Running To Win

Announcer: Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and died as a perfect sacrifice. Not even his enemies could point to a single character flaw. He is worthy of our absolute obedience since he is the only mediator between God and humanity. 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.

Dave McAllister: Pastor Lutzer, someone has said that no one has impacted the human race more than that one solitary life.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, Dave, of course you're absolutely right. He not only impacted the lives of those who have been born since he was born but even brought salvation to the people in the Old Testament who believed in Jehovah. And that person, of course, as we've emphasized, is Jesus Christ.

I've stood at the graves of some human beings who have also impacted the world. One is Karl Marx in London, buried there in the Highgate Cemetery. And the other is in Northfield, Massachusetts, D.L. Moody. I've co-authored a book entitled *Marx and Moody: Two Contemporaries, Two Gospels, Two Tombstones, and One Choice*. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you. I want you to listen to this message now, and following it, I'll give you some contact info.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: If you had been living in Leipzig, Germany, in 1779, and someone would have given you some theater tickets, maybe you could have seen the play entitled *Nathan the Wise*. It is a play written by Gotthold Lessing. The reason that play was somewhat unique is because during the Enlightenment, the idea arose that all the religions of the world can really be united.

The purpose of that play was to try to show that all religions produce morality, and that is what is important, and therefore their differences were negligible. It is not only that Lessing believed that, but he also began what is known today as the quest for the historical Jesus.

The idea was that we can't look at the New Testament and believe the miracles because miracles like that aren't happening today. Therefore, in order for us to try to get behind the New Testament to find out what really happened, we have to strip it clean of the miracles and find out what the real Jesus was like. Mind you, the other presupposition which was clear in those days, as it is today in the minds of many, is that the real Jesus was only an ordinary man.

Liberals who actually approach the New Testament that way tell us that they are doing us a favor. They say there aren't very many people who believe Christianity anymore because nobody can accept the miracles. If we strip the New Testament of miracles, if we reduce Jesus Christ down to our size, why then indeed Christianity will become popular and men and women will believe. The problem, of course, should be very clear to all that by the time you've done that, there is really nothing worth believing.

Did you know that these kinds of games are still played today? Right here in the United States of America, 200 scholars have been meeting for six years to figure out what Jesus Christ really was like and what he really said. They have voted on their opinions using various little balls. When a certain saying of Jesus is read, those who think that he probably said it put a red ball into the jar.

If they think that it's likely he didn't, but possible that he did, then they put in a pink one. If they think that the disciples made it up, they use a gray one. If they are absolutely sure that neither Jesus nor his disciples possibly said it, they put a black ball into the jar. They sit there and they put these balls in jars to try to come to a consensus. They are really trying to take Christ and to censor him. In fact, what they are trying to do is to make him politically correct.

Guess which sayings of Christ receive all the red balls? All of the ones where he denounces the rich and where he talks about the Good Samaritan. But what about the statements regarding redemption or the new birth or salvation? All those statements are black-balled. Obviously, Jesus didn't say that. Do you realize how subjective this game has become? It is really up to each person to somehow look at Christ and to come up with the Jesus that suits his fancy.

There is no manuscript evidence for that kind of a Jesus, but nevertheless, that kind of revisionism is going on all the time. The problem is that no matter how far you get behind those manuscripts, no matter how much historical study you do, there is always staring at you in the New Testament a very miraculous Christ. There is not too much that you can do about it except to collapse into subjectivism and make up your own version.

When Christ was on earth, he was making some fantastic claims. The Jews always went into the temple. It is there that they met God. It is there where they had their sins forgiven. Suddenly this man appears on the scene and begins to offer all of those blessings out on the street. He says, "If you believe in me, you have eternal life. I will forgive you. I can speak you clean." So we might expect that in order to back up such awesome claims, he would do miracles.

Today we are looking at the life of Christ, specifically the miracles that he performed that back up his radical claims. Take your Bibles for just a moment and turn to the 12th chapter of the book of Matthew. It is there where Jesus Christ's miracles finally so confronted his culture that they had to give a response. The response was not very pretty.

Matthew chapter 12, verse 22: "Then there was brought to him a demon-possessed man who was blind and dumb, and he healed him so that the dumb man spoke and saw. And all the multitudes were amazed and began to say, 'This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?' But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, 'This man casts out demons only by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.'"

"And knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, 'Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then shall his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Consequently, they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.'"

The Pharisees were right about one thing. They were right about the fact that Satan can perform miracles. They knew that. They were wrong in their estimation of Jesus. That should have been clear to them. Nevertheless, they did understand that Satan has power to do miraculous signs. In our day and age, we can expect miraculous signs to increase. When Satan comes to the Christian church, he does not come with some very blatant heretical doctrines.

The way in which he is going to capture the minds of men and even the minds of many Christians is by coming in the guise of a superior form of spirituality. We can expect people to arise who are going to tell us that if you really knew God like I know God, then indeed you'll understand that we can do miracles. When I was at the Parliament of World Religions, I was looking for miracles and I found them everywhere.

Benjamin Creme of the New Age movement says that it has been revealed to him that Maitreya, the true Messiah, is going to begin to illumine crosses all throughout Southern California, and they have now appeared in 12 different places. Interest in angels is on the rise because you have all of these visions of angels and of Mary and of Jesus, with people not understanding that Satan uses all of those guises to appear.

There was a doctor from the Philippines who came to British Columbia, Canada, with the intention of gaining some credibility among the medical establishment as to how he does miracles. He showed movies of his surgery. He was able to cut someone open, lift out all of the diseased organs, and after he had done that, he was able to sew this person back up, use a sponge, wipe off the blood, and there was no trace of the surgery.

In that audience was a friend of mine by the name of Bill McLeod. Bill McLeod raised his hand and said, "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, said, 'Unless a man be born again, he shall not see the kingdom of God.' What does that mean to you?" Suddenly the man's voice changed, and a different voice speaking through his vocal cords said, "This is the third time I have visited this planet, and I'm not going to answer your question."

We know that demons can do that and that Satan is going to do these miraculous signs. I wish that it was always so clear. It's a little bit more subtle than that. There is a man who went to a meeting where healings were taking place. He was slain in the spirit. He had been deaf, needed a hearing aid to hear almost anything, and actually was beginning to learn how to read lips so that he could communicate.

He came home and he was able to hear a whisper. His wife stood on the other side of the room. She stood to his back and spoke softly, and he heard every single word. They went to bed rejoicing. He woke up in the morning, and all of his deafness had returned. It would seem to me that if the miracle was done by Christ, it would have at least lasted for 24 hours. When Satan comes, he comes under the guise of a super spirituality.

Jesus Christ's miracles were greater in kind. Satan can do many things, but one thing he will not do, Jesus said, and that is cast out Satan. Jesus was delivering people. He was taking people who had compulsive inner spirits and was speaking to those spirits and they left the people. Lo and behold, the people were clothed and in their right mind and clean within. I don't believe that it's possible for Satan to raise the dead. Jesus took Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, and he raised Lazarus from the dead.

Christ's miracles were different in kind, variety, and in their completeness. In not one single instance in the New Testament, when Jesus healed a man who was born blind, did the man end up seeing with only one eye. The deaf never ended up being able to hear with only one ear. When Jesus spoke, the miracle was immediate, it was complete, and it was predictable based on his words. When Satan does miracles, they are sometimes haphazard and unpredictable.

The Pharisees should have known that Jesus Christ was indeed the Son of God because of his interpretation of the miracles. Jesus almost every time he did a miracle, interpreted it, and in those instances where he didn't, the message should have been obvious. There were three different ways in which miracles showed Christ's authority. First, there were miracles that showed his authority over the natural or the physical realm.

One day Christ was at a wedding and they needed wine. He said to those who were there, "If you take the water that is in those pots and if you have faith to give that water to the governor of the feast, you'll find a miracle has taken place." They did it, and there was an automatic change in the water to wine. On another day, Jesus was overlooking the Sea of Galilee and he told his disciples to go to the other side.

A big storm came up and Jesus walked on the water to go to the disciples. After he entered into the boat, Jesus spoke and said, "Peace be still," and immediately there was a great calm. One day Jesus said to Peter to take his net and get some fish. Peter said they had been fishing all night. Jesus told them to go out into the deep, and they caught a huge amount of fish. Jesus spoke, he commanded, and the fish came.

In the Old Testament, God said to Adam that he was giving him dominion over the earth and the animals. Because of sin, man forfeited it. He does not control nature. That is why you have earthquakes, tornadoes, and disruption. There is nothing that we can do about it. Jesus was illustrating to the disciples that he is not controlled by nature but that he is the controller. The thing that's so impressive is that Christ never misused his power.

He can feed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, and when it is over, he says to the disciples to gather up the fragments that remain. When he is hungry and sitting on the well, he sends his disciples to buy some food. He does not create it, though he could, because he does not do miracles frivolously. His miracles also showed he had authority over the moral realm.

Mark chapter 2 shows a beautiful example of how Jesus Christ used his miracle to confirm spiritual truth. Jesus is at Capernaum and there is a sick man who can't get into the house, so some men decided to take off the roof of the house. They let him right down beside Jesus. Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven."

Some of the scribes were reasoning in their hearts, "Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God?" That was good reasoning. I can forgive a sin that you do against me, but if you commit a sin against somebody else, I can't say you're forgiven. Only God can say that because he is the one against whom all sin is committed. They said this must be blasphemy.

Immediately Jesus said to them, "Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts? Which is it easier to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Arise, take up your pallet and walk'?" It is easier to say, "Your sins are forgiven." Anybody can say that. Talk is cheap. You can come to me and I can say your sins are forgiven. You can look into the eyes of someone else and say your sins are forgiven.

In order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, "I say, rise, take up your pallet and go home." What Christ is saying is that when he forgives sins, that is invisible. No one sees sins leave when you're forgiven. Therefore, he is doing miracles in the visible realm to prove that he has a right to do miracles in the invisible moral and spiritual realm.

It is difficult to tell a paralytic to rise up and walk. He will do that, and that will substantiate his claim that he has a right to also say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." Jesus used his miracles to show that he had authority beyond the physical realm, but authority also in the spiritual realm. In John chapter 9, Christ healed a man who was born blind to illustrate spiritual blindness.

He said to the Pharisees that they did not realize that they were blind. Because he had power to physically open eyes, he wanted them to know that he also has power spiritually to open people's eyes. When you do not know Christ as Savior, you are walking in spiritual darkness and you need him to speak so that your eyes are opened.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Only Jesus Christ is able to open our eyes to see the light of the gospel. Karl Marx was born into a Jewish home, but his father converted to Lutheranism when Karl was a very young child. Karl grew up knowing a lot about Martin Luther. Eventually he made the statement that just as Martin Luther began a revolution in the church, he was going to begin a revolution that would change the world.

He certainly attempted that, and all of us know the impact of Marxism. His father actually believed when his son was 18 years old that he had a demonic spirit. There is evidence throughout Karl Marx's history that his father's analysis is true. I mention that because he is in contrast to D.L. Moody, the founder of Moody Church, who preached the gospel in America as well as Great Britain. We're making available a new book entitled *Marx and Moody: Two Contemporaries, Two Gospels, Two Tombstones, and One Choice*.

I sure hope that you have a pen or pencil handy. You go to rtwoffer.com, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Right now, go to your computer and go to rtwoffer.com.

Announcer: You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Real miracles include raising the dead and feeding the 5,000, the kind of miracles Jesus did to prove he came from God. Next time on Running to Win, more about the amazing life of Christ, a man whose claims were validated by his miracles. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.