and even as it is the way we enter into the Christian life, it has to do with every aspect of our living for God thereafter. It’s all about believing the provision of God. Now, do we believe, at least intellectually that God has made every provision? Is there something about salvation that He has left up to us and our ability, and if we fail everything falls apart? No. He’s made provision for everything.

( congregational amens ).

Now, our problems come when we do experience failure and I’m as familiar with it as anybody in here. And it’s something we all have to deal with. I believe this is very timely. I appreciate it so much because God does want us to run with freedom. But the problem is... I was thinking about this. Satan attacks our faith. That’s what I was getting to. This is the target of Satan. God says something and if we believe it, he has really got no chance.

( congregational amens ).

If we don’t believe it, then there’s an edge that he can get in. Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. How did Satan attack Eve? “Yea, hath God said?” How does he attack you when you fail? “Yea, hath God said? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Did God really say that?

What does condemnation mean? Think about what condemnation means. It doesn’t mean you dirty so-and-so. Condemnation has to do with God rejecting somebody and ultimately casting them into Hell. It’s actually a legal thing. You’re brought before the bar of God’s justice and God says you’re guilty. This is what condemnation is. How can Satan say of someone who has put their trust in what Jesus did, you’re condemned because of what you did? It’s a complete denial of what Jesus did.

( congregational amens ).

Think about it. And so anything that causes us as Ron and others have said to withdraw ourselves and sort of hold back is basically going along for that period of time with what Satan has said, yeah, hath God really said? Yeah, I know up to this point He’s forgiven you but now you’ve done it again. “Yeah, hath God said?” And that’s where we need to be able to rise up and say yes, God has said.

( congregational amens ).

And Jesus has done. It’s not just an empty promise. It’s not just something that has no basis in reality. It’s is based upon something that happened. It is based upon a historical provision that God has made through Jesus Christ and the blood that He shed on that cross. You know the natural man sees no relevance to his with what Jesus did, with the death of someone who is condemned as a religious rabble-rouser 2,000 years ago. What does that have to do with me? It has everything to do with me because he went to that cross to pay the penalty, to die the death that I should have died.

( congregational amens ).

It was His life for mine. Oh, praise God!

( congregational amens ).

Praise God for what He did because He saw us helpless, unable to erase our sins, unable to live for God, unable to live up to the law. I mean...you know when God shows us that, it is to bring us to Him but I tell you it’s a humbling thing. It’s a humbling we need.

( congregational amens ).

We are so full of self-confidence that is unwarranted. We need to come to a place daily where we say Lord, I need you. You are my only hope and I...my faith is fixed not upon my ability to do anything. It’s fixed upon your living in me. “The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

( congregational amens ).

You know I’ve had a thought a number of times and I don’t know how specifically to say it. It’s along this line. Boy, I wish I had faith to move mountains or faith to do something that really mattered. I guess it all matters but you know what I mean. We’d love to have faith to do things. But you know what I believe the Lord would... He often says this to me. You know, how about believing me for the stuff at hand?

You know we want to find some formula by which we can jump from people of limited ability and unbelief to suddenly being spiritual giants. It doesn’t happen that way. God puts in our pathway every day things that call for faith to be exercised. And this is one of them. If we can’t move burdens off our backs that Christ paid for, how can we move mountains? You know God wants us to grow up in Him and all these things that we are called upon to exercise ourselves in every single day are designed to cause faith to become stronger and to grow.

If you plant a seed called faith you can’t expect it to go, whoosh, and suddenly be a great tree. It grows a little at a time and that’s what God wants us to do, is to realize that the battle we are in right now is just as important as that mountain He might call on us to move one day. And so we need to learn how to just take God at His word and believe it and not allow burdens to accumulate on our backs like we all tend to do and to realize the simple truth. Jesus did in fact pay it all. “There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”

( congregational amens ).

We have every right as God’s children to believe in the promise that He has given to us to take it personally, to say He loves me. Because the very needs that we experience are the reason He did what He did in the first place. He didn’t do it because we deserved it, didn’t do it because we earn it. So why should we think we have to earn it now? Oh, I’ve got to be extra good today because I need to make up for what I did yesterday.

( laughter ).

You know the failure of self-effort has to be made up for by self-effort. No.

( laughter ).

You see we’re really outside the whole thing right there. We miss the whole boat and God’s gonna have to let us keep falling in the mud until we say, wait a minute, like Paul. I can’t save myself. I need Jesus. I need a Savior.

( congregational amens ).

No matter how hard I try all I can meet with is failure. But Jesus made a full and complete provision for me and the way that I access it is not by trying harder. It’s by believing. And believing means a transfer of my confidence from me to the object of my faith. That’s Him. It is a continual recognition that He loves me and that I can trust in Him for the strength that I need and the provision and the washing when I need it. And all that I lack He has in super abundance. I praise Him today!

( congregational amens ).

-- Brother Chip King: Praise God! A service like this will minister rest won’t it? You know I just had a quick thought here. You know the ridiculousness of us falling into the trap of thinking that anything to do with our salvation has to do with what we’ve accomplished or what we can do. That’s what gives the enemy the entrance into our thought process and that’s where condemnation or at least seeming condemnation can come. Did you have anything to do with your salvation? No. It was Jesus Christ that began to deal with us. We can’t even come to God. We can’t even see our need except for divine intervention somehow in our lives. Is that not true?

( congregational amens ).

Absolutely. And then for us to believe then that Jesus Christ came and did everything He needed to do in order to draw me to Himself and in order to save me and went to the cross. And when He went to the cross it was enough. When He cried, “It is finished,” it took care of it. For us then to fall into the trap of thinking that when we fail that somehow severs that relationship is ridiculous.

( congregational amens ).

It’s ridiculous. The devil is a liar.

( congregational amens ).

He absolutely is a liar. He is calling into question what Jesus Christ did on the cross. He has no right to do that. He was defeated there. It’s all through my Bible and I believe it’s in your too. He was defeated and all he can do then is lie to us and try to convince us that somehow what he is saying is true. Well he is a liar. Amen?

( congregational amens ).

Do we believe God? Absolutely. Is He not the author and the finisher or the perfector of our faith? Absolutely. He began it and He will finish it. We are complete in Jesus Christ.

( congregational amens ).

Praise God for that!

( congregational amens ).

No wonder Paul could say we’re not to be anxious for anything. We are to by prayer and supplication make our request know unto God and what is the result of that? Peace. God just wants us to come to Him and realize you’re gonna fail because this sinful nature is here. I don’t want you to try to fail and I want you to be sorry when you do but that will not change how I feel about you. It will not change what I have done for you. Praise God for that.

Who’s workmanship are we? His. He bought us with His blood. He died on a cruel cross for you and for me because of our sinful nature and I believe when I’m in Christ’s hand and the Father’s hand is over top of Christ’s hand that’s a pretty safe place to be. Amen?

( congregational amens ).

Praise God for that! Praise God for that! That’s the message in our songs this morning. I did what I had to do to set you free and when the Son has set you free you’re free indeed.

( congregational amens ).

Nothing can change that. Nothing can take that away from you or from me. It’s forever sealed. And God looks on then as sons. My God, if heirs and joint heirs with Christ oh, hallelujah!

( congregational amens ).

Hallelujah! What He started He’s gonna complete and I’ll be forever with Him and so will you if He lives in you. Hallelujah! Praise God for that. We can rejoice. Let’s all stand up and let’s rejoice and thank God for what He’s done for us.

( congregational praise ).

Hallelujah! Thank you, Lord.

( congregational praise ).

Thank you, my God for Your truth that sets us free, for the power of your cross, the assurance of our salvation, God. We bless you and we thank You, Lord.

( congregational praise ).

We give you glory and honor. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

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