Running To Win 15 Minute Version

Guest (Male): Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. God has amazing ways of getting us to say yes. He does not make us puppets; rather, he arranges conditions so that we will choose to do his will. Sometimes those conditions can be tough, and they stay that way until we submit to God's authority.

Guest (Male): 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 continues his series on Brokenness: How God Gets Us to Say Yes, Studies in the book of Jonah. We're in Jonah chapter 2, learning about death to self-reliance and about the idols we set up to avoid obeying God.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: You know, there are things that we set up, it says in the book of Ezekiel that this people have set up idols in their own hearts. Our idol can be another person, it can be a vocation, it can be whatever we desire to do, that can be our idol that says, I want this even above the will and the purposes of God. I want this more than I want the glory of Jesus.

And that's an idol. So he says, those who follow vain idols. They forsake their hope of steadfast love. They're not going to get through to God. But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, he says, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. Isn't that interesting?

He's saying, Lord, I made a commitment to you long ago, and now I realize that I am going to, I'm going to fulfill that commitment. And in the next chapter, we can see that part of the commitment was that he does eventually go to Nineveh, where he was determined he would not go. And so he says, Lord, I'm going to pay my vows. I was looking that reading that in the text, and I discovered that the pagans in chapter one, as a result of Jonah's limp witness, actually ended up believing in God and paying their vows.

And you realize that sometimes, sometimes a child of God can have a harder heart, a more stubborn will, a more determined personality to blow God off than even pagans, who apparently came to know the true God. It's amazing what Christians have done. Have you ever been surprised at Christians? We shouldn't be surprised at those who aren't Christians, but our surprise is, people who have been redeemed by God, trying to thwart God's will, trying to do others in to the very best of their ability with all of their might, trying to thwart what would be the acceptable will of God. So God says, Jonah, have you learned something here? And he says, yeah, one thing I've learned is no more idols. In fact, I'm going to give thanks to you, he says. And then there's something else that God purified, and that was Jonah's theology.

He comes out with this marvelous statement: salvation belongs to the Lord. A well-known preacher in England by the name of Charles Haddon Spurgeon said that Jonah, in the belly of the fish, went in an Arminian, that is to say, he believed in free will, and you know, that we direct things basically, and he came out a Calvinist. Now, now that word Calvinism, some people don't like. I'm only quoting Spurgeon, you understand. Just quoting Spurgeon, no quote of mine would fit here.

But there's a stress on the sovereignty of God, and he's saying salvation is of the Lord. He's talking about his own salvation, his own deliverance. There's no question about that. But there is a larger statement in scripture that salvation is of the Lord. That is to say that it is God who redeems us. It is God who initiates us by having Jesus Christ die on the cross. God initiates salvation. And then God applies it to the human heart.

Salvation has to be of God. I began this message by quoting the words of Jesus that no man comes to me except the Father drags him. And unless we were dragged into the kingdom, we would go our own way. We would reject Christ. We would see no reason why we should believe. And so God grants us that ability to believe. Isn't he gracious? Because from beginning to end, salvation is of the Lord.

By the way, this is another argument as to why Jesus Christ is fully God. Many people who believe that he's a lesser God of some sorts, all kinds of problems with that biblically and theologically. But just hang on to this for a moment. If Jesus were not fully God, God would have delegated the dirty work of redemption to a created creature, and salvation would not be of the Lord. But from beginning to end, salvation is of God.

Some of you have never trusted Christ as savior. All you need to do is to open your hearts to him and realize this, that if God is talking to you, if you see that, if you sense within you this, this emptiness that you'd like to have filled, this sense of alienation and sin, don't turn away from that. That is God getting your attention to realize salvation is in him alone. So God was purifying his theology even.

What's the bottom line? At the end of the day, we always want the bottom line. I think that the bottom line is simply this: that only desperate people pray. Only desperate people pray. I omitted it a moment ago, but let's look at verse seven. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord. It took that. It took that. If you're not desperate, you're not going to pray. Isn't it interesting we see this nationally? We have, for example, a 9/11 experience, where thousands of people are killed, and the very next Sunday, you know, the churches are filled.

People come to prayer meeting. They say, you know, we're just coming to prayer meeting because we think we need God. Like the young people say, duh. So it took that. I remember hearing somebody say, you know, things are so bad, we're going to have to begin to pray. Only desperate people pray. But listen to me carefully. If you and I actually saw who we were before God, we'd know that we're always desperate. It's just that we don't know it.

We'd be at prayer meeting all the time if we understood our true condition before God because we'd understand that we are in desperate straits as a nation, most assuredly, but also as individuals. We are, we are desperate. And what God is trying to do is to say, don't you see your need? And the reason that God motivates us to pray, he does it through giving us circumstances that lead us to utter desperation. And then we finally cry out to God and say, God, it's over. I lay down the weapons of a rebel. I am desperate. Help me! The Bible says that if you call unto me in the day of trouble, I will answer thee.

I have a little booklet in my study. I think it's entitled Crying Out to God, and it makes this interesting point that in the Old Testament at least, there is a distinction between just praying and crying out. For example, in the Psalms, David will say something like this: I prayed to the Lord, and I cried out to him. Now we know that we don't have to cry out because God knows our thoughts, so we can pray silently. But there's something in scripture about lifting up our voice in desperation that attracts the attention of God. And over and over again in the scripture it says, I, I cried out to you and you inclined your ear. You inclined your ear to me and you answered me.

And there are times when we should cry out. You might not want to do it in your apartment if you have thin walls. Maybe you can go somewhere at times and just cry out to God. He loves to hear the voice of his children. And desperate people pray. I'm interested as I look at the text that Jonah doesn't even bargain with God. People who are really, really desperate don't bargain. He doesn't say, God, get me out of here and I'll be going to Nineveh in a heartbeat. Just get me out of here. I don't see that in the text.

What he's doing is he's thanking God for the deliverance that was wrought through the fish, and he's recognizing that, and he's giving God praise. And his future is entirely in God's hands. Isn't it interesting that Jesus in the New Testament used this one day some people came to Jesus and they said, why don't you give us a sign that we might believe you. Jesus had given them many signs, many miracles. But he said, no longer shall a sign be given unto you, but as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And just as God had Jonah expelled from his confinement. In the very same way on resurrection morning, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, giving an evidence that he was indeed the son of God, which is an incidental proof also that Jesus believed this story. He believed this story.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to believe anything that Jesus believes. If he believes it, I'm going to believe it too. So, what does God have to do in your life before you chafe and fight and manipulate and plan for your will to be accomplished? I've seen people dragged from one thorn patch to another, to another, to another, to another, to another, and they will not bow and say, God, help me, do with me as seems good in your sight. Because we as humans are so stubborn.

Look at what God did to Jonah, and next time we'll find out that he still wasn't had not totally come around. He was a reluctant, angry preacher. He went, but just barely.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: You know, in a sense, if we're honest, we all have some Jonah in our hearts, don't we? We rebel against God, but at the same time, God continues to work with us. I'm holding in my hands a book I want you to have for a very specific reason. I want you to visualize a little girl at the age of five or six at home in the dark. Her mother leaves. She has to fend for herself. And in the midst of this, later on, she and her sister were taken to an orphanage and dropped off like a package. Visited by their mother twice in seven years. What follows is a story of great rejection, a story of great hurt and abuse, but here's the good news, it's also a story of hope. It's a story of showing how God can work in a human life and bring about good in the midst of a past that was a disaster. I want you to have a copy of this book, it's entitled Dory, The Girl Nobody Loved, and it can be yours for a gift of any amount. This is a life transforming book. I sure hope that you get your copy.

Guest (Male): That was Erwin Lutzer with part three of Death to Self-Reliance, the second message in his series on Brokenness: How God Gets Us to Say Yes, studies in the book of Jonah. Next time on Running to Win, join us for thoughts on our own personal brokenness before the God who wants our full allegiance. Dory, 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. Dory, 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.