Running To Win 15 Minute Version

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Jonah preached in Nineveh only after God had to literally drag him there. Was his heart ever broken by that which breaks the heart of God? Today, final lessons we can take home from the story of a disobedient prophet. Stay with us.

Dave McAllister: 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. Today, Erwin Lutzer concludes his series on Brokenness: How God Gets Us to Say Yes, studies in the book of Jonah. Turn with us to Jonah chapter 4 as we take a look into our own hearts and see what is really there.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: We'll not be able to look beyond our own little world with our own little comforts and our own little entertainment centers and our own little world and our own little vacations. We will always just be narrowed in unless we are broken. We will never be able to weep or to be touched by that which breaks God's heart. God is compassionate and merciful and full of pity, and we won't be because self is on the throne of our lives and all that we care about is ourselves. We look out for number one.

We have so many people in our churches today, and we're all guilty of this. I'm preaching this message to myself too. I hope you understand that I always preach to myself first. But we have so many people in our churches today who say they love God but have absolutely no concern about those who are precious to God. Talk is cheap, and so unless we're broken, we'll never extend ourselves.

You say, "Well, I am concerned about the children in this city, but I don't know what to do about it." Well, one thing you could do is to check the bulletin. we need workers in our children's ministries right here at this church. God is raising up a marvelous ministry over at Cabrini-Green that you've heard about, and we need people of compassion, people who care. We need people of sacrifice, people who've been able to see beyond their own little precious circle of comfort. So that's the first lesson.

There's a second lesson, and that is unless we are broken, we will feel comfortable in our sin and our rebellion. We'll have rationalized it. We'll have lived in denial. We will not confront. God takes this mirror and shoves it in our face through maybe messages, through songs that are sung, through experiences, through people, through events. God takes the mirror and shoves it in our face, and we will not see ourselves. We will become comfortable in our rebellion and justify our rebellion and look into the face of God like Jonah does and say, "I have every right to be angry even to the point of death."

You see, my friend, what God wants us to do is to allow his mirror to actually show us ourselves so that we can open our lives to God and invite him into every crevice, every closet of our lives, looking in, inviting him everywhere so that he can show us our great, incredible need and at the same time show us his grace so that we are broken before him and that our will becomes his will. No matter what it is, God, I take your perspective. I don't understand it, but I take your perspective and I bow humbly before it and I accept it.

George Müller, who had so many various orphanages in England, about eight of them, all run by prayer and faith, said there came a time when George Müller died. I died to my own ambitions, I died to my own plans, I died to my own reputation, I died to everything that I had been working for and had only one question: what does God want me to do? That is brokenness.

Wasn't it Varley who told D.L. Moody one day, "We have yet to see what God can do through a man who is totally devoted to him"? And D.L. Moody said, "By the grace of God, I'll be that man." And he began a Sunday school. And isn't it interesting that Moody Church was begun with children and now so many years later, there are so many ministries that God is birthing in this church for children as his vision gets carried out? But that is brokenness, that's yieldedness.

You say, "Well, did God ever get Jonah?" This book ends and you say, "You know, it really doesn't have an ending." I want to read more. I don't know about your translation, I'm reading the English Standard Version and it ends there and then it has room on the page and I'm saying, "Hey, I want to know more about what happened here." I want to know whether or not Jonah had anything to say after God was finished at this point. But we don't.

But you know, I have a suspicion that Jonah did say yes. You know the theme of this message, this series is brokenness: how God gets us to say yes. Even when I began the series, I was saying to myself, "Well, God worked with Jonah, but he never did say yes because the pages of scripture just end." I can't prove this biblically, but I suspect that Jonah did say yes and I'll tell you why. Every scholar, every rabbi, the scholars throughout the centuries have puzzled as to who the author of Jonah is because we're not told, and virtually everybody says it must have been written by Jonah because who else would know all of these details?

Now you tell me something. Would a man write a story like this that makes himself look that bad unless he had been broken by God? I don't think so because God looks great in this book; Jonah doesn't. Because you see, the person who's delivered from his narcissism no longer asks, "How does it make me look?" Now he's asking a different question: "How does it make God look?" And as you read this book, God looks great.

It's Jonah who's narrow-minded, shall I say pigheaded and very narcissistic. But God comes off wonderfully. And a man who is broken by God is willing to say, "I am willing to tell the truth as the truth is even though I look bad because at the end of the day, even my reputation in the lives of others is not as important as telling an accurate story and letting people give praise to God." And so he tells the story here without trying to make himself look good. There's no tweaking here.

Some time ago a rather prominent woman wrote her biography and I can't prove this, but I heard that one library put it in the fiction section. Everything tweaked and worked so that it's my point of view, so that I come out looking a certain way. A person who's broken by God, even his reputation is left in God's hands and he's not always trying to fix it. Appearance no longer becomes the important thing; reality does. And it seems to me that anyone who'd write a book like this is probably somebody who in the end said yes to God and finally gave up the fiction of his own will and his own desire.

So as I come to the end of the series, I have a question for you today. Are you broken? Let me ask you a different question. What would have to happen in your life in order for you to answer yes to that question? What areas of your life are unyielded, unsubmitted, protected, guarded, rationalized, that would have to be given into the presence of the Almighty?

What would you have to give up? Who would you have to talk to? What would you have to make right in your life if you were broken? Remember that God especially blesses those who finally say yes. Let's pray.

As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend, I brought my broken dreams to God because he was my friend. But then instead of leaving him in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last I snatched them back and cried, "How can you be so slow?" "My child," he said, "what could I do? You never did let go."

How many of you are here today who say, "Pastor Lutzer, today by God's grace I want to let go"? Would you raise your hands please? All throughout the auditorium, many are and also in the balcony. I can see you there. You're willing to say, "God, you've got me. You've got me. I'm letting it go. I'm yielding it all. I'm trusting the Holy Spirit of God to grant me the grace to do that." Whatever it is that you need to say to God at this moment, would you say it?

In this message I did not explain that Jesus died on the cross for sinners and that your first step in saying yes is to say yes to him as Savior. So you may be here and you're not connected to God at all. You can say, "Lord Jesus, I say yes to you as Savior." Those of us who know him have to say yes to him on a whole host of other issues.

Father, we've done what we could do and if the Holy Spirit does nothing, then everything is a failure. But we believe that the blessed Holy Spirit of God has been poured out to change us. So work with us. Work with us, Father. Grant us that balance between patience and discipline that we need to bring us to yieldedness, to give up the idea that we can transform you into our image. May there be no point in our life in which we are out of agreement with you, we pray. In Jesus' name we ask, Amen. Amen.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: My friend, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter your circumstance, if you're open to God's grace you'll discover that he is there for you. Today's the last day we're making a special resource available for you. It's a book I've written entitled Dorie: The Girl Nobody Loved. It's a true story. It's a story of rejection but it's also a story of hope. It shows God's grace in the midst of the difficulties of life and it is a lifeline to those who have experienced a difficult past who do not believe that there can be a future for them. Well, the answer is yes, there can be a future for you as you trust God. I hope that you take advantage of this offer and I hope that you read the book and pass it along to others in this very broken world: the book Dorie, The Girl Nobody Loved.

Dave McAllister: Erwin Lutzer concluding Death to Self-Justification, his final message on Brokenness: How God Gets Us to Say Yes, studies in the book of Jonah. Next time, don't miss Pastor Lutzer's series from Romans chapter 8 on the blessings we've been given as children of an awesome God.

Dorie, The Girl Nobody Loved. It's a heart-wrenching story of how God took a child abandoned in an orphanage and gave her a whole new life. Written by Pastor Lutzer, this book will demonstrate that there is hope even when no hope is visible. Dorie: The Girl Nobody Loved will be sent to you as our gift when you give a gift of any amount to support Running to Win. 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. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is a ministry of the Moody Church.