Look at that from the negative side and they all want to forget their sins and their past. Yes, that’s first. We always forget our sins and our past, because that’s the only thing we are conscious of when we begin to deal like this with the Lord; we are always conscious of the failures. Now Paul says, “Forget that.” But there is something more to forget! You have to forget all the right things, and all the good things, and all your blessings. You can’t park on them; you can’t live in them; you can’t take them with you; you can’t do a thing with them but experience them and pass through them. Then, he says, “Forget them.,, Not forget them in a wrong sense of the word - that they were worthless, but he means, forget them in this sense: They will never merit you anything in getting you into the thing that God is after, never! Hook with that Hebrews 6:1. (I won’t take time to open it now because it is late). But take Hebrews 6:1 with Philippians 3:13 and see what you will get. “Forgetting the things which are past, I press” (Phil. 3:13). What is Hebrews 6:1? Why, we leave behind the first principles and move upward in the realization of the structure that He is building. “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God” (Heb. 6:1). All this truth is one. How many see truth is all one after all? It is just one great big thing, but it comes in such different little pat­ terns and pieces, and there is a great unity in the truth. I often think of it this way: When we were children we were delighted to see those great big woven spiderwebs; you remember how fascinating they were? The spiders would be so busy, and I have seen them sitting and waiting for a fly or a bug or insect to come and get entangled so it could shoot out there and get it. Well, this is what I have always noticed: when a fly is caught in one little side of it, the whole web vibrates; the whole thing is alive! It’s not static; it’s floating fairly; and if you begin to pull a little bit on this part of the web, how many know the whole web begins to jitter? That is like the truth. You begin to touch one bit of truth and it will begin to respond to you from Genesis to Revelation, because it’s all hidden away in there. You touch it here, it wiggles here. Where else do you see it? It wiggles there. Where else do you see this? It’s wiggling here. That’s like the truth that is scattered all the way through the Word. As soon as you touch it in one place and you keep your eyes open and your heart responsive, you will run right across it again. You read a little more and you run right across it again. Why there is that same old thing sticking up again! For instance, the lesson that I gave you a few minutes ago about the confession being the basis of blessing; how many of you see it sticking up all over in the Bible? It just sticks up all over, because that is the way it is made; that is the way it is sup­ posed to be. So Paul says, “Forgetting those things,” not in the sense of thanklessness; not in the sense that you have exhausted the thing and you don’t need it any more; it isn’t that, but you forsake it; you leave it; you forget it, because you should be occupied with the freshness and newness of the thing that He is after; that should occupy you. In Hebrews 6: 1 and 2, Paul was concerned because they were possessed to live in their experiences and the things that had come to their lives through them, and he had to stop them. Now, lie says, “Listen! you have been playing around long enough with this truth of redemption and salvation and laying on of hands and baptisms and all that which is elementary.” I told you the other day when I use the word “elementary,” I don’t mean it is so sim­ ple that it doesn’t amount to anything. I merely mean that it comes first; elementary in the sense that it comes first. It has just as much value as a thing that comes way up here, but it happens to come first. So we say, “elementary,” meaning “first,” ‘‘the beginning.” If you don’t have your elementary arithmetic right, there is no need of fussing around up here in higher mathematics; not because it is less (it is an essential), but it hap­ pens to come first. Paul says, “Don’t, don’t, don’t play around with all these first principles.” They are principles which are involved in it, but he says, “Don’t live with that, leave it, leave it alone; don’t throw it out the window; don’t say it isn’t any good; (it is all that), but leave it; now let it alone and go on to its completion.” Not perfection, completion, because He is building a building. And these first principles are your foundation. And when you lay your foundation, lay it, be grateful, be thankful, but say all the time these are only the stones in the foundation of a structure that God is building in me; God is building through me. Why do people do this all the time? They get these experiences in God and a revelation of elementary truth and how many know they park right on them? They park there, and if you listen to their testimonies they always are parked on: “Forty years ago the Lord saved me and He did that …” Well, that was a stone you laid in your foundation forty years ago. Haven’t you anything more after you laid that foundation?! Haven’t you put that stone in there? If you go to help them, right away they think you are going to tear their foundation apart. “Oh, don’t you touch that! I remember what that cost me; I prayed hours and hours to get that victory …” I often say to them, “I am not destroying your victory; I don’t want to take the foundation stones out; I don’t want to destroy a thing God has done for you; I want you to have it, but please move on, please, please, please move on!” Paul said the same: “leaving them,” don’t destroy them, leave them and let us go on. On to what? On to the fulness and the meaning of the very stones that were laid there as your founda­ tion. That becomes your building material that you are going to build right on. You laid the stone of salvation, have you ex­ hausted it? No. I am still building and growing andfeeding on all that that one stone of salvation meant, and I go right on building a tower out of it. The same with every one of those things that God has given you; you don’t exhaust it; you don’t end it; you go on under the power, I call it ‘‘the impact," of that thing, and you build. So Paul says, “We will forget that.” Sometimes I think the best thing for some people would be (this would horrify them) to forget some of the things that they have lived in for twenty years. It would do them good to forget it. Now here is another hook-up with it. Do you remember what He said to the children of Israel when they got on one of those merry-go-rounds? Remember the command? “Ye have com­ passed this mountain long enough; tum you northward” (Deut. 2:3). Well, it wasn’t wicked to go around the mountain; it was kind of nice; they had a change of scenery all the while. ‘‘You have done that long enough, now change it! Ye have compassed this mountain long enough." God gave me a terrific message once on it; I think I only spoke it twice. Everybody got sacred to death, so I thought, “Lord, I do nothing but scare folks, I don’t want to talk on that.” I haven’t talked on that I think in twenty years, but I got some of the dim outlines of the notes that He gave me: “Ye have compassed this mountain long enough, TURN YE” … southward?…• Hallelujah! Nol Nol “NORTHWARD” - blizzards! (Enough said). How many catch the point? It was something they didn’t receive on the mountainside. Do you remember some of the other little details in there?: “Don’t mess with this group of people when you pass through.” (Oh! that is sweet.) “Pass this group by.” “When you go through this group have just enough touch with them for the necessities.” I think I will preach that sometime; it’s really good.