Running To Win 15 Minute Version

Guest (Male): Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Believers get to life's goal line by faithfully following Christ, who lived to minister to people. Taking His gospel to needy people is our primary reason for running the race every day. So, are you making an impact in your area of influence? Please stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. In our series on following Jesus, we're moving now from the desert to the community, the place where Christ wants us to spend our lives for Him.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Two weeks ago I spoke on the topic, what would Jesus do? Last week I mentioned that if you follow Christ, you will follow Him into the desert. And there you will come into worship with the living God, but Satan will also show up, as took place in the desert ministry of Christ. And I hope that you've been in the desert this week. I've spent some time there and noticed within my own heart some conflict which I'm thankful to say that God brought me through successfully.

And now today we would like to speak about Christ coming into a community. We know what it is like for Jesus to enter into the human heart. But there are times of special refreshing that God brings to a city or to a nation that are so special that people have coined the word revival to talk about them. Revival means when a group of God's people simultaneously and oftentimes spontaneously are revived by the power of the Spirit of God.

When most of us think of America, we think of those great revivals in the past during the time of Jonathan Edwards and Whitfield, the three great awakenings. What many of us do not even perhaps realize is that in this century, America experienced a revival. In 1904, there was a great moving of the Holy Spirit in Wales, so much so that churches were filled 18 months. Almost night after night for a year and a half, churches were filled.

As the news of what God was doing in Wales came to the United States and was picked up by the secular and the religious press, many people were encouraged to pray for revival in the United States. And God did some wonderful things. Let me tell you about them. In 1904 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, it was estimated that almost all of the 60,000 people had become believers. In Newark, the secular press ran a column a day to tell about what God was doing in the churches.

In Atlanta, 1,000 businessmen met for intercession and on November the second, 1904, stores, offices, etcetera, were closed at midday for prayer. In Louisville, Kentucky, 58 leading businessmen closed for prayer at noon and someone said, quote, "The whole city is breathing a spiritual atmosphere. Everywhere in shops and stores, in the mill or on the street, salvation is the one topic of conversation."

In Chicago here, many churches experienced revival. But perhaps the most dramatic took place in Denver, Colorado and in Portland, Oregon. In 1905, which is just the transition from November, December to January 1905, on the 20th day, it was a day of prayer and at 10 o'clock the churches were already filled. At 11:30, almost all the stores had closed. By 12 noon, four theaters which had been designated by the mayor for prayer were filled, and the Colorado State Legislature voted to postpone its business so that people could be released to pray.

Portland, Oregon, 1905. 200 stores closed from 11 o'clock to 2:00 in the afternoon for prayer. And someone said, quote, "For three hours a day, business was practically suspended and from the crowds in the great department stores to the humblest clerk, from the bank presidents to bootblacks, all abandoned money making for soul saving." Now isn't that great? We're talking about this century. 1904, 1905.

And then I think, for example, of what happened in Canada in the early 70s. And this is of particular interest to me because I wrote a book about it entitled Flames of Freedom. And the book is no longer in print, but the Canadian Revival Fellowship keeps printing it. It's the story of the Canadian revival and the dramatic things that happened in Western Canada over a period of a year as God came to town.

Now let me ask you the question, what happens when Jesus comes to a town or to a city? I want you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the 19th chapter of Luke. Luke chapter 19, Jesus Christ coming to Jericho. It says, and He entered and was passing through Jericho. And behold, there was a man called by the name of Zacchaeus and he was a chief tax gatherer and he was rich. And he was trying to see who Jesus was and he was unable because of the crowd for he was small in stature. And he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him for He was about to pass through that way.

What I'd like to do is to give you five characteristics, five events that take place when Jesus comes into a town. And you can write them in the margin of your Bibles because each of them is just one word and each of them begins with a letter C. Normally I don't alliterate my points, but today and I think last week as well, I've done that.

Here they are. First of all, there's curiosity, curiosity. Jesus is coming to town and the multitudes want to see Him. Why? Because they're skeptical. They no longer believe. It's been so long since they have seen the hand of God in circumstances that they can scarcely believe that maybe God might do something unusual. But Jesus is coming and the crowds want to see Him.

Do you know that in Canada there was a businessman who was in a meeting where people were standing up and telling about answers to prayer and saying, you know, God did this and God did that. One person said, I've seen so many answers to prayer, if you get another answer to prayer, don't even tell me about it. I can't take it, he said. That insurance salesman was in the congregation listening to what all the people were saying and he said these words.

He said, I don't know what it is that you people have, but he said I want it. You're standing here telling me that Jesus did this and Jesus did that. He said, I didn't know that Jesus had done anything in a hundred years. Do you know that that's the way the people in our community think? They say to themselves, I'm not sure that Jesus has done anything in the last 100 years. They are skeptical. Some of them are turned off. They are tired of a dead religion that produces no results where there are no answers to prayer and where God is not among His people.

Curiosity. The crowds came, but there was also an individual there by the name of Zacchaeus. This is the only place in all the New Testament where you have the phrase, a chief tax collector. Now let me tell you what tax collectors would do. They would make an agreement with the government of Rome that they would get X number of dollars and pay the government. But what the tax collector would do is he would become an extortioner.

He would get all kinds of taxes from people and there were three huge tax regions and Jericho was one of the three. And everybody that came by, all of the trade that passed through Jericho, it was always taxed by whatever the market could bear. So people despised tax collectors, particularly a chief tax collector. But here he is and he wants to see Jesus. And he is small in stature, so he runs and he climbs a balsam tree, translated here a sycamore tree, because he wants to see Christ.

Curiosity. Is Jesus actually able to do anything? Is He as good as His word? Can He be believed? Secondly, you have confrontation, confrontation. Notice what it says. Verse five, and when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry down and come down today for I must stay at your house. Wow. Here's a tax collector who very probably thought that at best maybe his eyes would meet just for a split second with Christ. That's all he hoped for.

Zacchaeus probably hoped that his eyes would meet with Christ's, but he certainly didn't expect Jesus saying, hey Zacchaeus, get out of your tree and let's go over to your house. I've got to meet with you today. What a shock. Confrontation. Why did Jesus choose Zacchaeus? There are all kinds of people who are clamoring to get a better look at Christ. And Jesus chooses one man and says, you're the one and I'm coming over. What a surprise for him that day.

And do you know that when Jesus Christ comes to town, there is always confrontation, loving confrontation. But it is, I believe, eyeball to eyeball confrontation. In December of 1971, as my wife and I went up to Canada after that revival started in that part of the country, we went to a home of a man who used to teach me chemistry and physics in high school. A mathematician who was very bright. We were always a little bit afraid of him.

Even as an adult whenever I saw him, I always wondered if he remembered that I got a C in chemistry. You just, you know, you feel as if you're in the presence of somebody who knows all about you. There he was telling us that though he had been a Christian for many years, Jesus had not been Lord of his life and how they were selling their home and how people were being saved at the university now that he got turned onto Christ. I couldn't believe this was the same guy.

Everybody who came ended up praying, kneeling at the coffee table in their home. It was cleared and had become an altar. But I'll never forget, now he's a layperson, he has never been to seminary or Bible school, he looked me square in the eye and he said, have you ever taken credit for anything that God has done through you? And I said, well, I'm sure I have. He said, listen, he said, we have to pray. You have to get on your knees. He said, don't you realize that unless you take care of pride in your life, God is never going to be able to use you like He would like to.

Nobody ever spoke to me like that before. Eyeball to eyeball. There were people who said they had been in the ministry or serving Christ for years and years who confessed that in the presence of the heat of revival, their hearts appeared to them as being made of ice as God began to take carnality and begin to show people what they were really like.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. Every one of us need to be rebuked. We need to understand what God is doing in our lives and we have to have the humility and the prayerfulness of Jesus Christ. Today is the last day we're making a special resource available for you. It's a booklet entitled Walking with Jesus: A Radical Return to His Priorities. What you'll discover in this book are practical insights as to how Jesus lived, how He was committed to the Father. We discover Christ's humility, but also His burden for others. Walking with Jesus can be yours for a gift of any amount.

Guest (Male): In his series on following Jesus, Erwin Lutzer tells what happens when we follow Christ into a community. And what often takes place is revival. Next time, more about Zacchaeus and what happens when Jesus comes to town. What would life be like if we responded to situations like Jesus did? That's why Pastor Lutzer wrote Walking with Jesus: A Radical Return to His Priorities. This booklet will help each of us live like Jesus lived. It can be yours as our thank you when you give a gift of any amount to support Running to Win. Just call us at 1-800-215-5001. That's 1-800-215-5001. Online, go to offerrtw.com. That's offerrtw.com. Or write to Running to Win, Moody Church, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is a ministry of the Moody Church.