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. The Star Wars films saw good and evil as two sides of a coin, the force, with a good side and a dark side. While we don't take theology from Hollywood, we all know there's a great struggle going on between good and evil. Stay with us.

Dave: 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. Pastor Lutzer, they call it the conflict of the ages. It's between God and Satan, and the consequences are everywhere. Tell us where we're headed as you teach today about God at war.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, Dave, at the beginning in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis, God promised the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. So when you read the Old Testament, what you discover is Satan had so many different schemes to try to thwart God's purposes, and God always outwitted him. And that's the way it has been and it will be into the future. That's why I'm so encouraged as we listen to this series of messages.

But even as you listen today, my friend, I want to ask you a question. Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? An endurance partner is somebody who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts and helps us get messages like this around the world. At the end of this message, I'll be giving you some contact info. Meanwhile, pray about the possibility of joining what I like to call the Running to Win family. But for now, let us listen.

Now my topic today is God at war. God at war. It was Toynbee who said, "Blessed is the nation that has no history, for history is a record of war." I'm not going to be talking about military battles, physical battles, because those kinds of battles take place on earth between countries. I'm talking about battles that go on in the human heart. I'm talking about the conflict that has been going on for centuries between God and the devil, and it's a conflict in which you and I are directly involved, whether we want to or not or whether we know about it or not. We are a part of what is happening.

In order to set the context, I want you to turn to Genesis chapter three where we find most things got their start. Genesis chapter three. We find that the Lord, of course, is cursing Satan, giving him a curse. Now remember that the first message of this series was God when He was alone. The next message I spoke about the fall of Satan. Last week was man, the casualty. And this time we're speaking about the conflict between God and Satan.

Genesis 3:15 has sometimes been considered as the John 3:16 of the Old Testament. Let me read it to you: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman"—the Lord here, by the way, is speaking to the serpent—"I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel." You say, "What is the text saying here? It doesn't seem to be very clear."

First of all, let me explain that Satan's seed refers to demons and all the people of the world who side with Satan against God. And the text says that there will also be the seed of the woman, that is the righteous seed culminating in Jesus Christ, in the birth of Christ the Redeemer. So with that background, let's try to understand the text this way.

First of all, the Lord says that a Redeemer is going to come, but there is going to be conflict. I will put enmity, I will put hostility between the work of Satan and the work of God. There's going to be war. And that's what we're talking about. Furthermore, the Lord not only says there's going to be war, but He predicts how it's going to come out. What is Satan going to be able to do? He will nip the heel of the Redeemer. That's the best he'll do.

He will nip the heel of the Redeemer, but what will the Redeemer do? The Redeemer will bruise or crush his head. I'm told that serpents have their poison in their head. And so what Jesus is going to do is to stomp on the devil and twist him into the dirt and end his authority and reverse his work. But there's going to be enmity. There's going to be war. Is Satan going to give up? No. Is he going to lose? Yes. Are you and I involved in the conflict? You bet.

What I'd like to do today is to give you an example of three conflicts that Satan has been involved in, in which God has allowed him to win some tremendous victories, awesome victories, but in the end, the victories are illusory because it only hastens Satan's judgment. And to do that, we're going to be looking at a number of passages of scripture, some we will be reading, others I will simply recall to your mind.

The first conflict is when Satan tries to destroy the race. He tries to destroy the race. If we had time to read chapter four, we'd find out that Cain kills Abel. Who was Cain's inspiration? The Bible says in first John that Cain killed Abel because he was of that evil one. Why was that important to Satan? It's because, you see, Satan can't see the future. He doesn't know that it's going to take thousands of years for the Redeemer to be born. And he probably is thinking that Abel, who is a righteous child, likely is going to be the one who's going to crush him on the head.

Because you see, he can't foresee the future. He can know what people are thinking, he can know what is being planned, especially those who belong to him, but he cannot predict the future. When President Kennedy was shot in Dallas many years ago, all kinds of soothsayers came forward and said, "I predicted it." Have you ever noticed that it's much easier to predict an event after it has happened than before? Have you ever noticed that?

If you buy those newspapers at the beginning of the year with all those predictions, keep one of those sometime. Keep it for a few years and see how many of them came true. Very, very few. As many as you and I might be able to predict. So you see, what Satan tries to do, though, is he has two tactics. The first is: kill the righteous seed. That's number one. Number two: if you can't kill them, corrupt them.

He tries to kill Abel, and Abel is killed. And what does God do? God gives Adam and Eve another son whose name is Seth, and the word Seth means substitute. And so Satan begins to understand that no matter how many he kills, God will only give another one, and therefore he changes his tactics and he says, "I'm going into corruption now."

Turn to Genesis chapter six. It says in verse two that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, whatever they chose. And then it says, verse three, the Lord said, "My spirit shall not always strive with man." Verse four: "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were old men of renown." You say, "What in the world is going on here?"

In every other place where the expression "sons of God" occurs in the Hebrew Bible, it's a reference to angels. So I take this text to be a reference to fallen angels involved in illicit sexual moral activity, either directly—you say that's absurd, that's 18th century, that's medieval. Oh yeah? I've spoken to people who have been so given over to immorality that they had sexual experiences that were demonic. Or perhaps these demonic spirits were simply energizing the people in their sexual activity.

But at any rate, the evil is so profound that it says in verse five, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously." Wow. What a society. I can imagine Satan saying to himself, "I've won, I've won, I've won, I've won. The whole race is corrupted. There is no good seed that's going to bruise me." Verse eight: "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord."

One man, one family. And that's all that God needs. Do you see how close God is willing to allow Satan to come to a point of victory and then suddenly cuts him off and doesn't allow him to have what he thinks he might have? And so he has to snatch defeat out of the very jaws of victory. It's so close, but there's Noah.

Let me give you another example of a battle that Satan appears to win and then eventually loses. First of all, he tries to destroy the race. Now, if you look at Genesis chapter 12, you remember God called Abraham and the Lord said that Abraham is going to be the one who will be the righteous seed. And it says in verse three—I'm assuming you know the text here, 12, verse three—"I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

Obviously a not-so-veiled reference to the coming Redeemer. So it's going to be through the seed of Abraham that all the families of the earth are going to receive blessing. Satan, understanding this, begins a persecution process. Remember, his two methods are kill, and if killing doesn't work, corrupt. So afterwards, Abraham has a number of sons. You know the story of how they go into Egypt, and once they're in Egypt under the leadership of Pharaoh, what is Satan trying to do? To exterminate the seed of Abraham.

And so Pharaoh says, "I'm going to try to kill people by hard labor." And then he says to the midwives, "When a child is being born, if he is a male child, kill him." Extermination of what we now call the Jewish race. That's what he was after. Did it work? Well, not quite, because God allowed the people to get out of Egypt after inflicting judgment on the gods of Egypt. You know that all of those plagues in the book of Exodus, every single one was directed to a different Egyptian god.

For example, they used to worship the Nile River. What does the Lord do? The Nile turns to blood and it's unusable. They used to worship the sun. What does God do? Darkness is upon the face of the land and the sun doesn't shine. God is mocking the gods of Egypt. It says in Exodus chapter 12, verse 12, "Against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment; I am the Lord." Some people escape. They go through the Red Sea, they end up in the desert, eventually they get into the land. Extermination didn't work. So Satan changes his strategy and he moves to corruption.

And so when the people are in the land, what do you read in the Book of Samuel and in the Book of Kings? Nothing but idolatry. The people worshipping the pagan gods, and no matter how much righteousness there was in the land, generation after generation, it always collapsed again and there was idolatry all over the place. And eventually God says, "I've had enough," and He allowed the Assyrians to come in and carry off 27,000 people to Assyria where they lived there as refugees.

And then He allowed the Babylonians to come in and to carry off thousands of people into Babylon. And Satan again is waving the flag and saying, "I've won, I've won, I've won." Well, not quite. There were some people who came back. They came back 70 years later and they started to rebuild a temple and all. And the reason that you have all those genealogies in Ezra, Nehemiah is God is making sure that we understand that His prediction to Abraham is being fulfilled and the genealogy is being preserved because things are being set up for the coming of Jesus Christ onto planet earth. And Satan seems to be so close, but God always wins.

Let me give you a third example. He tries to corrupt the whole race. He tries to corrupt the whole nation. Now he tries to destroy a baby. Tries to destroy a baby. Turn to Matthew chapter two for just a moment. Matthew chapter two. What's going on here in the text? Well, we find out that Herod wants to worship Jesus. Ha, ha, ha, ha. The Magi come to Jerusalem and they say, "We're looking for the Christ Child." Incidentally, the star did not lead them to Bethlehem; it led them to Jerusalem so that the scribes could tell them what the scripture says.

People think that just because they were led by the star, people are into astrology, which the Bible forbids. It is rebellion against God for people to go by the horoscopes. But I want you to notice Herod, of course, is so kind, isn't he? Verse eight of chapter two, he sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make careful search for the child, and when you have found him, report to me that I may come and worship him also." The liar.

They of course worship Christ, and then they are warned and they go into Egypt. And Jesus and his parents go into Egypt, and Herod finds out about it in verse 16. It says, "When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, he became very enraged and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in its environs from two years old and under according to the time which he had ascertained from the Magi." He says, "I'm going to kill them." And he didn't know which baby to kill, so he says, "I'm going to kill the whole works."

Satan says to himself, "Surely I'm going to win this victory." Did he win the victory? No. What happened was Jesus and his parents had slipped away into Egypt and escaped the hand of this dictator who was more interested in killing people than he was in any kind of righteousness. All right, I've already told you, Satan has two methods. Number one, he always tries to kill. That's his preference. You say, "Well, how strong is he?" It says in the Book of Hebrews that Satan has the power of death.

Awesome. That's what he likes to do. He's the destroyer. He'd like to kill us and to kill the people of God. Does he pull it off? No, he doesn't pull it off. Jesus eludes his grasp, so he moves on to plan B: corruption. He says, "I can't kill him, I'm going to corrupt him." He takes him into the desert and says, "Look, command these stones that they be made bread." In other words, do a miracle independently of God.

And if you don't want to do that, bow down and worship me. Fall into the sin of idolatry. And if you do that, I'm going to give you all the kingdoms of the earth and their glory. And he had the right to do that, by the way, because Jesus didn't rebuke him. He's trying to corrupt the Son of God. What audacity the devil has, but it's his best shot. He's desperate. Jesus, of course, says no to all of the temptations.

And once again now, Satan has a real dilemma on his hands because he knows that Jesus is the Redeemer. He doesn't quite understand all that is going to happen, but he doesn't know now whether to support the crucifixion of Jesus Christ or to be against it. What is he supposed to do in the middle of this? If he allows the Jews to accept Christ by not offering any resistance and they embrace Jesus as Messiah, Jesus would be embraced by the nation, possibly establishing the kingdom, and of course, we knew that He had to die.

But he can't stand the nation accepting Christ as Messiah. So he, as a last-ditch effort, inspires the nation to nail Jesus Christ to the cross. And for a few brief moments, he is gleeful. It is ambivalent madness, because he thinks to himself, "I have put the Son of God on the cross"—which incidentally is the topic of my sermon next week. He says, "I've put Jesus on the cross," and he gets that momentary delight of seeing Christ appear in all weakness hanging there, dying like a common criminal.

Oh, moments of delight, right? Oh, listen, did God have anything to do with that? Turn to Acts chapter four for just a moment. How well did Satan do to thwart the purpose of God? Did he really derail God's program? No. Chapter four, verse 27 of Acts: "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur." I love it. It's fantastic.

Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. And let's remind ourselves: God always wins. You know, even in countries that oftentimes we think the gospel does not penetrate, God also wins there. I'm holding in my hands a letter that we received from a listener, an Arabic listener in Iraq. And in a moment, I'll be telling you why it is that we're able to get the gospel in different languages.

But this person says, "As a mother, your program opened my eyes to how bitterness and unresolved family conflicts were poisoning my home. I wept while listening. For the first time, I saw that the enemy wasn't outside, but inside me. It was unforgiveness. I want to ask God to heal my family, starting with me. Thank you." Now you might be wondering, how is it that Running to Win can go around the world? Well, I'll tell you, it's because of people just like you.

Would you consider joining us and becoming an endurance partner, someone who runs the race with us? Now here's what you can do to get more info. Go to rtwoffer.com. Click on the endurance partner button. I'll give you that again in a moment. Or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Right now, you can go to your computer, go to rtwoffer, all one word, rtwoffer.com, click on the endurance partner button and join hands with us as we run toward the finish line.

Dave: Time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Amy in Carrollton, Texas, listens to Running to Win on KDKR. She's been deeply hurt and wants to know this: "How do we respond to those who've wronged us, but don't acknowledge any wrongdoing on their part, or say that no wrongdoing ever occurred? Everyone involved in this situation is a Christian or claims to be. What's your advice?"

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: My advice is simply this. There are so many issues in life that you and I cannot sort out. For example, you say everyone involved is a Christian. Are they Christians? We don't really know. Jesus said that in this life the wheat and the tares, they grow together. So sometimes we look at a person's life and we may say that they are Christians. They may claim to be Christians, but there's no fruit. There's really no evidence. But let's assume they are.

Number one, the Bible says that as far as it is possible, as much as depends on you, live at peace with all men. If you have gone to them and you have shared your heart and they have rejected it and they say that you are wrong or that there is no problem, you've done as much as you can. You now leave them to God. You must forgive them, and the reason you must forgive them is so that you are not under their control.

People who have been wronged and don't forgive are always connected with those who have wronged them. It's almost as if there's a chain from one to the other. Forgive them and break the chain. Leave the consequences with God. God knows how to settle the accounts, and we have to trust Him to do it in His way and in His time. But let the problem go, let the people go, and let God take over.

Dave: Thank you, Pastor Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church. Next time, more about God at war. Don't miss it.