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. When it comes to the Bible, at some point, your doubts have to give way to faith that it is what it says it is, the word of God. And the only book that can take you across the gorge of death into eternity.

Today, find out why you can trust the Bible. 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.

Guest (Male): Pastor Lutzer, some say there are too many Bible versions to know which one is accurate. What's your take on this?

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, Dave, I know especially for new Christians, it can be very confusing. But at the same time, we should rejoice, I think, in the fact that there are many different versions because we have to understand that the English language does change. And of course, there are some translations that are more accurately based on the text, and there are others that we could characterize as a paraphrase.

So here's my point. As long as you know what kind of Bible you are reading, I think that it is really to your benefit to use more than one translation. I personally use the ESV, that's the English Standard Version, because I think it's a very accurate reflection of the text and it's the one that I use for study and for preaching.

So as you consider which Bible to use, I suggest that you also might want to consult with your pastor, but at the same time, whatever translation you use, read it. And believe it, and trust it. And when you come across those very difficult passages, you lay them aside, you keep going, and someday you'll discover that God gives you brand new light so that you can begin to understand them better.

We here at The Moody Church are deeply committed to helping you run the race of life. And at the end of this message, I'm going to be offering a resource that we think will help you even as you make your journey through the difficulties of life.

What I'm saying to you today is this. If the Bible is mistaken regarding its origin, it has nothing else to say to us that is worthwhile. Oh yeah, there's some wonderful sayings that Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount, but a lot of those can be found in other religions. How do you respect a book that's wrong so many times? You simply can't.

Either the Bible is a good book, or it is a bad book. Either it is a book that tells us the truth, or it tells us a pack of lies. Either it was written by honest men who heard from God, or it was written by deluded prophets and men whose meanderings are not worth reading. It is one or the other, and so I say to you today, make up your mind as to what you believe about the origin of the Bible that claims to be God's word, God's book.

So one reason why we believe that the Bible is the word of God is a logical reason. Even skeptics admit that the Bible has had a good influence on people. And are you going to say that this book, written under such fraudulent circumstances, is good? I don't think so.

I think what we need to do is to bow humbly and accept the fact that God spoke through holy men of God and they recorded his will in holy scripture. There's a second reason, and that is the authority of Jesus. Once you've established that the New Testament documents are reliable on their own grounds, on independent investigation, that is not connected with faith, just as matters of history.

You discover this Jesus who really believed, he believed in the Old Testament. In fact, this is critical. Jesus accepted the history of the Old Testament. He believed in Adam and Eve. Now, in some of our seminaries that are of a liberal tilt, they say, "Well, you know, we accept a lot of the Bible, but we don't like the first 11 chapters of Genesis. We don't believe that there was a flood, we don't believe in creation, and we don't believe in Adam and Eve."

They, you know, humanity evolved, but we believe in God, we're theists. Oh my. So you're telling me that you claim to be a Christian and you don't believe what Jesus believed? It's very strange to me. Jesus believed in Adam and Eve, in Jonah, in the flood, in Moses. He quoted the Bible over and over again, and when he encountered Satan, he says, "It is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. It is written, man shall live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

And he's quoting the Old Testament. That's the way Jesus handled it. One day when I was in Bible College, I remember a student saying something that I had thought of myself. He said, "You know, I find it easy to accept the New Testament as the word of God, but I find it so hard to accept the Old Testament. I mean, there are passages in the Old Testament, I confess to you, I read and I say, 'I don't understand this, and I don't know why God did it this way.'"

"There are some very difficult, difficult parts of the Old Testament." So I understand where he was coming from. And I remember a skeptic saying, "Well," he said, "the only way we could know that the Old Testament is true is if there was an omniscient being who knew all the details."

If you're sitting here today as a skeptic, you have your wish. You have your wish in Jesus. Oh yes, he was a man, but he was also an omniscient being who knew all the details, and he looked at the Old Testament and said, "The scripture cannot be broken." Jesus believed it, and I believe it's important for you and me to believe it too, just like he did.

No, he can't get out of it. Jesus believed in the authority of the Old Testament. He believed in the teaching of the Old Testament. He believed in the prophecies of the Old Testament. And even regarding the law, he says, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one crossed T, I'm paraphrasing here, or one dotted I shall pass until it's all fulfilled."

Can you believe less than Jesus if you're his follower? I hope not. Now, you know that the Bible has been vilified and criticized and cut up and spoken against. I can do no better than to read the words of Bernard Ramm. "A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put."

No other book has been so chopped, sliced, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy, or religion, or psychology, or letters of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible, with such venom and skepticism, with such thoroughness and erudition upon every chapter, every line, and every tenant?

Yet the Bible is loved by millions and studied by millions, and the corpse never stays put. Will you remember that? It's always there. You realize what people have had to endure because they believed in the Bible? Years ago when persecution broke out against the church in France, you had the Huguenots who were believers influenced by the great John Calvin in Geneva, and they came to faith in Christ and they were banished from France under Louis XIV, who thought that he was doing God a favor and actually said that he thought he should enter heaven because he had done God such a favor to get rid of these people.

But in a monument in France to them, there are these words, and I hope that I remember them. "Hammer away ye unregenerate hands, your hammer breaks, God's anvil stands." You skeptic out there. Take your hammer and pound it on God's anvil. See which breaks, your hammer or God's anvil.

God's anvil will take a lot. It's probably taken a lot more heat than you're able to give it. We hold in our hands today the living, true word of God, the word of God, right here.

We take it for granted though, don't we? We really do. When I led a tour to the sites of the Reformation in England last year, actually, I took the tour group right outside of St. Paul's Cathedral and showed them the place where all the Bibles were burned. And when Wycliffe trained his young men to share the Bible and had scribes transcribing it, prior to Gutenberg, the first thing that he taught them was how to die for the faith.

Hundreds, hundreds were put to death. And I asked the bus driver to go to the place where it happened. Now you can't even see it because it's full of traffic lights and streets. But hundreds have died because of this book that we take for granted and leave on our shelves. Well, there's so much else that I could say. I could talk about history, I could speak about archeology and science, but we have time for only one more reason.

First reason is logical. The Bible claims to be the word of God. What are we going to do about it? The second reason is crystal logical. Jesus believed in the Old Testament. You say, "Well, Pastor Lutzer, how do I know that the Old Testament of Jesus is the same as our Old Testament?" That's a good question. And that's one of the questions I'm going to answer tonight as I speak about canonicity.

I can't imagine that there's anyone here this morning that won't be here tonight. It's possible that it would happen. You explain to God why you aren't coming and that'll be fine with me. But we're going to have a great time tonight as we discuss these kinds of issues.

The third reason is personal, the power of the word. Let's suppose you were driving through Los Angeles, and this is right after the riots occurred that took place there many years ago. And you were in the riot district because you were lost. And suddenly your car drives over a piece of metal, and you realize you've got two flat tires, and you have no cellphone.

And you're sitting there wondering what in the world to do because people are roaming the streets. And suddenly a door from a building flings open and about 15 young men come strutting out and they surround your car. First of all, what emotions would you have at that moment? That's number one. Number two, would it help your emotions if you knew that they were on their way home from a Bible study?

I think even atheists would feel better if they knew that. It's amazing what the word of God does. It's amazing its power. Young man in anger took the Bible that his mother gave him and took it and flung it out of a train as far as he could throw the thing. He hated her, and he hated her God.

That's what happens to young people. Years later he repented of his sins and thought he'd go back to where he had so desecrated God's holy word and uh, he did some investigation and discovered that the Bible that he had flung out of the train had been found by a family that read it and believed on Jesus. And now they were changed and he was changed.

What, what book is it that can take the heart of an angry young man and the heart of a family and transform them and make them differently, except God's holy word. There is no other book out there that can do that. That's why if you're a skeptic, the first thing you should always do with skeptics is to get them into the word of God. Don't argue about Aristotle's laws of motion, which were used by Thomas Aquinas to prove the existence of God.

They're too complicated and there are answers to all of these things. You can't convince people that way. What you do is you get them into the book because the Bible says that the word of God not only heals us and helps us, but the word of God actually converts us. You have been born again, the scripture says, not of corruptible seed or perishable seed, but by imperishable, by the word of God that lives and abides forever.

It's the word that explodes in the human heart and we have to trust the word. Two weeks ago, my wife and I were in a in a restaurant with some friends and as we came in, they introduced me to the waitress as a pastor. And so I asked her where she was on her spiritual journey and she said, "Well," she said, "I'm investigating all the faiths."

And she told me about a book that she was reading that introduces all the different faiths and I said to her, "How much adult consideration have you ever given to the Bible?" And she said, "None." Have you ever read the New Testament? "No." I made her promise and this is the best you can do in a passing connection.

"Please look into my eyes and make this promise that you will read the New Testament." That's the best thing that I could do in in the few seconds that we had together. Why? Because it's the word of God, you see, which will germinate in our heart. People read the New Testament, they read the Gospel of John and they say to themselves, "There's no way somebody could have made up this story of Jesus."

And they become captivated by him. And before you know it, they're believing in him. Why do you think that the Bible is banned in so many countries today? In Islam, for example. Why is it that a young soldier told my daughter, "If I'm found with a Bible when I return to my homeland, I could be put to death." Why? It's because people fear the word of God.

They know it has power. It is the living word of God that lives and abides forever. It is the two-edged sword that pierces asunder soul and spirit, the joints and marrow of the heart.

"If I were the devil," said J. I. Packer. "One of my first aims would be to stop folks from digging into the Bible. I should do all I could to surround it with the spiritual equivalents of pits and thorns and hedges and man-made traps to frighten people off." If you were the devil, that's what you'd do.

Those of you who have no scriptural reading program, those of you who begin and you read a few verses and you put the Bible away. You're falling into the trap of the devil. That's his strategy because this book can bless you. Could I read what Spurgeon said about it? He said, "This book has wrestled with me. This book has smitten me. This book has comforted me. This book has smiled on me. This book has frowned on me. The book has clasped my hand. The book has warmed my heart. The book weeps with me, sings with me, whispers to me, preaches to me, maps my way, holds my goings. It is the young man's best companion and is still my morning and evening chaplain."

That's what the word of God can do. No wonder we find it hard, so hard to study it. I'm going to conclude with the words of Robert Chapman. To impress upon you the need for you to love the Bible. If God were to do something mighty among us here at The Moody Church, one of the things that we'd notice is people would be reading their Bibles and reading their newspapers less.

Because God generates within us a love of his holy word. Robert Chapman writes, "This book contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you."

"It is the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's sword, the Christian's character. Here Paradise is restored, heaven opened, the gates of hell disclosed. Jesus Christ is its grand subject, our good its design, the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, test the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, a river of pleasure. It gives you life, and it will be opened at the Day of Judgment and remembered forever. It involves the highest responsibility, rewards the greatest labor, and condemns all who will trifle with its sacred contents. My friend, today, this is the word of God."

Let us pray. Father, forgive us for the times that we have neglected your book. Forgive us, Father, that we have not loved and delighted in it like your word says we should. Delight in the law of God, and you'll be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. We have too many other delights. May we repent of those today, we pray.

And I pray that this may be a congregation in love with the word, and may skeptics who are present open their New Testaments and begin to read your word. We pray that it may be in our minds, in our hearts. We pray that as we meet other people, it may always be our guide. And when it comes time to die, may we cleave to its promises that will take us all the way to eternity. We pray in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. Amen.

Guest (Male): Well, my friend, you might be a skeptic, or perhaps you know one. Here's my encouragement. Take the Bible and begin to read it. Read the New Testament. Read the stories about Jesus, read the book of Romans, read the book of Philippians. And what you will discover is this. Even though there is diversity in terms of expression, in terms of the human aspect of the authorship, there is a profound unity about the Bible when it comes to subjects that are most important, such as God, salvation, eternity, the spirit, and so forth.

The unity of the Bible is very striking. And I believe that God will use his very word to help you to understand that you are holding in your hands, yes, the word of God. Now, we have a book that is actually based upon one of the books of the New Testament, the book of Philippians. The title of the book is Be Joyful, and it is written by Pastor Warren Wiersbe.

Pastor Wiersbe was pastor here at The Moody Church before I had the privilege of becoming the pastor. And what he writes is always relevant, it's very readable, and it will be a tremendous encouragement to you. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here's what you do, you go to RTWOffer.com, or you can pick up the phone right now and call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Thank you so much for helping us as we run toward the finish line.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: It's time once again for another opportunity for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question you may have about the Bible or the Christian life.

Guest (Male): Dr. Lutzer, today's question comes from Devon, who lives in Michigan. He writes, "In your book, 10 Lies About God, you state, 'Let's honestly admit that a growing number of Americans think that the church is irrelevant.'"

"My question then is, how exactly do we as born-again Christian people engage those unsaved who find the church to be irrelevant? Must we wait for a deathbed opportunity where perhaps then such a person is more receptive?"

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Devon, I'm so glad that you asked the question. Yes, I think that there are many people in America who believe that the church is irrelevant. How do we win them? I think that we win them individually by our authenticity, by our integrity, and our love. I think that Americans today desire to see Christians who really live out their faith.

Christians who are not only against certain things, but are for other things, and are willing to make some sacrifices on behalf of their principles and on behalf of other people. You know, I believe that mass evangelism as we once knew it is probably not the way to go today. Billy Graham, of course, was able to draw large crowds because of his fame, but today it's very difficult for us to invite someone to church and say, "You come to church with me because we have a special speaker."

People simply do not care and there are too many competing voices, television, the internet, and all kinds of other things. So I think that the only way we can do it is by individuals impacting the culture wherever God has planted them. And I certainly hope and pray that you, Devon, will do that in your sphere of influence, and you pray for me that I might be able to do it in mine.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Dr. 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.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North La Salle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614.

Some religions have millions of deities. The Christian faith is based on the self-revelation of a single omnipotent God. Jesus taught us to call him our Father. In the Bible, God has many names, but only one character. Absolute holiness combined with infinite power, love, and justice. Next time on Running to Win, we'll come to grips with The Father We Worship, lesson number two in What We Believe. Running to Win is sponsored by The Moody Church.