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. How can one describe God? How can one describe anything infinite? The best we can do is to list his attributes. These qualities open a door of understanding, a door that lets us catch a glimpse of his greatness as well as his grace.

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, we've seen that God is self-existent, holy, and wise. Are there other attributes of God we'll learn about today?

Erwin W. Lutzer: Yes, Dave, as a matter of fact, I think we're going to be talking about his sovereignty and his truthfulness. But I want to emphasize this. Even as I meditate on God, I realize that he is a very complex being. All of these attributes inhere within him without contradiction. Have you ever imagined how it is that God can listen to hundreds of thousands of prayers simultaneously and respond to each person according to his will? Mind-boggling.

At the same time, we are admonished to worship him. Even as we worship him, we recognize, as Jonathan Edwards says, that the ideas of God go on for all eternity. I have to say this, that perhaps forever we will be learning more and more about him. I hope you listen carefully and at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info for a very special resource that we think will be a great blessing to you.

God is wise. Number four, immutability. Immutability means that God is unchanging. Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest. They shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou roll them up and they shall be changed, but thou art the same and thy years shall not fail. Hebrews 1:10 and following. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, the motto here at the Moody Church. I am the Lord and I change not.

What's the first thing you say to your mate after you've been gone all day? You say something like this, "How are you doing?" Please don't ever ask God that. I know somebody who used to say, "God, how are you doing this morning?" That's just plain silly. How is God doing? He's doing very well, thank you very much. He's doing just as well as he did yesterday morning. He hasn't learned anything since yesterday; he hasn't forgotten anything since yesterday.

He's no less in control today than he was in control yesterday. He is the Lord and he changes not. Immutability. God exists outside of time, but he recognizes time. Prophets prophesied. He recognizes days and months and years and our existence. But he sees everything as having already been completed because he is immutable. He learns nothing. If he were to change, would it be for the better? Unthinkable because he's already absolute perfection.

Would he change for the worse? Unthinkable that God would do that. So God is the same, even though you and I aren't. As a result of that, time goes by, our lives go by, and God gives consistency to history because he's always here and he's always immutable. How do we live out that excellency before a skeptical world? We are now a people who live with less stress because we recognize that because God is immutable, you know tomorrow that you're worried about, that relationship that you have to give to God or else be even more worried about?

You realize, of course, that God has already lived your tomorrow. He's already lived your tomorrow. He's already lived last week. He already knows what is going to be said at your funeral—all those nice things that we say at people's funerals, all of which I'm sure is true—but everybody gets something nice said about them at a time like that. God knows all that already. Why should you and I be so anxious about tomorrow? Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and yet your Father feeds them? Are you not of much more value than they?

God, you're immutable. You don't change. We sang moments ago, "Great is Thy Faithfulness." You'll be here after we leave and after other people take over in the leadership of this church and after other people use our new Christian Life Center and we've passed off the scene. God will be there. God will be there converting, changing people's hearts, doing his work. The immutability of God. The weight of the world is on his shoulders; he can handle your particular need.

The sovereignty of God. We could talk about the fact that we are loved; we are a loving people because we've been forgiven; we are a forgiving people. But let me hurry on to sovereignty. God is sovereign. I love it, Psalm 115:3, "But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased." Nobody tells God what to do. Nobody has suggestions to make to him. He is God, and he is sovereign.

He proved that when he decided to create. The moment he created, he knew about sin. He knew about all of the dominoes that were being set up that would take place throughout history. He knew about you and me, about our failures and sins, and there was nothing that you and I have done or could do in the future that would catch him off guard. He wouldn't say, "Boy, on second thought, I don't know why I saved so-and-so because just look at this." None of that for God. He is sovereign.

He created, and also he redeemed. Is that big, huge? God redeemed sovereignly, working out the details of Jesus Christ's death, choosing us to belong to him. All of that is under his control. If God doesn't approve, a fly doesn't move. The very hair of your head is numbered, and as I look across the auditorium, I see that God has less and less to worry about as he counts the hair of some of you, myself included.

Every time you wash your hair and you see various hair in the sink, God's total just completely changes. The whole computer just goes berserk for a minute, and then there's a brand new total. Have you ever thought of the absolute detail of God's sovereignty? Somebody said, "Well, is God big or small?" Depends on how you want to calculate it because he is big and he inhabits the heavens. Solomon said, "The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have built."

Yet the Bible says in Isaiah, and it's confirmed many times in the New Testament, that God in his greatness has chosen to dwell in the hearts of those who believe in his son. What a God we worship. What a God we believe in and trust. Now all of that leads us to the question of worship. I want you to come with me to a remote village. I want you to be introduced to a woman. She was a woman who had a series of bad marriages—five, as a matter of fact.

When she was living with the sixth man, she decided to do that because after all, to be married again would just be a charade. Why even go through the act? Just simply live common law. That's what she did. Most of the women in her village would go to fetch water at the local well and they would do that usually early in the morning before it got too hot. But very probably they didn't want her along because after all, she had a really bad reputation. There are some people, you know, who can't handle people who have bad reputations.

So she came alone at noon, and she met a stranger at the well. He says, "Give me to drink." She said, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?" He said, "If actually you were to ask, I could give you living water." "Oh," she said, "Give that to me so I don't have to come here and draw day after day." Then he said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here." She says, "I don't have a husband." He says, "Yeah, you're telling the truth. After a manner of speaking, you've had five of them, and the man that you're living with isn't your husband. So you're being truthful."

This may show, by the way, that God doesn't accept common law marriages. She says, "You must know more than most people do. You know when the Messiah comes, he's going to tell us everything." Jesus looked at her and said, "I who speak unto thee am he." The first person in the Gospel of John to whom he revealed his Messiahship: a fallen, despised woman who had nothing but a history of failure in her life. You're talking to Messiah.

She said, "You know, our fathers worshipped in this mountain, Mount Gerizim." In fact, an altar was actually found there by archaeologists a number of years ago. But she says, "You say that Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship." Jesus said, "Let's get this straight. Two things about worship. First of all, it's not a matter of place. The time is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth. It's not a matter of place."

It doesn't happen just because you're in a temple. It doesn't happen just because you're in a church. It doesn't happen just because you're singing the right songs—and at Moody Church, we know that you're singing the right songs because we choose them. It doesn't necessarily happen. No, it's a matter of spirit; it's a matter of heart. It's a matter of bringing yourself into the presence of God. It's a matter of doing that. Jesus said, "Well did Isaiah speak about you and say that this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."

You can be here today and have sung the songs and have listened to the sermon and have heard the prayer and your heart far, far from God. So Jesus said two clarifications. First of all, it isn't a matter of location. As a matter of fact, if you don't worship God at home, it is very doubtful, perhaps impossible for you to worship when we come to church. So it's a matter, Jesus said, of heart. Secondly, Jesus said it is also a matter of truthfulness and honesty.

When we come before God, this is not the time for hypocrisy. This is not the time when you put the right spin on it. We're coming into the presence of the sovereign, immutable, all-knowing, holy, self-existent God. He knows more things about you than you know about yourself. He knows the number of grains of sand that were on your shoes when you came to Moody Church this morning. That's how exacting his knowledge is.

So we come into that presence and we open our lives and we say, "God, my life is an open book to you. Walk through every room; show me what you see. Search me, O God, and know my heart because you already know it, and finally I have the nerve to invite you in and let you look around." Jesus is talking to this woman. He's talking to somebody who hasn't amounted to anything so far as this world is concerned. Then he throws this bombshell on her. He says, "The Father is seeking such to worship him."

He's saying, "Woman, in the eyes of the world, you've been a failure, but the Father's looking for people like you to worship him. The Father's on a hunt." Why doesn't he go to the rich? The rich oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes are self-absorbed. Do they really need God? Why doesn't he go to the famous people? Listen, the famous people who are on the covers of the magazines, they're not looking for a God to worship; they're looking for worshippers.

He goes to the lowly, the contrite, the people who know that they are sinners, the people who know that they need grace, the people who have not been a success. He goes really to all of us, whether all of those descriptions belong to us or not, but it is almost impossible to develop fervent worshippers in an affluent society because we have so many things that satisfy our appetites temporarily. But the real needy, the ones who are desperate, for whom success has passed by, they oftentimes are the best worshippers, and they delight the heart of the Father.

The self-existent Father, the holy Father, the all-knowing wise Father, they delight that holy Father, yes, and they delight the sovereign Father because that's what he's looking for. Success as we generally think of it is not open to everyone, but being a worshiper of God is. So when we come into the sanctuary at Moody Church on Sunday morning, we know that we are leaving the profane and we're coming into the sacred. We know that we're leaving earth for a little taste of heaven.

We know that we're making God look good because we worship well in the eyes of others and most of all, hopefully, in the eyes of God. We proclaim his excellencies not just by words, but also by heart. We come cleansed; we come with our consciences silenced because of forgiveness and repentance. We come with our eye on God. I hope that's one of the reasons, the primary reason why you come to Moody Church. Your worship doesn't end when the singing is over.

It continues through prayer, through our gift—imagine coming to God and bringing him nothing. It continues through the message, and we leave saying, "The transforming moment of my life has just happened one more time this week: I have beheld the Almighty, and he has my heart." Will you join me as we pray? Father, we ask in the name of Jesus that we might understand the Father whom we worship. We pray, Father, that we might love him, adore him, give him all that we have, and worship him in spirit and in truth.

Now right now, we're going to have a few moments of silence. I want you to talk to God. If God's talked to you, if it's a conscience that troubles you, would you confess that sin and promise that that sin will be taken care of? If it's a divided heart, confess that. Let's come into the presence of God and let us do business, as it were, with him who is monitoring every single thought right now, looking, scanning for worshippers.

My friend today, this is Pastor Lutzer, and I want to especially speak to those who are perhaps depressed. You may feel as if you are abandoned; maybe life is very difficult; you've had some bad news. I want you to remember the words of Jesus to the woman at the well: "The Father is seeking worshippers." Imagine that. If we worship him, we do gladden his heart.

Very quickly, we're making a resource available for you entitled Be Joyful. It's written by Dr. Warren Wiersbe. It deals with all kinds of topics brought up in the book of Philippians. Now what you must understand is joy is something that happens within us despite the circumstances. There's so much more I could say about it, but I want to give you the contact info. Here's what you do: you go to rtwoffer.com. Perhaps I said that too quickly. Go to rtwoffer.com or you can pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'd like to encourage you to go to your computer right now, type in rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Dave McAllister: It's time again for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Today's question comes to us from Alex, who lives in Connecticut. Here's his story. "Although I was raised a Roman Catholic, I was saved and ended up joining a Baptist church, which I later found out was a fundamentalist church. I didn't even understand what that meant at first, but eventually found myself walking on eggshells in the midst of the fundamentalists and in some ways worse off than when I was a Catholic.

I am studying for the ministry and feel a strong call to it. But when I wanted to marry a divorced woman, this church objected. They advised me to find another woman. I have tried to rationalize my engagement because my fiancée has strong reasons to believe that when she was still married, her former husband was cheating, but there is no real proof and she is unwilling to find out. There certainly is no shortage of sin around, but Christ died that we might live despite our sin. My fundamentalist church says that an elder or pastor should never have been divorced or married to a divorced woman based on 1 Timothy and Titus. But since I have never been divorced myself and she will be my only wife, don't I meet the qualification to be the husband of one wife as the scripture says? Would I be sinning and therefore an adulterer if I marry her? And if I do marry her, should I not try to enter the ministry?"

Erwin W. Lutzer: Well, Alex, you have asked many questions. I'd like to begin by saying that there could be worse things than attending a fundamentalistic church as you described it. Fundamentalism itself is usually a defense of the scripture. It is usually you find churches that love God's word and preach the gospel, but some of them, yes, it's true, become legalistic and that is a danger, isn't it?

In your case, however, I'd like to suggest that to marry a woman who's been divorced, I don't think that that would disqualify you based on what the Bible says in Titus and in Timothy. There it does say that you should only be the husband of one wife, but since you have not been previously married, you are indeed the husband of one wife, whether she was divorced or not.

But the more fundamental question is this: should you marry her? When you marry her, would you commit adultery? Now you say in your letter that she is not willing to investigate her former husband. That strikes me as a little strange because why wouldn't she be willing to? Has he been married? If he has been married, then in my mind, that bond would be broken and you would be free to marry her.

Perhaps he is living with someone. It seems to me that it would be worthwhile to investigate that fact. Then you ask the question of whether or not you can enter the ministry. Well, it depends, of course, in what denomination and what church. There are some denominations that have no rules at all and so they would indeed welcome you no doubt with open arms into the ministry. I cannot answer that question because of the difference of opinion.

But getting back to the bottom line, I believe that if you marry her and her divorce was not legitimate in God's eyes, you may indeed be committing adultery. Now that's tough news, but I suggest that you do some investigation regarding her former husband and then based on wise counsel, you make your decision. I pray that God will give you both the grace and the strength to choose wisely. This is a huge decision, and it does not have a simple answer.

Dave McAllister: Thank you, Dr. Lutzer, for that answer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, you can go to our website at 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. God is so vast and incomprehensible that unless he took direct action, we'd never understand him in a meaningful sense. He took that action 2,000 years ago when Jesus appeared on earth. The Bible reveals that Jesus is the Son of God and that all the fullness of God dwells in him. Now to see what God is all about, all we need do is look at Jesus. Next time on Running To Win, we'll take that look, a look at the son we follow. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running To Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.