Running To Win

Dave McAllister: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Keeping appointments is crucial for business success, but God has a heavenly iPhone for His people and sometimes He calls with sudden changes in His list of things for us to do.

Today, how the Holy Spirit sets the agenda for a child of God. 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.

Pastor Lutzer, I'm really glad that God sees what's up ahead a lot farther than we can. What may seem to us to be coincidences are actually divine appointments when God is first.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Dave, as a matter of fact, I could give you some examples in my own life as I witnessed to people. They were indeed divine appointments. But you know, it's also true that through the ministry of radio, we find that there are those who have divine appointments.

And at the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be giving you some contact info, but also reading for you a testimony from someone who listens to this ministry in East Africa. Why East Africa? Well, you've probably heard me say it before, but we are in 50 different countries, in seven different languages, and we hope to expand.

But at the same time, I want you today to be edified. And later on, we'll help you on your spiritual journey by reminding you that we are really all a part of running this race together.

So what does it mean to put God first? We're learning, aren't we? One of the things that God demands when we put Him first is it is the end of our individual rights. I no longer have a right to this, a right to that, because my rights have been laid at the foot of the cross when God is first. When God is first, we develop intimacy with the Holy Spirit.

You may be saying, "Well, Pastor Lutzer, since you're preaching these sermons on putting God first, what has this series of messages meant to you?" And you know, of course, that my messages do me a whole lot more good than they do you. Because if they don't do good to me, they can't do good to you.

One of the things that has grown out of it is my desire to really seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Because it's interesting that I read in Acts chapter 2, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said this and that. And then we read that Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit. Philip, filled with the Holy Spirit. And I'm saying to myself, "I think I've experienced some of the filling of the Spirit, but I think that there's something deeper that I need to get." I read what these men experienced and it was wonderful indeed.

So we're all learning, aren't we, what it means to put God first, completely first in our lives? Because you see, what God wants to do is to say, "I want to use you. I want to direct you. I want to help you. And I need to be not only resident, but I need to be president. I need to be first."

We deceive ourselves in this area, of course. We say that God is first and the reason we know it's true is because we've sung the right songs or we've said the right words. But if you're really honest before God, you know that making Him first is more difficult than you realize it is.

Today, we're going to look at the life of a man who was a deacon who ended up being an evangelist and who discovered that when God is first, God controls our appointments. He directs our lives to an appointed end. The story is in Acts chapter 8. Philip, whom we met last time as one of the deacons who was chosen in Acts chapter 6, Philip is having a great revival in Samaria.

It says in Acts chapter 8, verse 4, "Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed Christ there. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they paid close attention to what he said. And evil spirits came out of people, and the crowd just got larger." I have to tell you in all honesty, preachers love crowds. The more people, the better.

Here Philip is experiencing a great revival and suddenly the Holy Spirit says, "Leave what you are doing and go to the desert because there's somebody there whose heart I am preparing for the gospel." And when God is first in our lives, first of all, He sends us. I'm actually reading now verse 26. "Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Go south to the road, the desert road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.' So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch." "Go," God says.

Isn't it interesting that the angel tells Philip to go, but the angel can't spread the gospel himself? Angels know the gospel. They saw Jesus Christ die. They understand the terms of the gospel without taking Evangelism Explosion courses. The angels get it right. God says, "No, no, no angel. If the gospel is to be proclaimed, it is to be through the voice of a human servant." So God says, "Go, Philip. Go and make the invisible God visible to this man who is seeking."

And so the Spirit of God said to him, "Go, I'm sending you." Some time ago, my wife sent me to the post office to send a package. I didn't take the package and just leave it at the post office and say, "Well, go ahead, pay your own postage." Packages aren't used to paying their own postage. You have to pay it for them.

In the very same way, when God sends us, He gives us the resources to do His will. And so when the Holy Spirit of God said to Philip, "Go," God says, "Philip, I've given you a good pair of legs because you're going to need this pair of legs to catch the chariot." And God says, "I'm going to give you whatever it is that you need to fulfill My will. Go and I will give you what you need to accomplish what I intend to be accomplished."

And so the Spirit of God said to him, "Go." When Jesus said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel," what was the rest of the verse? "Lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the age." Yes, He sends us. Listen to me carefully. God does not send you anywhere that the grace of God can't keep you and bless you. When He sends, He provides.

Secondly, the Spirit of God guides us. You'll notice that he starts out and on his way he meets an Ethiopian and an important official of the charge of all the treasure of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, "Go to that chariot and stay near it."

So Philip is running along and the Spirit now is speaking to him and saying, "Just stay near the chariot, stay by it, don't get too close yet because he's in only Isaiah 52. And what I want to do is to get him into Isaiah 53 before you connect." So give him a couple of minutes, just hang near the chariot, run alongside, but don't interact with him just yet.

So Philip is walking along and running along alongside the chariot and then the Spirit says, "Now it's time because he's into Isaiah 53." And so Philip catches him in Isaiah 53 and says to this man, "Do you understand what you're reading?" And he says, "How can I? I can't unless it's explained to me." Talk about God instrumental in connecting the very timing of this event.

Now, what do we know about this Ethiopian? He was an African from south of Egypt. That's where Ethiopia was in those days. It was a large region south of Egypt. We know that he was an official. We know that he was wealthy. He was riding in a chariot. That was the BMW of the age for sure. Not everybody had their own chariot. We also know that he had power, but he was spiritually empty.

Here's a man who's willing to leave his own religion, his own region, go all the way to Jerusalem, about 200 miles. And as he approached the temple, I'm sure that he thought, "This is where I'm going to find God." And he gets there and discovers hypocrisy and emptiness and deadness, lectures about the law. And he returns empty.

And so Philip says, "Do you understand what you're reading?" And he says in verse 31, "How can I unless somebody explains it to me?" So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture: "He was led like a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so He did not open His mouth. In His humiliation He was deprived of justice. Who can speak of His descendants? For His life was taken from the earth."

And so the Ethiopian says, "Tell me please, who is the prophet talking about? Himself or someone else?" And Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. The man's reading right in Isaiah 53 where Jesus is presented as the Lamb of God giving Himself up for the life of the world, the substitution of Jesus on the cross for sinners. What better passage to preach Jesus?

Have you ever met somebody who's got it all? Somebody who has money, who has a focused career, somebody who is wealthy, somebody who's in the higher strata of society? And you've thought to yourself, "What in the world do I have to share with him? Why would he be interested in Jesus?" I want you to know today he may have all that and more and yet be very, very empty.

One of the reasons you find people who are so driven oftentimes is because they're trying to cover the emptiness in their lives that they will not face. Here's a man who in Jerusalem experienced religion but not reality, form but not fulfillment, law but not grace. He was introduced to Judaism but not to Jesus. And he met the priests who offered sacrifices, but he left without any peace. Doesn't that describe many, many people in Chicago and in the cities of this nation?

They go to the temples, they go to the synagogues, they go to the mosques, they go to the cathedrals, they go to the churches, but they're empty. It's just a form, just a form. I was in Winnipeg this week for a few moments passing through to visit my parents who incidentally are doing well. My mother had her 95th birthday and my father, as you know, is 101.

The day I arrived, the first thing he said to me after I gave him a hug was, he said, "Yesterday I read the entire book of Ephesians from beginning to end." That's not bad for 101. That's pretty good, I'd say. I'll tell you this, I don't expect to be reading the book of Ephesians at 101.

But in the airport, I met a woman from England and I began to strike up a conversation with her. And then it was interrupted and it didn't exactly go as far as I had hoped. She was on her way to England; I was on my way to the other direction. But I asked her whether she attended church and she said, "No, very few people in England attend church, maybe two or three percent."

What I was going to say to her is I cannot imagine anything as boring as church if you don't know God. I mean, what could be more boring? I'm surprised that we have as many people in churches sometimes than we do because unless you're connected with God, unless you're introduced to Jesus, it's got to be boring.

Do you realize that there are millions of people in Chicago who know Jesus like I know Michael Jordan? I've read what he can do, I know his abilities, I know a little bit about his history, I know where he fits, I know about his fame, but I've never met him. I've never looked into his eyes. We've never shared a cup of coffee together. I can't really say I know him. I know of him, but I do not know him.

And the answer to the emptiness of our lives is to know Him. I love the text that says Peter began at that text and began to preach unto him. He wasn't just sharing. Now, we share today. Everything is shared. Nobody preaches; we just share. And that's fine, just share. But it says he preached Jesus to him.

God sends us. God guides us. And then God works through us. You know, they're traveling along and they get to talk about the gospel and he tells him the good news about Jesus. It says in verse 36, "As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, 'Look, here's water, why shouldn't I be baptized?'" Where'd he get that idea from? Philip must have told him that when you accept Christ as Savior, you should identify with Christ through baptism. Philip probably told him that.

And there is a verse, verse 37, that does not occur in some of the earliest manuscripts. Perhaps a scribe inserted it to help us here a little bit to fill in a gap because the verse that's inserted says that Philip said, "If you believe with all of your heart, you may," and the eunuch answered, "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God." Now, even though that particular verse may not have been a part of the original text, clearly something like that happened along this desert road. The eunuch believed in Jesus.

And the minute he believed in Jesus, he wanted everybody in his caravan to know that he was a Christian. So he says, "Stop the chariot because there's water here. I want to be baptized." I'm amazed at the number of born-again Christians who talk their way out of obedience to Jesus when it comes to baptism. They've got every excuse in the book. They say, "Well, you know, I am saved. You don't need to to go to heaven," which is true, but you need to to be obedient to God and to Jesus.

In the early church, there was no such thing as an unbaptized Christian. When people got saved, they were baptized. So don't talk your way out of baptism. And so he says, "I want to go down into the water." I don't think he just had a couple of drops of water sprinkled on him, but we won't go there this morning. Simple fact is he said, "I want to be baptized."

Notice what the rest of the text is. Philip baptized him. Verse 39, "They came up out of the water. The Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away." Was this a miracle? Was he just snatched away? It almost seems that way. Maybe it just simply means that the Holy Spirit said to Philip, "Philip, you've got another assignment. Leave him now." However, the eunuch did not see him again. I hope that they had enough time to say goodbye, but the eunuch went on his way rejoicing.

Wow, the burden had been lifted. Do you remember Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress talks about Christian finding an answer to the burden, to the emptiness, to the weight of guilt, to those flashes of guilt that come to our mind, to the recognition that we have sinned, that we are alienated from God with all of the emptiness that that brings about? And then suddenly he gets to the cross and his burden is rolled, as it were, symbolically speaking, onto the cross and he feels so much lighter because he has been converted. And so we have the story of a marvelous conversion.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. Could I have a moment of your time? I want to tell you a story about what happened to me recently and how God put me next to a sinner who needed to hear the gospel. I was sitting on a plane, the plane was being filled with people, and a man walked by me and I could not read his very confused tattoo. I asked him what it was about and he said, "This is going back to the time when I was a rebel." I said, "You know, God can change rebels." Well, of course, by then he had moved on and he sat at the back of the plane somewhere and when I deplaned, he caught up to me and said, "What do you mean when you say God can change rebels?"

So there I was sharing the good news of the gospel, helping him to understand what God has done for him. I mention that for this reason: God is constantly connecting people who need the gospel with those who can explain it. And of course, we thank God so much that He does this all the time through the ministry of Running to Win.

For example, I'm holding in my hands here a letter from someone who listens in East Africa. And this person says, "Thank you so much for the Word of God. I am a new listener and your teachings help me so much every day. Running to Win continues to minister to me with a powerful teaching transforming my life. My spiritual life is being nourished. Thank you so much, a listener in East Africa."

How we thank God for all these opportunities and you, my friend, are a part of our ministry and a part of those opportunities. Would you consider becoming what we call an endurance partner? I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I want to give you some contact info. Here's what you can do: go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com and when you're there, you click on the endurance partner button. At least investigate it. Go to rtwoffer.com, click on the endurance partner button or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. We invite you to join us as we connect with people who need the gospel of Jesus Christ in their spiritual life.

Dave McAllister: It's time once again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Today's question comes from Ted in North Carolina, and I believe it's a question many people would like the answer to. He writes, "There are some passages in the Bible that seem to teach that we can be physically healed through faith, yet we see very few genuine healings today. How do you account for this?"

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, Ted, I want you to know that indeed that is a question, as Dave mentioned, that many people ask. The bottom line is this: there is no promise in the Bible that we can be healed physically whenever we want to be. Oh, it is true that when Jesus died on the cross, that death included us body, soul, and spirit. But we will not have the privilege of entering into our inheritance fully until the day of resurrection.

In fact, Jesus died to abolish death and yet we die. Even faith healers die. So we need to understand that sometimes those promises that are referred to are misapplied and misunderstood.

Now, secondly, the question of why we don't find a whole lot of healings today. It is true that in certain periods of biblical history God did many miracles, then there were other times when there were fewer. But here's my question to you, Ted. Can you and I go on trusting God even if He doesn't heal? You remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Our Lord is able to deliver us from the furnace, but if He doesn't, we will continue to trust Him.

Before Dr. James Montgomery Boice died, he gave a marvelous speech to his church. He said, "If the Lord wants to heal me, He could heal me. Sure, go ahead and pray for my healing." But he says, "I've not seen a lot of healings in my life." But he says, "I'm dying trusting God and trusting His providence." That kind of faith honors the Lord our God.

Dave McAllister: Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your questions answered, go to rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer or you can 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 all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago. In Acts chapter 8, God went to unusual lengths to get the gospel to a needy Ethiopian. You know what? He does the same for all who come to Christ. Next time on Running to Win, we wrap up our series "When God is First," seeing how God guarantees the circumstances of our salvation. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.