Running To Win

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. In the race of life, the clock never stops. Once gone, time cannot be reclaimed. The Bible teaches believers to redeem the time for the days are evil. Time must be used wisely because one day for each of us, time will be no more. 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. We're beginning a series on crowning Christ Lord. Pastor Lutzer, does this mean that if we don't crown him Lord, he is not Lord?

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Dave, of course, the character of Jesus is unaffected by whether or not we crown Him Lord. He is Lord, always has been Lord, will be Lord throughout eternity, regardless of what people think about Him.

But you know, the issue of time. This is a great time, if I might put it this way, a great time to speak about time. Christmas, then New Year. And my, how quickly time goes. And yes, we have to buy it out of the marketplace, as the Apostle Paul told us.

But I'm holding in my hands a book entitled, "Running To Win: 365 Daily Devotions". It's actually written by none other than Evangelist D. L. Moody. And I also contributed to it. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you, and I think it would be a wonderful Christmas gift.

So at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info. What we want you to do is to begin each day, speaking about time, we want you to begin each day with your mind focused on a verse of scripture and an exposition of its truth. But for now, let us listen to this message.

It's great to be back here again. As you know, we were gone last week. My wife and I were in a place called Chattanooga, Tennessee. And you've probably heard of that place and Precept Ministries.

Just so that you remember that your pastor is subject to the same pushes and pulls and vicissitudes of circumstances, I want to tell you how we got there. We left here at noon on Friday, intending to fly down American Airlines to Nashville. From Nashville, catch a plane to Chattanooga, which was to arrive at 5:15, and I was to preach at 7:30 that night.

When we got on the plane here at O'Hare, American said that there was a problem with their plane. It had mechanical difficulties and would not be leaving for at least an hour. We were on the plane and then we were told that. And then they said that the plane would not be going to Nashville because there was too much fog. It would be landing in Birmingham anyway once it did get off the ground.

We thought, well, you know, we're smart. I mean, we're intelligent people. We'll get off American, we'll try to find if there's another flight that'll make it down. Sure enough, you could have suspected it. United had a flight leaving in 15 minutes that would go to Atlanta. We could catch a plane from Atlanta and we could make it to Chattanooga in time.

So we ran over to United because they said, run, you've only got 15 minutes if you know what the distance is between American and United. And so we ran, we ran. And we found out later we could have walked very slowly, but nevertheless. Nevertheless, we ran. We were told that United, American didn't really check to know whether there was room, and technically there wasn't, but the guy was nice and so he decided to put us on the flight anyway.

The first thing we did when we were on the United flight is wait on the airstrip for an hour before takeoff. And then we flew to Atlanta, circled Atlanta for 40 minutes before we landed. By now, of course, there was no way for me to keep my speaking engagement. So the next flight out was at 8:30 from Atlanta to Chattanooga. And so we phoned ahead and said, you know, I won't be there, but we are going to be on this flight.

And Delta has a flight. Well, Delta, we were ready, Delta wasn't, but nevertheless, 8:30 came, 9:30 came, flight hadn't left, 10:30 came, 11:30 in the evening they said, now's time to get on this flight. We got on the plane, all sitting there, ready to fly. I said to my wife, well, at least we'll get there. We didn't have to spend the night in the airport. As soon as we get on the plane, the pilot says, we hate to tell you, but this flight is cancelled. Because, first of all, the airport is closing in Chattanooga at midnight, and it's 20 to 12, and it's almost going to close.

And secondly, fog is beginning to settle in. But if you go to the main desk, they'll put you up for the night and maybe you can get a flight tomorrow. So we went to the main desk, that's a long way to go, you know, just with our hand luggage. We went to the main desk, got there and they said, yes, we can put you up for the night, but we can't guarantee that the plane will fly in the morning because there's going to be fog in the morning. But if you go back to the gate where you were, we will have a bus there that will take you to Chattanooga.

So we went back to the gate where we were. The bus wasn't there at 12:30 as indicated, but it did show up just before 1:00. 4:00 in the morning, we're in Chattanooga, precisely where we're supposed to be. And of course, our baggage was somewhere on that American flight. But my wife, who is very persistent, said, she said, it's probably here at the airport somewhere in Chattanooga.

The whole airport basically locked up at this time of the day or night, I should say. And so we finally find someone who has a uniform, and he convinces a janitor to open this room with American Airlines. And guess what? Our suitcases were there.

Now, just think about this, folks. If we had stayed on the original flight, we'd have arrived there earlier, assuming that we'd have arrived when our suitcases arrived. We don't know when our suitcases arrived, but we know it must have been before midnight because the airport closes at midnight. So we'd have been better off to stay with American. We went with United and ended up getting on at 4:00 in the morning.

My wife said to me, she said, are you upset because we made that decision? I said, no, I'm not upset. And then I told her something that she knows altogether too well already. I said, honey, remember, I'm not God. You know, I've often thought to myself, I've often thought to myself, you know, if I were only God, I wouldn't make such foolish decisions. Have you ever thought of that?

If you knew all the contingencies, if you had all knowledge of things both actual and possible, you wouldn't have to stand up and tell stories like the one that I'm telling you today. But you see, we acted on the basis of the best information we had and we decided that that's what we were going to do.

I had an opportunity to read two books. One that I'll tell you about sometime, and one other, I hope that you catch the humor in the title. The other was entitled a brief history of eternity. And very interesting book about the fact that the universe is actually finite and not infinite. And that is also true of American and United Airlines.

Today, I'm beginning a series of messages on stewardship, particularly on time today. We'll be discussing a number of different areas and I want you to take your bulletin because in the bulletin there is a an outline of the message. How many of you have this outline? Can I see your hands, please?

Now that it's firmly in your hand, I want you to forget about it because the message I'm going to preach is actually based on an outline that was made up at 9:30 last evening, rather than this one that was made up earlier in the week. So what you can do is to take this sheet of paper, some of it will be similar, but use the back of it for the outline that you're going to be getting today. Is that clear? We just want to be clear in what we say.

Sometimes those of us who preach, we come up with one outline early in the week and Saturday evening, things begin to change when you're under the gun. And that's what happens at least two times a year. After the message, you can come up again and tell me whether or not you think I made a wise decision in switching to the outline you're going to get, rather than the one that you thought you were going to get, which is listed here.

I do want you to imagine, however, that every single day you are given $1,440. You need to spend it because at the end of the day, it automatically disappears. If you don't spend it, it's gone. You can't save it, you can't keep it from one day to another. How would you spend $1,440?

Well, you have several options. You may not spend it at all. You may simply say that you're going to just let it disappear. You could spend it on worthless things. You could just impulse buying, buy anything that you see and buy it as quickly as you possibly can so that you can get your money spent before it disappears. That's another possibility.

The third option, of course, is to say in light of the fact that I'm given this much money, I can't keep it until tomorrow. I'm going to budget it and I'm going to use it for items that are most important, and I'm going to spend it very wisely.

I'm sure you've already guessed, but every one of us is given 1,440 minutes every single day. And yet we cannot keep these minutes. We can't put them together and hold on to them because at the end of the day, those minutes are gone forever, and not even God, who can do all things, has promised to ever resurrect them for us.

There's nothing that you can possibly do to repeat yesterday. If you did not spend time in prayer this morning before you came to church, you will never have another opportunity to do so on this particular day. It is gone.

Now, there are some people who are very disorganized in life. They are lazy disorganized. I won't discuss them because clearly none of them are present this morning. There are others who are frantically disorganized, frantically disorganized. They're doing all kinds of things, but they are not necessarily always doing the right and the most helpful things.

Guest (Male): Thank you for that emphasis over there.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: One morning a farmer told his wife he was going to plow the South 40. The tractor needed oil, so he went to the shop to get some. On the way, he noticed the pigs weren't fed, so he proceeded to the corn crib. The feed sacks in the corn crib reminded him that his potatoes were sprouting. On the way to the potato pit, he passed the woodpile, remembered that his wife wanted firewood. By the time he had picked up a few sticks, an ailing chicken passed by.

He dropped the wood, reached for the chicken. When evening arrived, the frustrated farmer had not even oiled the tractor, let alone plowed the field. There are some people who are frantically disorganized.

Then, of course, there are those who are very, very carefully organized and structured. There are some people who become neurotic if they miss one turn in a revolving door. Their life is so energized, and all of us, I think, have within ourselves that kind of anxiety complex. I don't know if you do this, but I do frequently.

You're standing at an elevator, you notice that the that the button has been pushed because it is lit, and yet you go and you push it anyway. You push it anyway. There's something within you that says, things need to be speeded up, and we live in this revved up society. And the problem is, there are some people who are climbing that ladder of success. They are highly organized, but doing essentially things that will not last for eternity and consequently climbing that ladder only to discover someday that it has been leaning against the wrong wall.

What I'd like to do today is to give you three commands about time, three commands about time. Would you take your Bibles and turn, please, to Ephesians, Ephesians chapter five? Ephesians chapter five, where the Apostle Paul links the right use of time with spirituality.

And I might say today, if you are a time waster, you have a spiritual problem because it is God who has given us the time to live upon the earth. Now, you know that when I preach, I use the New American Standard translation. But I prefer the King James here. I didn't look up the King James, but because I memorized the entire book of Ephesians in the King James many, many years ago, I remember how the King James reads, and I prefer that translation.

In verse 15, "Walk circumspectly". Chapter 5, verse 15. "Walk circumspectly, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time." Because the days are evil. The reason I like the King James is because, number one, I like the word circumspectly. And number two, because it says, "Redeem the time".

And that is the first command that I want to give you today, and I want you to know that that is exactly the Greek word that is used. It is the word redemption. My translation says, make most of your time. Well, of course, if you redeem the time, you do make the most of it. But I like the word redeem. Agorazo has to do with buying something. Exagorazo means to buy it out of the marketplace, to take something home with you, to purchase something.

Redeem the time because the days are evil. Time must be seized. It must be bought out of that 24-hour period. Let me answer a couple of questions. What do we buy the time out of? Well, I've already hinted. All the other demands that are put upon us. And we live in a society where never before have we had so many options. Never before have there been so many opportunities to waste time. They're all around us.

There's television, there's videos. Some good friends of ours from Moody Church lent to my children over the Christmas holidays a game called Nintendo. Have you ever heard of that? And I played it a couple of times. And I thought, you know, a guy could actually get hooked on this nonsense. There are all kinds of things that there are in existence today that can waste our time. Even things that aren't bad, but they just do not have any long-term eternal consequences.

And I want you to know today that all of these demands that we so easily say yes to can squeeze out of us every drop of spiritual life. Until our entire life is being taken up by other demands which we are constantly saying yes to. And when Paul wrote this passage of scripture, he says, "Buy the time out of all of these things that will not last forever." Seize the time.

You say, well, how much does it cost? If the word redeem means that a price needs to be paid, how much does it cost to redeem the time? Well, it costs plenty because every time you say yes to something good, you are saying no to something that really is second-rate.

Every time you say yes to one half hour of Bible reading, you're saying no to a hundred different options that could press upon your soul. Every time you're saying yes to the Lord and say, "God, I am going to pray and commit myself to you, and I'm going to let my heart be refreshed in your presence." You need to say no to all those other demands and to all those other options.

You see, that's why the Bible says, "Redeem the time. Take the time, make the time." Beneath my very calm exterior, sometimes I have within myself a restlessness, a a sense of anxiety. I think probably all pastors do. Maybe that's just the way God wired us.

But when I'm here at the office, and by the way, some of you think possibly that I spend my whole week studying. I want you to know that that is one of the lesser things that is actually scheduled into my regular program, simply because of the counseling and the letters and the administration. And I'm not complaining, that's that's my responsibility, and I enjoy what I'm doing. But but Friday afternoon, I knew that the whole afternoon was going to be just just taken up with a lot of little things that need to be done for the weekend.

And one of the members of the staff said to me, he said, let's just get out of here for an hour. So we we left and we took some books with us and we went to across the street to the Historical Society, went up to the library there and spent an hour and 15 minutes just just reading. I'm reading a book on the Puritans. Incredibly interesting book. And what a delight it was to just just leave everything behind for an hour and 15 minutes and go to read.

And I thought to myself, you know, that's what the text is talking about when it says, "Redeem the time". There are times when you just got to say no to it all and say, "I've got to do what really, really matters and just do it." And I say to you today, pursue God, just do it. Do it.

You see, we have this idea somehow that if we're going to be godly, there's going to be time to be godly. And after we've done everything else, then God gets the end of the bargain and and that's sufficient for the Almighty. We think to ourselves that somehow our our disciplines of godliness are going to fall in line all by themselves. What a foolish notion.

We organize to be successful. We organize to get things done. We need to organize if we want to know God because it takes time. It takes time. And you know, my friend, one of the best examples of someone who used his time wisely was none other than Dwight L. Moody.

As a matter of fact, there were people who said that he was a bundle of motion, constantly encouraging people, constantly speaking, always desiring to win people to Jesus Christ. What a marvelous leader, what a marvelous evangelist he was. And you know, it's my privilege to have written a devotional incorporating some of his material.

And in this way, it is our desire here at Running To Win that you focus on one verse of scripture every single day. So we're making this volume available for you for a gift of any amount. And of course, I'd like to mention, Christmas is just around the corner. Make a great Christmas gift.

Here's what you do, go to RTWoffer.com. RTWoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. The title of the devotional is "Running To Win: 365 Daily Devotions". And we believe that they will encourage you and remind you of that which is most important. We'll also get a glimpse into the heart of D.L. Moody, but at the same time, our desire is to point you to God's Word.

Once again, that contact info, RTWoffer.com, or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. I have to say that we here at Running To Win enjoy making resources available for you because we want to help you even as we join your hands and run toward the finish line.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question you may have about the Bible or the Christian life. Recently, Tommy emailed us these questions about fasting. Over the years, I've heard so many different ways of fasting. Some say, you can't eat or drink anything during your fast. Others say, you should drink water. And how long should a fast be? What are the technicalities of fasting? What does it look like? And what is the biblical way to fast?

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, Tommy, I want to thank you for your question because there are many Christians today who never fast. And some of us fast only very rarely. But we should. Jesus assumed that we should. He said, "When you fast." He assumed that believers would fast. Couple of things. First of all, fasting has physical benefits. No question about it that if you were to fast, for example, for a week or longer, 21 days, there would be pain in your body.