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.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Someone has said, what you think, you are. We must protect our minds from the devil's attacks, and the helmet of salvation is what we need when doubts arise about our status as God's children. Today, how to use this piece of the armor of God.

Dave McAllister: 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, clearly our minds are prime targets when the enemy wants to plant doubts about our salvation.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, you know, Dave, I do want to clarify that there are some people who doubt their salvation, and it's good that they do because they aren't saved. But at the same time, what you're talking about is the fact that even those who have savingly believed on Christ and belong to him, the enemy wants to attack us. And you're right, he wants us to lack assurance because then we never quite know where we are with God.

This is the last day that we are making a special resource available for you. It's a book I've written entitled, How You Can Be Sure That You Will Spend Eternity With God. Now, this is so critical. I'm going to be giving you the contact info right now. I hope that you have a pen or pencil whereby you can write this down. You can go to rtwoffer.com or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Remember the title of the book, How You Can Be Sure That You Will Spend Eternity With God. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, I am going to be giving you that contact info again after this message. But remember, it is possible for you to know and to have the privilege of knowing that you do belong to God forever.

Let me begin today by asking a question. What comes to mind when I say the word Satan? He was created to be an angel, and then he rebelled against God. And so far as we know, took one-third of the other angels with him. Two-thirds of the angels still give praise to God, but Satan rebelled that he might no longer be God's servant. But in a sense, he still is. He is still under God's authority and under God's reign and will always be.

We're caught up in the battle. Satan is allowed to have a certain amount of power, a power limited, of course, by God, and we are involved in the contest. And what he wants to do is to discover in us something, some entry point whereby he might gain a foothold. It could be any number of things. But it can be something like a computer.

A mother came to me deeply heartbroken over her daughter who had been on the computer and found a website. Now, there are all kinds of good websites, but there are a lot of destructive ones. I'm not only talking about pornography, I'm talking about occultism. I'm talking about people meeting others and hooking up with others on the computer. And when that happens, there is an obsession that begins to develop and Satan knows that he has people where he wants them. And they can get out of it if they understand the power of Christ, but oh, how he likes to deceive.

Well, today we're going to be talking about the helmet of salvation. It's found, of course, in the sixth chapter of the book of Ephesians, but I do not want you to turn there today. I have another passage that is going to help to explain what the helmet of salvation is all about. But I begin today by telling you that this will be the most important message that you have ever heard or probably ever will hear.

Now, I'm sure that you will hear many messages that are much more eloquent than this one. You may often hear messages that are much more interesting than this one, but there is none that is more important than this discussion of the helmet of salvation and what it means, who's got it, who doesn't have it, and how to pick it up if you've lost it.

Today, I'm speaking to two categories of people. The first category I could classify as unbelievers. Now, that's not very complimentary, but you need to understand that when I say unbelievers, that does not mean that I'm talking to the atheists. There may be some atheists listening and so you're an unbeliever, but not necessarily. You can be an unbeliever and be a seeker and be here today at the church to check us out. And we're glad that you are here to check us out.

You may be wondering about Christianity and exploring it, and at this point, you still have not made that faith commitment in the sense that you've transferred your trust to Jesus. And so you're still in that category, but you're investigating it and I say, keep investigating the Christian faith. You may even love Jesus and still not and still not be in the category of believers.

Now, if you're an unbeliever, I'll tell you exactly what the devil wants to do with you based on Second Corinthians. He wants you to be content, to be very content in your self-assured view of yourself and the world and your relationship with God. He wants to strengthen that sense of contentment. As a matter of fact, he would like to be able to do that and to keep you even from hearing the rest of this message.

Do you realize that there are some people who are listening to me today who are going to find it difficult to track with me, even though I hope that I am clear? They're going to find that they wander. They're going to find this sense of indrawn contentment, and it is going to keep them from hearing what they really need to hear. So even though it's a battle, hang in with me and we're going to make it together to the end, aren't we? I always say it's my responsibility to speak, it's your responsibility to listen, and I've been praying that we shall end at the same time.

And then there's another category of people, and you are the believers. God bless you. I'll tell you what Satan wants to do with you. He wants to shatter your confidence that you have savingly believed. What he wants to do is to cast doubt on the promises of God, so on the one hand, in the lives of those who haven't believed, what he wants to do is to strengthen self-confidence. In your life, what he wants to do is to destroy the confidence that you've put in the scriptures and the promises. And by the time this message is over, I hope that I've spoken to both groups and that you've been helped in determining what side of the ledger you are on and how you should proceed from here.

Imagine doing all that in the next 20 or 25 minutes with your help and with God's guidance, I trust and pray. What is the helmet of salvation? What is a helmet? Well, you know that if you play football without a helmet, you know what can happen. When you're without a helmet, a number of things can happen. You can go into confusion, and you don't know which end is up. And that's true of some minds, especially when it comes to the gospel. They find it all very confusing and they can't fit it in.

Another thing you can do is you can actually be in a coma and be unaware basically and build your own reality. You know, it is said that psychotics build castles in the air and neurotics live in them. You can build your own reality and you can be very content in doing so when you lose or do not have the helmet of salvation.

Now, I want you to take your Bibles because it's important that you look at the text with me. And the text is First John. Not the Gospel of John, but near the end of the Bible, close to the book of Revelation, you come to First John. Now, there are many of you who say, Pastor Lutzer, every Sunday I bring my Bible to church, but I forgot it today. And this is the first time you've forgotten it. So please take a Bible that is there in the seat ahead of you. It's there for you and turn to page 1,023. 1,023. And if the person next to you doesn't still have a Bible, well then you share yours with them because we need to look at the text.

First John, and we're going to begin now, chapter five. Chapter five. And before I read, I need to tell you what's going on. In the early days when John was writing, there was a group of people named Gnostics. We became acquainted with them, didn't we, during the great Da Vinci Code debate? The Gnostics. The Gnostics tried to combine Christianity with Platonism. So they ended up with some very strange views about Jesus, many different views about Jesus.

One of the views was that Jesus became the Christ at his baptism. The Christ spirit came upon him at his baptism. Now he was born just a man, Jesus, but at his baptism, the Christ spirit came upon him and then it left him just before he died. So he was born a mere man and he died a mere man. They taught that of one thing they could be sure, and that is Jesus as God could not have come in the flesh.

Now it is to those sorts of people that John is writing. He's writing to believers, but he's helping them to sort out the doctrine of Christ. And he says in chapter 5 verse 1, and now we're talking about the assurance of salvation, putting on the helmet if you please. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By the way, John loves to just talk in broad strokes and clear speech.

If you are born of God, you will love God. Because when you are born of God, God does a miracle within you so that there's something within you that was not there before the miracle happened. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things pass away, all things become new. There's a new nature created within you when you are born of God. And Jesus said that unless you are born of God, you'll never see the kingdom of heaven. But whoever is born of God loves God. We don't naturally love someone we haven't seen. This love is implanted in us by God when we are born of God.

Now, what John does is then, he begins to color in, color in the details of who this Christ really is. If you believe that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is the Messiah, you are born of God. In chapter four verse one he says, there are many spirits that are in the world. And you'll notice behind all the false prophets, there are spirits. Do you see it there in the text? Test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone into the world. By this you know the spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. And that was a direct attack, of course, against the Gnostics who denied that Jesus as God could come in the flesh.

Now, what John does is he says in chapter 5, and here I am again in chapter 5 verse 5, Who is this that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God? So what he does is he's beginning to identify the kind of Jesus in which you must believe in order to be born of God. It must be Jesus Christ the Messiah. It is Jesus come in the flesh. It's only that Jesus who can save you.

And now notice, I'm picking it up at verse 6. This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water only but by water and blood. Wow, what in the world is John talking about? Again, you need to understand the Gnostics. Remember I told you that they said that the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism and then left before he died, so that he was a mere man all the way through, at least a mere man in terms of his birth, and then he died as a mere man.

What John is saying is, this is the one, namely Jesus, who came by water. He was baptized certainly, and the Holy Spirit came upon him, even though I might say he was the Christ previous to that baptism. Но the Holy Spirit came upon him, but he also came by blood. It is the same Christ. It is the Christ who came and who died and shed his blood. You can't divide Jesus from Christ. He is the one. He is the incarnate one. He is God in the flesh and he is the same person from beginning to end. He came by water and he came by blood.

Isn't that interesting? What John has done now, he's undercut a number of wrong views about Jesus. He's undercut the Gnostics who believed he was a mere man. He also undercut Islam, even though of course he was living 500 years before the Quran, because the Quran says in Surah chapter four that Jesus did not die. It was an illusion. There was no Jesus who died on the cross. And so what you have is Islam believes in a different Jesus.

Also, if I had time to show it, he undercut the Mormon Jesus, which is an entirely different Jesus. And what John is saying is that you must believe in Jesus, Messiah, God come in the flesh, shed his blood. You know the Bible says in the book of Revelation, they overcame him, that is Satan's fury, by the blood of the lamb. Here at this church, we talk about the blood. There's some churches who say that it is so offensive and so contrary to PC etiquette that they don't, but we talk about the blood because the Bible talks about the blood.

Years ago, I read a book entitled, I Talked With Spirits, written by a man who was understanding the occult. And he said that he went into a meeting in Minneapolis where they were singing, what a friend we have in Jesus, and he didn't know it was a séance. They were calling up the dead. So he knew that this was demonic and so he said to the medium, is Jesus the son of God? And the medium deflected it and said, go on believing. This is the ambiguity of Satan when he's cornered.

And then he asked the medium, did Jesus Christ shed his blood and die on the cross for sinners? And at that point, the medium freaked out and actually had to be revived. Satan will take it as far as he can, but he does not want the blood. He does not want the death of Jesus Christ for sinners. Give me some other Jesus other than the one who died for sinners.

Now, all right, that's the basis of salvation. The basis of salvation is to understand the gospel. Но now we have a question, don't we? Have you been born of God? And I'm talking to you, by the way. Even those of you who may be in your own world of reality at this point, would you come out of that world just for a moment and let me ask you one-on-one, are you born of God? All right, now we're going to answer the question.

Notice that John goes on to say, now, you'll notice he says in verse six, and the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is truth. Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit would come, he would testify truth. All right, now, for there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. Well, that's interesting. What is he saying? He is saying that the Holy Spirit of God testifies to the truth of Jesus, the Jesus who came by water, he was baptized, but also the Jesus who died.

Well, what else does he say? Verse 9, if we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his son. Well, that's interesting. What is the testimony of men? The testimony of men is the record of the Bible. It is the story of Jesus that was written down by the prophets and the apostles and those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ. And we believe that testimony because it has excellent historical confirmation that could be a whole lecture or ten lectures in itself. So we believe the testimony of men, but he's saying that the testimony of the Spirit is even greater.

Now let's think about this. Let's connect this with what else the Bible teaches and the continuity and the consistency of scriptures is just absolutely overwhelming, isn't it? Paul says this in the book of Romans. He says that the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Wow.

It is the Spirit, Paul says elsewhere in Galatians, by which we call God Abba Father. It is the Spirit that assures us that we are connected with God. Jesus said of himself and him sending the Spirit, remember he said to the disciples, he said, disciples, when the Spirit comes, he is the Spirit of truth and he will testify of me. He is with you, but he shall be in you, bearing testimony to who I am and giving us the assurance that we belong to God.

Now, that's the basis ultimately of ultimate assurance. You see, there are many of you who are here today who've walked with God for many years. If I were to ask you, are you absolutely sure that Christianity is right and that you're rightly related to God? You would say, I'm absolutely sure. What gives you that sense of certainty? It is the work and the ministry of the Spirit confirming the message of Jesus who died on the cross for our sins.

Yesterday evening, as I do always every Saturday evening, I spoke to my mother, who's about to be a hundred years old in about two months. And so she always asks me what I'm preaching on. Her mind is still fine. It's getting a little fuzzy, maybe about like mine, you know, here and there, but she knows what's going on. So I asked her again, you know, are you sure that when you die, you're going to go to heaven? And she says, I am so sure that it's as if I'm already there. She's just itching for glorification. Just itching for glori— she keeps saying, please pray that I'll just go to heaven.

Now, let me ask you something. Where does that certainty come from? Is it because my mother, who by the way had a grade three education but taught herself how to read and taught herself how to speak English as well as the German with which she was raised? Did she study all of the manuscripts and go through all the history? Has she studied archaeology? No. She has accepted the witness of the scriptures and it's been so strongly confirmed to her by the Holy Spirit that she has absolutely no doubt whatever that when she dies, she'll be in the presence of God. It is the witness of the Spirit of God that assures her that she belongs to God forever.

Dave McAllister: Well, my friends, just to add a footnote to that, my mother is in heaven now. And before she died, she told everyone that when I die, I want everyone to say, God be praised. We can have that kind of assurance. That's why I've written a book entitled, How You Can Be Sure That You Will Spend Eternity With God. And today is the last day that we are making this book available for you. And so it's very critical that you receive a copy and I'll tell you why.

It'll be a tremendous blessing to you and even if you have believed on Christ, and I hope that you have, it will confirm your faith. Но also it will challenge those who believe that assurance is not possible. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you. Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com, of course, rtwoffer is all one word, rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

I've said this before and perhaps you have heard me say it, that you can be wrong about a lot of things, but there's one thing you should not be wrong about, and that is your eternal salvation. And no matter where you are on your spiritual journey, no matter how badly you have failed, salvation and grace is available for you.

Once again, the title of the book, How You Can Be Sure That You Will Spend Eternity With God. Here's that contact info. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Meanwhile, always keep in mind that Running To Win exists in order to get the gospel of Jesus Christ around the world. Thank you so much for helping us do just that, because our desire is Christ be exalted and souls be saved.

You can write to us at Running To Win, 1635 North La Salle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. It's tough to grow in the Christian life without the assurance that you are a child of God. Some say salvation can be lost, regained, and then lost again. Next time on Running To Win, why it's crucial to settle the question of knowing you have eternal life. Running To Win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running To Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.