The Cross: The Basis For Morality – 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Americans are adrift in a sea of moral relativism. We need a moral compass. The cross of Christ is that compass, and the church must live by the cross if our culture is to survive. 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, today we'll be seeing how the Apostle Paul directed the Corinthian believers on how to live on that sea of moral chaos. You know, Dave, that's right. In the book of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul talks about that, but I want to emphasize something, and that is that in those days, there was no way that they could actually influence the government to bring about just laws. That's different from our situation. That's why I've written the book entitled Christians, Politics and the Cross, and this is one of the last days we are making this resource available for you. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours.

Very quickly, go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Christians, Politics and the Cross. Let us now listen carefully. You know, I have a friend, bless him, who doesn't think that he should attend a restaurant where a liquor is served because he's contributing toward the liquor. Well, that's fine that he has that conviction, but I wonder what happens when he eats somewhere else. How does he know how the money that is being given is going to be used? If you have that view that you're not going to associate with idolaters and swindlers and immoral people, then you're going to have to go to northern Wisconsin and buy a little plot of land and a little bit of acreage and not see anybody for at least five years, but watch carefully the man from whom you purchase that plot of land. He might misuse that money for immoral purposes. Now, Paul says that's not what I'm talking about.

Of course you have to do business with these people. Verse 11, but actually I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person or covetous or an idolater or reviler or drunkard or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?

He said, that's your responsibility. You're pointing your fingers at them and you have not cleaned up your own act, but those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. You see, what Paul is saying is I don't come here to Corinth with a, with a morality campaign to clean the place up because I know number one, it won't work. And number two, even if you got them cleaned up morally, unless they were rightly related to God, you would not be doing for them anything that would be of eternal significance and consequence. You would be imposing an outer law upon them without an inner transformation of heart and that won't go anywhere.

That will not fuel the stall train along the tracks. So Paul says, first of all, what you need to do is to take care of the sins of the flesh. In chapter six, he goes on to say, you should take care of the sins of the spirit.

And sometimes we emphasize one and we say nothing about the other. What is it in chapter six while he's talking about some of these people who are going to court? You know, we think we live in a litigious society and we do, but evidently at Corinth there were perhaps a number of attorneys there also who majored in disputes. And here brothers are going to court among brothers. People from the same church are going before ungodly judges trying to resolve these disputes.

Paul says in verse five, I will pick it up at verse three. Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more matters that pertain to this life? If then you have law courts dealing with matters for this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church?

I say this to your shame. Is it so that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren? But brother goes to law with brother and that before unbelievers. Actually then it is already a defeat for you that you have lawsuits one with another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not be defrauded? And I can just hear the people say, yeah, but my rights, he chiseled me out of the inheritance.

He didn't give me what's coming to me and we need to set the record straight. You always find those who believe that the whole cause of justice rests with them. Every single wrong done has to be pursued legally so that they bring justice to every situation. You can't do that in the world.

In fact, you can't do it in the world and you shouldn't. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves. Vengeance is mine. I will recompense says the Lord. But as we, as we rear a generation that has long since lost confidence in God's ability to handle things, we therefore think to ourselves, we must handle it in our way and we are going to get the utmost farthing of what is coming to us no matter how ugly it all looks.

Paul says, clean up your act, clean up your act. And then when he goes on to say is these very famous words, verse eight, do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Now that can mean a, that they will not be in heaven.

And certainly there's good evidence that that perhaps is what he meant. On the other hand, there are those who say, no, there are people who are involved in these kinds of sins who are Christians and they will get into the kingdom, but they will not rule with Christ in the kingdom. They will not inherit the kingdom either way. What the apostle Paul is saying is that you take lightly what God takes very seriously. And now he lists 10 sins. Five of them we could say are the sins of the flesh. The other five are sins of the spirit.

Four of them are sexual. Do not be deceived and how easy it is to be deceived when we want to do our own thing. For neither fornicators, that usually is immorality among the unmarried, nor idolaters. And I'll tell you, Kelvin said that our hearts are idle factories. We have all kinds of idols that are in our minds oftentimes. Or adulterers, married unfaithfulness or effeminate nor homosexuals, the two parts that are played in the homosexual society, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Don't ever think they will. What a statement, what a statement. But then he goes on to say in verse 11 and such were some of you, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God. Notice a couple of things about this verse. First of all, he not only lists the sins of the spirit and I mentioned some of those, but notice he says revilers. Have you ever met a reviler? A reviler is someone who gives you abusive speech. Normally angry people, normally angry people and people who always think the worst of every situation.

They prejudge everything and they make it the very, very worst and only when they are convinced otherwise do they give somebody the benefit of the doubt. He said don't think that a person like that is going to inherit the kingdom of heaven, but don't be deceived because it's easy to excuse it and to think that they will. And he goes on to say, yes swindlers, you know there are those who are dishonest in business, always chiseling somebody, always trying to get the best deal, always trying to make promises and then thinking of ways that they get out of those promises. And he says that the covetous, the covetous, in fact in chapter five verse 11 you remember he says that if someone is covetous and claims to be a believer, don't even eat with him.

Don't associate with him. I've seen discipline of the church for a lot of different things. I've never seen it for covetousness. But Paul says, you know, let's put that sin on the list along with all the others that are more noticeable. But then he says, and such were some of you, that's your past behavior, but you are washed. Now, if we were writing this, we'd have said you are justified, sanctified and washed. But Paul begins with their experience first and says you are washed.

Are y'all following me today? I want you to know today that the world has no answer to the problem of guilt, none whatever. You either do one of two things. I learned it in the university psychology class. You sublimate it. You sublimate it.

I don't know exactly how the prof told us to do it, but that's what he told us to do. You try to work it into your psyche. You try to ignore it so that it no longer really causes you any trouble.

That's I think what sublimate means. You know, my wife and I had an alarm clock, one of these that beep, you know, on these digital gadgets. And it was beeping in our bedroom every hour. And we toyed with it and couldn't get it to stop beeping.

So I said, I'll put it in my study. That was about five or six months ago. Now, every hour on the half hour, I still hear the beep. But you know what? It's not very loud anymore. And one of these days that battery is going to give up the ghost and say, I'm finished. That's the way the world says, handle your conscience.

You know, you feel guilty. Let it die like a battery so that you no longer hear its screams or its whistle. Learn to live with it. Become hard. Just do it.

Actualize yourself. That's one way. The other way, of course, is to drown it with drugs and alcohol.

You know what? Christianity says that there is a way to be washed. The nature of the cross that we take into the world actually does cleanse the conscience. I mean, imagine having committed these sins, you know, and these are terrible things. And there are people who are listening to this message who have done some of these things and maybe even worse things. And imagine being washed by God, cleansed. You can get up in the morning and you can look into the mirror and you can see yourself because inwardly you have been made clean. Now, where can you find that in our political agendas here in America?

You can't find anything like that. That that's unbelievable. I mean, that you will be washed. Some of you bless you. You live with fear that someday your past life is going to come up to haunt you. And you wonder who knows now and who might find out. Once you have been washed, you give all that to God, trusting him that even if the lid is blown off your life, he'll walk with you through the experience because he really does love you. And if he washes you, you are clean. You are washed, Paul says, you were sanctified. That is to say, you were set apart. Imagine people having committed these kinds of things and they have a mark on them that says, set apart by God for God, special handling. Jesus said in John 17, I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth, set apart by God. And then he says, you are justified. You're declared as righteous as God.

Thanks to Christ, you gave him your sin and he gives you your righteousness and you make it into the doors of heaven welcomed by Christ himself. I love to tell the story of Roger because he was with us. Actually, I looked up the date. It was about six or seven years ago when he came to Moody Church. He had been a homosexual prostitute. He estimated 1,500 different partners at least. He was dying of AIDS. He married a young woman and miraculously she did not catch that virus. But I did an interview with him because I found his story so fascinating as to how God saved him out of such a life. He was gloriously converted and then it took him two years before the word of God cleansed him so that he was able to give up totally his desires that he had had in his unconverted days. And now he radiated the peace and the freedom of God. That refers to him. And such were some of you. He died later of AIDS.

He had it when AIDS was the kind of thing that if you had it was a two-year death sentence basically. And now he's gone. But I imagine him coming into heaven not through the back door but welcomed through the front porch by God declared as righteous as Christ.

What hope? What a gospel that we have to carry into the world. That is so much better than simply trying to get people to change their lifestyle however important that might be. The fact is how can you reach inside and change somebody who perhaps doesn't want to be changed who's been told that he can't and who feels the sense of self-condemnation about the kind of secret life that he is living. And now suddenly God comes and washes him and sanctifies him and declares him righteous. What is the bottom line that I'm trying to share with you today? It is simply this that if we want to change the world it will happen through the proclamation of the gospel outside these walls and the purification of the church within these walls. You see not all of the problems in America are really the fault of those humanists and those liberals and those Supreme Court justices and all the people that we target.

It could well be that the problem is much closer to home. Do you remember when Jonah was out on the sea and he encountered there a mighty big storm and the ship was battered and they didn't know what in the world to do and so they decided to toss this guy over. Actually he volunteered. Jonah had a suicidal streak in him anyway. Later on he wanted God to kill him because he didn't have the nerve to do it himself. He said, Lord smite me dead.

I can't take all this grace that you're given to other people. But you know it's interesting that the storm was not the result of the pagans. It was not because these pagans were worshiping their pagans gods and God hurled a storm out of heaven because he wanted to teach them a thing or two about those awesome idols and those gods.

That's not what happened. The reason for the storm was that there was a disobedient prophet who was going in the wrong direction when God gave him clear guidance as to what his will was. You know Jonah wasn't those kind of guys who could look to God and say God I do your will but I have no idea what it might be. Many of us say that but God says Jonah I want you to go to Nineveh. That is very very clear and Jonah said no and God says because of you my servant the storm is coming. That's what the problem may well be and while we expend a lot of energy trying to clean America up God says I want my people who are called by my name to be cleansed and to walk in freedom and then you'll be in a position where you will have a significant effect in your society.

If it is true if it is true that one immoral person can infect a whole congregation and a little leaven leavens the whole lump and you think that's a bit unfair let me say that the reverse is also true that sometimes righteousness on a part of one congregation can have an impact that is much bigger than one might think and that ought to be a cause for optimism. One day God said Joshua I want you to conquer Jericho but after Jericho is conquered I want you to burn everything this is the first victory we're winning in the land don't want you to spare anything. There was a guy by the name of Achan who had a better idea. Achan said to himself yeah but what am I going to do here's some silver here's a good coat it's too good to burn up that's why he took it and he hid it in his tent. Next battle that they came to was Ai and lo and behold 36 men die on the battlefield and Joshua's crying up to the Lord and saying what went wrong thought you were on our side what's the big deal why do you allow these pagans to win the war? God says Joshua get up stop praying you know there's a time to just quit praying he said you've got a problem there's a guy by the name of Achan who hid something in his tent.

Well God didn't give the name but he says there's somebody there's somebody that's got something you'd better find out who it is and you remember the process that they went through and Achan was finally uncovered and he says you know I saw this Babylonian garment and I saw this silver and he said I saw it and I coveted it and I took it. Now I have a question for you let's suppose that after the defeat of Ai you asked a military commander why did Israel lose the war? He wouldn't have said well I'll tell you what there's this guy back there who's got something in his tent that he shouldn't have and that even crossed his mind.

He just said you know bad strategy not enough men what you need to do is to think more carefully as to how you're going to attack the enemy better weapons that's what he would have thought of. Let me ask you what is the connection between something that is hidden in a tent? What is the connection between that and defeat on the battlefield? The answer is there's no logical connection between those two events except that God decided to make a connection between them and God says that as long as you don't clean up your act you won't win those battles that you become so angry about that you think we should be winning and the problem is not so much outside the walls as it is within the walls. Who knows?

Who knows? Who knows but that God might yet grant us the gift of repentance and purity and humility? Who knows but that we might yet influence our Corinth if God is gracious and we look into our own hearts and see the sins in our own hearts that we so readily condemn in the world. It is then you see that the church having evaluated itself makes its greatest impact upon society. How do we get the engine going?

The engine is fueled by the cross of Christ who reconciles sinners to himself and the power of the Holy Spirit of God who sets us on fire for him. That is the answer ultimately ultimately to our predicament. I end with a note of optimism.

It was Solzhenitsyn who said that it's possible sometimes to shout in a valley and your shout begins an avalanche. Who knows? Who knows but that God may yet be gracious to us but he says judgment begins at the house of God. It begins with us, begins with us before we can see the transformation of the world. So where are you at today?

Two categories of people to whom I speak. Number one, those of you who have never personally accepted Christ as Savior, you have not been washed, sanctified, nor justified in the name of Jesus. Today you can reach out in faith to receive that gift.

Humble yourself, admit your need. You're not going to save yourself. God is the one who saves. Second category, you are concerned about America and you know Christ as Savior. You begin where you are.

You begin sharing with your neighbors, with your friends, you begin with your own life and you recognize that the best way for us to clean up the nation is to begin with ourselves first. Whatever God says to you and to me, may he grant us the grace to follow through in obedience. It's not important that you listen to this sermon, though I hope that you did.

As I look at you, I think some of you did, maybe some of you didn't. What is important is that whatever you've heard, you obey to the very end. And of course I want to emphasize in this political year that in addition to praying and witnessing about the cross of Jesus Christ, we can indeed do all that we can to elect those leaders that we think best reflect biblical values. That being said, I've written a book entitled Christian's Politics and the Cross and this is one of the last days we're making this book available for you. In one of the paragraphs I say, there are two things that we can do as we see the rising persecution. We can angrily denounce our enemies or we can prudently choose to carry the full weight of Christ's cross. The lighter our cross, the weaker our witness. What this book attempts to do is to remind us that politics is very important but it is not supremely important.

Only the gospel is supremely important. For a gift of any amount, we're making this book available for you. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, you gave that contact info too quickly.

So I'll give you time to pick up a pen or a pencil. I'm going to be giving it to you again with a sincere hope that this book is going to help you as you discuss politics and Christianity. Go to rtwoffer.com.

That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. There is a basic problem in evangelism. The world thinks the cross we preach about is foolish but to us it's the power of God. So how do we bring the message of that cross to a rejecting world? Next time on Running to Win, we'll learn how to have a real impact on those around us. In a series on Christians, politics, and the cross, Erwin Lutzer will bring his final message, the cross, our challenge before a watching world. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.