Run with Perseverance

(2 Timothy 2:1-13)

1Wherefore, seeing we also are encompassed 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, 2Looking to 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.

3For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.

God Disciplines His Sons

4Ye have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin.

5And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh to you as to children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked by him:

6For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

7If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons: for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? 8But if ye are without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons. 9Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? 10For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. 11Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who are exercised by it.

12Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; 13And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

A Call to Holiness

(1 Peter 1:13-21)

14Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: 15Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up, trouble you, and by it many be defiled; 16Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birth-right. 17For ye know that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

Our Kingdom Cannot Be Shaken

(Exodus 20:18-21; Deuteronomy 5:22-33)

18For ye are not come to the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor to blackness, and to darkness, and tempest, 19And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard, entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: 20(For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: 21And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and tremble:) 22But ye are come to mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23To the general assembly and church of the first-born, who are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

25See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: 26Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. 27And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. 29For our God is a consuming fire.