Running To Win

Announcer: Let us run with endurance, the race that is set before us. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Each believer needs the Word of God on a daily basis, just like we need food and water. We need to develop an appetite for the Bible, but sin can quench that appetite real fast. Today, more on making the way clear for the Word of God to do its work.

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, take us again into First Peter chapter 2 as you teach about how the Word of God converts us.

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: You know, David, as someone who has had the privilege of preaching the Gospel for so many years, what excites me and continues to excite me is when God takes the Word of God, combines it with the Spirit of God and brings about the life of God.

And it is indeed the Word of God that God uses the message of the Gospel to convert people. And that conversion, of course, has huge implications for the way in which we face life. I'm holding in my hands a book entitled "Managing Your Emotions."

Now, this book deals with issues regarding emotional wholeness, feelings of love, depression, rejection. Why is that relevant? It's relevant for this reason that conversion has certain fruits. And what we must do is to emphasize the fact that we are not just simply converted and then left stagnant.

Rather, we are to grow in the Christian life. And at the end of this message for a gift of any amount, we're going to be making this book available for you. It's entitled "Managing Your Emotions." When God converts us, it is a thorough work on His part and it influences every area of our lives.

You know, that's the case, I believe, of many believers in the Body of Jesus Christ. They are basically infants and they are they are starved spiritually. And as a result of that starving, they don't know how to receive the pure spiritual milk of the Word that Peter talks about.

Now, imagine a baby who gets fed once a week. Every Sunday morning he goes for some food, and then he's starved during the week, and then he comes on Sunday, and he sings songs, and he hears the Word of God preached, and he opens his or her Bible, and and so they are inspired and they say, "Wow, you know, that was really interesting and helpful, and I'm motivated." And then nothing. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, starved.

And they don't grow. And why is it that we don't have an appetite for the Word? Well, I think what we need to do is just look at the context of what Peter is talking about here. You'll notice it says in chapter 2, verse 1, "Put away all malice."

Well, that will stifle your appetite for the Word of God. If you have malice in your heart, if you're overcome by hatred and all deceit, what are you doing that's deceitful? You begin to live a deceitful life, and I'll tell you. It'll be hard for you to put up with church, much less reading the Word and being encouraged by it and being fed by it.

What about hypocrisy and envy and all slander? You see, as sin develops in our life, it zaps our appetite for the Word. And the world does. My mother, I remember, used to say, "No, you can't have sweets before dinner and so forth." Why? Because it takes away your appetite. So we've got all of these other things going on, including the technology around us that is constantly distracting us. And so there's no way for us to grow spiritually.

And it would be very interesting to see what Moody Church would look like if we took all the spiritual babies and put them in a nursery. I wonder how many we'd have. And so you see, appetite needs to be developed, and that's what we're going to do.

We're going to do it together as a church. We are going to restart, jump-start an appetite for the Word. Now, what does the Word do for us? Well, it is food. It is food. Spiritually speaking, it is food.

If you need food to grow physically, you need food to grow spiritually. You'll notice it says, "the pure spiritual milk of the Word that you thereby may grow." You need milk. But it's not just that you need milk. You also need bread.

And that's what Jesus was using when He was combating Satan. You know, milk is just the basics of the Christian life. How to read the Bible, reading the stories about Jesus in the New Testament. All that is is milk. But Jesus is withstanding Satan and He quotes from Deuteronomy that says, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

And in the scripture, bread is spoken of, what bread is to the body, in the same way the scripture is to the soul. So if you want to graduate from being a baby in the Lord that needs milk, you begin to memorize scripture so that you can use it the way Jesus used it against Satan. Satan comes to Him with one temptation, and Jesus says, "It is written." And Jesus is able to quote it.

I wonder, anyone who has been saved here for two, three, five years, how many verses of scripture could you quote in a moment of fierce, unrelenting temptation? How many would you be able to quote? The more you're able to quote and to apply the Word, now you're getting to the level of bread.

But the Bible also is meat. It's also meat. You'll notice that the author of Hebrews, and you can just write this down and read it later. I'm picking it up in chapter 5, verse 11. He says, "About this," in context he's talking about Melchizedek and Jesus and the parallels. "We have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing."

And you're saying, "I just don't understand this." Let's go on to something else. Let's answer the cellphone. "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food."

Solid food is translated in some translations as meat, which is what it is. "For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the Word of Righteousness because he's a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good and evil."

You say, "Well, what's an example of solid food of meat?" Well, certainly the doctrine of Melchizedek. How long has it been since you have read the book of Hebrews to try to understand the relationship of Melchizedek to Jesus and how it affirms the priesthood of Jesus Christ? Do you know something about that?

Well, that would be an example. Paul's writings, no doubt. The book of Romans and Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians, now we're beginning to get into the meat. And he says, "You should be able to teach others."

Fathers, you should be able to teach your families. And if you say, "I don't know even where to begin." I'll give you a suggestion. Take the Book of Proverbs and read it with your children. Read a chapter a day of the Book of Proverbs, for example, and and learn along with them. But the point of spiritual growth is that eventually we become disciplers of other people, rather than simply saying, "Okay, we have all this truth and we are not sharing it with anyone else." You begin to get to the meat of the Word so that you can instruct others. And it doesn't mean in a formal classroom, though it includes that.

It means just in relationship. Are you able to sit down with someone else and say, "Let's read the Bible together and let's let's figure out what it says together and let me be able to guide you because I have come to the point." And of course, I'm being very careful in what I say here. None of us comes to the point where we understand everything, but we're further along in growth.

And then, of course, you say, "Oh, but you know, there's milk, there's bread, there's meat. That's pretty heavy, but I need some dessert." Don't you think that would be wonderful? Just like me yesterday, after I had a sandwich for lunch, I had a chocolate attack.

I don't know whether or not you've ever had a chocolate attack, but you really need a chocolate at that moment. That was my dessert. You say, "Oh, I need dessert." Well, the Bible has that too.

In Psalm 19, the Bible says that the precepts of the Lord are more important and more precious than gold, yea then much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the dripping of a honeycomb. You need dessert? Go into the Psalms and it's full of honeycombs. So the Word of God has within it a whole meal and meditation is to the soul what digestion is to the body.

And it's the transforming power of the Word of God. "Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, growing vibrant Christians." You say, "Oh, I've been defeated by sin all this time." Well, yeah, have you been reading the Word and listening to the Word? That's where the power is.

What I want to do is to nail this down. I was going to mention being confronted by the Word, but we'll leave that some other time. First of all, God wills. God wills that we grow into a predetermined image, that we grow into a predetermined image, namely the image of Jesus.

I emphasize that we have the DNA of Jesus. One of the most remarkable things to me about the miracle of birth. And I don't know how in the world somebody can see a newborn baby and not believe in God, but that's a separate issue. The fact is this, the miracle of birth where you can look at a child who's a couple of weeks old and you can see in that child actually the features of his father or his mother.

And and you just say to yourself, "This is incredibly amazing." The color of eyes is determined already when the child is conceived. Height, hair color, all kinds of features, all wrapped up, all wrapped up in that in that embryo, in that birth process, all there already.

God says, "When I convert you, I give you the stamp of the Lord Jesus Christ." The Bible says in the fourth chapter of the Book of Ephesians, it says that we are to exercise our gifts within the church and communicate with one another within the church, so that we might grow up into Him in all things, into the image of Christ.

Scripture says in the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans that God puts us through various experiences that we might be conformed to the image of His Son. When you are converted, God had His Son Jesus in mind and said that if this person grows and gets out of the spiritual nursery and begins to allow the Word of God to feed him or her, when that begins, then Jesus is going to break through. Some of the characteristics of Jesus.

We're all different, just like members of the family are different. I mean, I can't believe we have three daughters who are so radically different, all with the same parents, and within us very much differences, racial differences, economic differences, abilities different. But all of them having within themselves implanted all that they need to have Christ-likeness, apart from the fact that they must be in the Word of God.

And learn to feed themselves, and one of the things I'm going to be doing in a future message is to speak specifically about meditation and how the feeding process works. Second, growth can only take place with the intake of the Word. Growth can only take place with the intake of the Word of God.

Now, the idea of listening to seven chapters a day or whatever it turns out to be so that you listen to the whole New Testament in 40 days, for many people seems formidable. They just say, "I don't know where I would have the time."

I want to be very sensitive here, but I don't believe you. Is that clear? I'll tell you why I don't believe you. I was on the phone this week with a pastor friend of mine in California who had leukemia. And he went through a treatment that involved five hours a day for several weeks. Well, where in the world does a pastor, a busy pastor get five hours a day? Please, tell me.

Ah, but his life was at stake. When your life is at stake, you find five hours a day. Thank you very, very much. And when your spiritual life and your eternity is at stake, and whether or not you really live a life to the glory of God, when that's at stake, somewhere, someplace you find 28 minutes a day, somewhere, someplace.

And when you think of listening to it nowadays, you can do that with your family over a meal. Wouldn't that be wonderful to have a meal without any arguments because everybody is just listening to the scripture being read? You can even listen to it in the car.

Though I remind you that angels that guard you when you drive officially retire at 75. So be vigilant. Be vigilant, but, you know, you can listen in that context. If you are creative, you will find that half an hour somewhere, someplace.

And of course, if we do it together, if we all say, "Today is our beginning date," and we write that on the back, you can imagine the impact that it's going to have. This is what the Bible says in First Timothy chapter 4. It says, "Exercise yourself toward godliness."

Now there are other ways to do it. You know what you can do? You can read a chapter a day and so forth. This is this is jump-starting. This is immersion. And when you read or when you hear the Word of God, before you do, you have to pray this and say, "Lord, open Thou mine eyes that I might behold wondrous things out of Thy law."

Pray that prayer from Psalm 119. Then what you do is you ask God for the ability to concentrate. And that means turning off everything, all the stimuli that normally interrupt you and say, "God, I'm giving you this time." And you know what's going to happen? Oh, the first times it's going to be so hard. You're going to say, "I did it yesterday and I don't even remember anything."

So what do you do? You do it the next day. That's what you do. And you keep doing it day after day until suddenly there's an appetite that develops within you and you say to yourself, "You know, I don't think I can go a whole day without the Word of God." Because you've tasted and you've seen that the Lord is good and the appetite as you deal with issues through the Word will happen.

Now I have to tell you, I had a heads up here, and so yesterday I listened to today's section. So I'm ahead of you. All day yesterday, because I did it in the morning, all day yesterday, various passages came to mind. You know, this passage, and then I'd be thinking about this and this passage. When you're going through a large section like that, you don't have to stop and smell the flowers, so to speak. You know, you can go back later and you can study, and what you're interested in is the whole sweep of it. And remember, we're only challenging you for 40 days that we believe it's going to go much longer than that.

Israel was in the desert for 40 years. Goliath challenged David for 40 days. 40 days. And then David took care of him. Maybe it'll take 40 days for you to slay Goliath, but be faithful.

Jesus was tempted of the devil for 40 days. We can do this together for 40 days. Do I have a witness that we can do this together?

And now I have to ask you a question. Have you been born again by the water? Jesus mentioned water is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Have you been born of the Spirit and the Word? That's a very good question.

As I mentioned, it's not something that you grow into. It's not church attendance. Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, that religious leader who came by night because this leader had a hunger within his soul. And he knew that there's got to be more to religion than these boring rituals. He knew that it isn't just a matter of rules and and regulations and promises that we make to ourselves that we break anyway. There's got to be more to it.

And Jesus said to him immediately, "You must be born from above." It's a miracle that you can't do. It's not a matter of determination. The scripture says that we are born from above by the will of God.

Have you been born from above? Has God created within you that new nature? Because now you're hearing the Word of God that Jesus died for us as sinners, He shed His blood so that we could be reconciled to God, and He rose again in triumph to show that what He did was legitimate and right. And and do you say, "I believe on Him as my Savior?"

And it'll happen in a moment of time when you with a kind of desperate faith know your sinfulness, the moment you believe. How does that song go? It's just coming to mind as I'm preaching. The moment we believe that pardon from God we receive. Something like that. But it's right.

And God transforms you. For some people, it's a great experience because the environment is such. For others, it's a quiet experience. You could believe on Christ right now, those of you who are listening by radio or by internet or any other way that you are listening right now, you can say, "Jesus, today I accept you as my substitute, as my Savior, and I believe and trust You alone for my eternity."

You know, in the Book of Acts, in Acts chapter 16, there are two remarkable conversions. One is the conversion of the Philippian jailer. There was an earthquake, and he was so terrified. He began to get his life in order really, really fast and he said, "What must I do to be saved?"

And they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved." And evidently, he was saved right there because they went into his home and all those who believed were baptized. We don't know that there were any children in the home. There's no infant baptism in the Bible, but they were baptized. And that was a rather spectacular conversion, I'd say.

But in the very same chapter, there's the story of Lydia. And the Bible says that Lydia was going along by the river, and there was going to be a Bible study there, and it says, "She was a woman whose heart God opened." And later on, she helped the apostles. Are you listening today and your heart is being open to God?

Or you say, "Okay, I reach out to Jesus as my Savior to receive the miracle that He alone is able to give." Bottom line, a man was explaining how he got saved to someone, and he said it very, very simply. He said, "I did my part, God did his part." He said, "Oh, interesting, explain." He said, "My part was to do the sinning. Jesus Christ's part was to do the saving." The end of the day, that's what the Gospel is. Our part is the sinning.

His part is the saving. And then as a new