Ankerberg Show

Narrator: Folks, when you leave your home each day, do you realize how much our radical secular culture has influenced how you live and think? You may be surprised that it has influenced you more than you realize.

For example, our secular culture is trying to redefine or rid us of even believing in God. My guest today, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, former pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, writes in his new book, The Eclipse of God.

Just as the moon obscures the sun's light during an eclipse, radical secularism has obscured the light of God. Yet God is still God even when we no longer see or acknowledge Him. Today, we live in a world where radical secularism has redefined God's moral standards, and we are watching the unraveling and destruction of our culture.

We have seen an increase in violence, treachery, the abuse of the law, sexual perversity, drug use, and suicide. Radical secularism continues to make more changes in our morals, laws, and education, and this darkness is being protected and normalized while light is being vilified and criminalized.

This is not just the clash of worldviews, but the clash of spiritual forces that affects us all. The God of the Bible is watching and weighing us on His scales of justice. So, learn how our secular culture affects us, but will not ever redefine or change God. Join us for this edition of The John Ankerberg Show.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I am John Ankerberg, and as you have just heard, my honored guest today is Dr. Erwin Lutzer, former pastor of Moody Church. And we are talking about his new book, The Eclipse of God, which is a great book because it is loaded with information. Practical, up-to-date, current information that you need to know.

And one of the questions I would like to take from the book and talk with you about today is, is God more tolerant today than He used to be? Talking about the Old Testament versus the New Testament.

Is it safer to sin today than it used to be? That is our topic today, and especially in terms of, what do we do with the Old Testament that seems to be harsh? So, some people say God is an intolerant God in the Old Testament. But you know, He is kind of matured and He is a loving God in the New Testament.

Now, Erwin, how would you start this conversation?

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: First of all, what I would like to emphasize is that it is very obvious that the Old Testament and the New Testament are revelations from the same God.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Absolutely.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: But first of all, yes, it is true what you said. You know, you have people being stoned for various infractions, but at the same time, John, it is so important for people to recognize that God was also showing a great deal of grace in the Old Testament.

We read, for example, about the flood. We read about the killing of the Canaanites. But let us keep in mind that God was dealing with sinfulness, and there is nothing that God has ever done that is unjust.

He has always acted justly. As a matter of fact, He has never punished an innocent person, only once.

Dr. John Ankerberg: That is right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Only once did He punish somebody who was totally innocent, and that was Jesus Christ.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And why did He punish Him?

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: He punished Him because our sin was placed on Christ. There was no sin in Jesus, but the Bible says that our sin was laid on Jesus, and He bore our sins and took the penalty for it. And we will be mentioning that also.

But I want to just take the time here to help people to understand, here is a passage from the Old Testament, lest we begin to think that God did not have grace in the Old Testament. This is from Psalm 103. I am going to pick it up at verse 8. "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will He keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is His steadfast love to those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord shows compassion on those who fear Him."

That is a lot of grace.

Dr. John Ankerberg: That is a lot of grace.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: So, in the midst of all this, when there was repentance and the acceptance of sin and the recognition of sin, and when people took ownership of their sin, there was grace and there was mercy.

Now, the question is, there have been scholars who have said, "You know, the God of the Old Testament is a different God than the God of the New Testament." Old Testament harsh. New Testament so much grace, so much acceptance. Well, first of all, as we emphasized, there was grace in the Old Testament.

But obviously, when you read the whole of the New Testament, you discover that we are talking about the same revelation from God. All the incidents that we read in the Old Testament, such as creation and the Exodus, and a host of other incidents, they are repeated in the New Testament.

So, obviously, the Old Testament and the New Testament are like a hand in a glove, and we must recognize their unity.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah. I would like to say something here about the pastors in our churches that are telling our people that the Old Testament needs to be unhitched from the New Testament.

And I am talking here about my friend Andy Stanley. I knew his father very well, Charles Stanley. But in his book, Irresistible, he claims that the New Testament has to be unhitched from the Old Testament. After all, he claims the Old Testament advocates misogyny, the disrespect of women, and treating them as property.

And he goes so far as to say, if we do not unhitch the Old Testament from the New, we are going to have the prosperity gospel, the Crusades, anti-Semitism, legalism, exclusivism, and judgmentalism. But I would like to say this to Andy, you start to have problems with Jesus and the Apostles themselves when you start saying things like that.

Second Timothy 3:16, when the New Testament was not even written, this is what Paul said about the Old Testament, "All scripture is breathed out by God." All scripture. And he was only talking about the Old Testament at that time. And so, you cannot just unhitch it. Jesus Himself said that every jot and tittle would not pass away until all was fulfilled.

So, I am saying, you do not want to have a problem with Jesus or the Apostle Paul or the others in the New Testament that quoted the Old. And today, we are having scholars inside the church that are trying to say, "Hey, let us scratch the whole Old Testament and let us just keep the New Testament."

The whole Bible comes from God. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is profitable for a whole mess of things, and I am going to stick with that.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Well, you know, to Andy Stanley, I would simply say, Andy, you would have a hard time selling your idea to Jesus.

Dr. John Ankerberg: That is right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Because Jesus was basing Himself upon the Old Testament.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And all the prophecies.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: All the prophecies, all the unity of the Scriptures. All of that is very important.

So, John, what I want to get into is a question that people would be asking at this point. Obviously, there are radical changes.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: So, what changed?

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: In the Old Testament, God was dealing with one nation, namely the Jews. And Mount Sinai is the place where God revealed Himself, where God came to the mountain, the mountain trembled, there was lightning and thunder, and He told the people, "Stay away. Stay away. And even if an animal touches the mountain, do not touch the animal, shoot it with a dart."

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: "With an arrow. Stay back." And so, the writer of Hebrews is contrasting that with Mount Zion, which represents the death of Jesus Christ. And this is what he says.

"For they could not endure the order that was given," and the order was, "If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned." "Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, 'I tremble with fear.'"

"But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels," et cetera. Now, let us look at three changes between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: And we will show that God has not changed one Iota, but His administration has changed.

Very quickly, first of all, you have the movement from the earthly to the heavenly. What is Mount Sinai representative of? It is God coming without a mediator. It is God coming to a mountain, a holy God to sinful man. So, God says, "Stay back." In the New Testament now, we have a mediator, namely the Lord Jesus Christ who came.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Correct.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: So, God is saying, "Come, come. You are welcome now, if you come through Jesus Christ, you can be received."

Dr. John Ankerberg: That is number one.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: That is number one. Number two is this. In the Old Testament, God dealt with Israel as a nation. Everything had to do with the nation as a whole. That nation would either be blessed or cursed depending on its obedience to God. Today, God has a different administration. He is dealing with people around the world. As a matter of fact, this program, for example, is being heard in many different countries, in many different languages.

And in all of these countries, there are believers on Jesus Christ. There are churches, and God is saying, "I am no longer dealing with a nation now. I am dealing with a church, a transnational community, which I am building. So someday there will be people who will arrive in heaven from every tongue and people and nation."

Dr. John Ankerberg: And He is offering them to come a different way.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: That is right. You now come to God through Jesus Christ.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And putting your faith.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: And put your faith in Him. And then there is this difference too. In the Old Testament, you do have very harsh judgments from our standpoint on various sins and various infractions, and they were done immediately.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: You know, as you mentioned, they could be stoned and so forth.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: In the New Testament, God is postponing that, and He is dealing with eternity. But we need to warn people that just because God is not judging them immediately now, that does not mean that God has lowered His standards.

Dr. John Ankerberg: I think that the sin that they have done, God has gotten matter and matter and matter, and it is boiling. It is not coming out. He is waiting for people to take the escape hatch of coming to Christ and putting their faith in Him. But boy, if they do not, that anger is boiling over because God is a wrathful God according to Paul.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: You know, the Bible even says this, that because God does not exercise judgment against sin immediately, people think it is safe to do wrong. So, what you have today is people who think, "Well, I can live as I please because God is not intervening. He is not judging people."

Well, the day is going to come when they are going to be severely judged because in the New Testament, there is more light, spiritual light, than there was in the Old Testament. And again, it says in the book of Hebrews chapter 10, where God says, "If it is true that in the time of Moses people were stoned to death under the testimony of two or three witnesses, of how much severer punishment will there be of people who trample under their feet the blood of Christ?"

Dr. John Ankerberg: This is chilling.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: What God is saying is that the day is coming when your judgment is going to be more severe. If I might just pull out some verses from the book of Revelation, from chapter 6. It says, "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, lo, there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood. The stars of the heaven fell onto the earth, even as a fig tree casts her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind. The heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together. Every mountain and island were moved out of their places. The great men and the rich men and the bondmen and the freemen, they hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains and said unto the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the wrath of Him who sits on the throne.'"

So, what we need to do is to warn people, to help them to understand that God is not more tolerant. We do not see the judgment happen immediately, but that does not mean that it is safe to do wrong. And what we have to do is to help people to flee to Jesus.

You know, oftentimes we think of Jesus as only loving, and He certainly is. But how about this verse that is coming to mind from the book of Thessalonians? It says that Jesus is going to return from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. To all those who think that God is more tolerant, I need to warn you, He is not.

We are going to be severely judged. Blessed is the one who keeps us from the wrath to come, namely the fact that we have faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone. We are dealing with a terrifying God, but thankfully, He is also a God of mercy, a God of love, and He made provision for us to be able to be accepted by Him.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah. God has not changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament. He has changed His way of how He administrates His justice. And because of the cross and Christ's coming and dying for our sins, God has put a pause on when that judgment is going to come. And meantime, the door of mercy and hope and forgiveness is open because of what Christ did. And people need to take advantage of that because there is the great white throne coming. And by the way, Jesus is going to be the Judge at the great white throne judgment.

And it says, the books will be opened, which means everything you have ever done, every thought you have ever had, every motive you have ever had, it is written in those books. And those books are going to be brought out against you to show you if you have not accepted Christ, why the penalty will be so severe. I am saying right now, people need to come to Christ while they have an opportunity. You can have forgiveness in Christ, and you can go right into the Father's hands the moment you die. But you have got to invite Christ to come into your life. Would you help them do that?

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: I want to just say a word to all of you. You know, the Bible says that God is a consuming fire. That is scary. But as John has indicated, we need not fear Him if we come to Christ.

You know, back in the days when the prairie was being developed here, what happened is there were farmers who feared a prairie fire. If that fire came, it would destroy their buildings. It would destroy their homes. So, what they did when the wind was favorable, they had what is called a controlled burn.

They would burn the grass that would be off in the distance and make sure that that all was fully consumed so that they then knew that when the fire came, it would not touch their buildings because their buildings would be where the fire already was. My friend, today, when you trust Jesus Christ as your savior, you are actually standing where the fire of God has already fallen.

Because of what God did in Christ, laying our sin upon Him. I want you to visualize the agony that Jesus Christ was in, bearing the sin of the world, taking the fire of God, the wrath of God on our behalf. How important it is for you to flee to Christ, to know that God has not changed. The judgment is going to be very severe, but thank God, I repeat it again, the Bible says that Jesus came to save us from the wrath to come.

Best news you will ever hear. Would you join me as I pray? Father, we thank you, Lord, that you provided Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Lord. We thank you today that He died for us. We thank you that He took the fire of God. We thank you, Father, that the wrath of God was laid upon Him on our behalf. We pray that many people will come to know Christ in all the different countries of the world. May they today come to Christ and know that they have a refuge from your wrath. For you are a consuming fire.

We love you. We thank you so much for Jesus. May many receive Him right now by faith in prayer, admitting their sinfulness, but turning to the only one who can prepare us for the future. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Thanks for joining me today. I hope that you prayed that prayer with Erwin. Next week we are going to have a very important topic. How can you speak the truth in a world of lies? And what I mean by that is that people are saying, I believe this is truth, but it is truthiness. It is somebody else has said this is true, but they have no evidence for what they are saying. It is truthiness. So, it is not really truth, but they believe it. And that has a consequence. We are going to talk about that next week. I hope that you will join us.

Narrator: Stay tuned. John will be right back.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Now, thank you for listening to The John Ankerberg Show. We are a listener-supported ministry, and your gifts help us continue to share the gospel with millions of people worldwide. To learn more about our resources or to support our mission, visit jashow.org, or please call us at 1-800-805-3030. If you are in Canada, please visit jashow.ca or call us at 1-866-746-5803. Or you can subscribe to us on YouTube. Your support makes a difference in spreading God's word.