Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. There are just two ways to approach an understanding of God. Either you accept his written revelation, or you invent your own idols, because we all worship something. Today, more from Isaiah on coming to grips with the true God and the way he thinks.
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. We're in a series on 10 lies about God and why you might already be deceived. Pastor Lutzer, is it possible for us to ever grasp how God thinks and then attempt to think like he does? Well Dave, of course the pursuit of God means that we, as far as possible as human beings, get to know God. What a wonderful pursuit that actually is, but we can't comprehend him totally at all. He is way beyond our understanding, but we can seek him out. I've written a book entitled 10 Lies About God, and I wrote it so that it might be transforming in the lives of all who read it. By transformation, I mean that they will have a better understanding of God, that they will approach him correctly, that they'll be able to answer objections to the Christian God. And I trust that this book will be a blessing, and we're making it available for a gift of any amount. Here's what you can do.
Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. As far as possible, let us make sure that our minds are in tune with the God of the Bible. The scripture says that we see through a glass darkly, but we do see, but sometimes it's very murky.
And when we try to figure out God's ways, we suddenly discover that indeed his ways are unfathomable. Now take your Bibles, you're in Isaiah 55, and turn one page to Isaiah 57. Notice what the text says here, verse 15 of Isaiah 57. For this is what the high and lofty one says, he who lives forever, whose name is holy. I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. I want to contrast the gods that we're just talking about, the idols, with a true and a living God. What can be said about this God? Karl Barth was right, we cannot begin with man and begin to reason up and project on God our image. We must begin with what he has revealed, and he says that he is the high and the holy one who lives forever, and he lives in a high and holy place. First of all, he is a God who hides, who hides.
Luther, I think, was right when he says even when God reveals himself, he remains hidden. He speaks here in the text about being the one who lives forever. Have you ever wondered what it was like when God was alone before creation and God was fully satisfied because of the trinity? His needs were met, there was a relationship there that was entirely fulfilling, and there was God from everlasting to everlasting.
He is God, and then suddenly he chose to create, and creation helps us get a bit of a window on his immensity, doesn't it? When you stop to think of it, light travels 186,000 miles a second. That means it hustles around the world about seven times every single second. The light from the sun, which is 93 million miles away, takes eight minutes. So the sun that warms you when you're out there on the beach left eight minutes ago before it did you any good, or as the case may be, before it did you any harm.
But there you are, you're enjoying it, and it took eight minutes hustling at 186,000 miles a second. But Orion, the star, takes 527 years for the light of that star to reach the earth. Now 1517, Martin Luther, your member, went down to the Castle Church and nailed the 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Germany. 1517, the light that left on that day still isn't here. We say, oh, you know, where have you been? I mean, you know, I've been having coffee along the way.
What are you so slow about? 186,000 miles a second, and you know that unless I live as long as my father, I probably will be dead by the time that light gets here. And that's one small star that really is just next door, if you look at the universe, which spans the limits of our imagination of hundreds of millions of light years, and new galaxies are being discovered, and billions upon billions and billions and billions and billions of stars. You think we can take that God and put him into our little mold and co-opt him and say, my little image is the right image?
I don't think so. You think of his immensity. Immediately, therefore, we are led to his unknowability. Oh, I know we do know something about him, as we'll point out in a moment, but there's a part of him that is inscrutable.
The scripture says, and we sometimes sing it, don't we? Great is the Lord and worthy to be praised, and his greatness is unfathomable. No matter what conception you have of God's greatness, there's always something about him that is much greater, and it cannot be traced out. I don't know about you, but do you ever have real silly thoughts about God like I do?
I remember thinking about this when I was a boy. I was thinking to myself, you know, God exists from one end of eternity to the other and from one end of space to the other, however far those ends go. And he's beyond his creation, obviously. But I'm saying to myself, he knows all things. Is his knowledge localized somewhere? I mean, I know my knowledge is somehow localized in my brain, and I usually carry my brain around with my body.
The two so far have always gone places together. But, you know, is all of his knowledge also? Does it exist at the farthest star? Does the knowledge permeate the whole universe?
Is it somehow localized? I don't know. All that I know is that his ways are inscrutable. They are past finding out, the text says. Zophar, in the book of Job, asked Job this question. He says, Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Holy One to perfection? Are you going to tell me that you can discern God and you can go into his presence and you can know all about him?
Is that what you are telling me? John Wesley said, Bring me a worm that understands a man, and I will bring you a man who can understand the triune God. There is much about God that we do not know. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments?
Did you notice it? How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out? For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or to whom has he given anything and he's got to return it? For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory and dominion and power forever and ever a man. It's not the God of the New Age movement that people have in their hip pocket. It's not the God of contemporary America, cafeteria, religion. This is a different God entirely. You say, What is its relevance? Well, we just read, did we not? To whom then will you liken me or shall I be equal, says the Holy One?
Who are you going to liken me onto? Who is the one who brings out the hosts on high and he gives them all names because of the greatness of his might not one fails? Why do you say, Oh, Jacob, and speak, Oh, Israel, and say, My way is hidden from the Lord and the justice do me has escaped the attention of my God?
Do you not know? Have you not heard that the Lord, the creator of the heavens of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He gives power to the faint and to them who have no mighty increase of strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary.
Young men shall utterly fall. They that wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. You can't understand him. But the text is saying, though you can't understand him, he is honored when you trust him. If he is this great God, why don't you entrust him with your injustices?
They have not escaped his attention. So first of all, God hides. There's much about him we do not know. The reason I want to emphasize that is I need to tell you that the difficult messages in this series are still in the future. And what I want to do is to lay down right here the fact that we need to find out what God has revealed, even if we don't fully understand the why. For example, the next message in this series is going to deal with the issue of whether or not God is obligated to save people of other religions. And I'm going to say, No, that's not what the scripture teaches. Can you think of how politically incorrect that is?
Can you imagine some of the letters that I'm going to receive when I'm going to speak that? And if you ask me why, I may not know why, but it is my responsibility to find out what God has said. It is not my responsibility to know all the whys and the wherefores. Look at the problem of evil. I don't think that there's any problem that has so vexed my spirit, both philosophically and theologically and emotionally, is the problem of evil. If God loves us, why all these tragedies, which obviously could be prevented, as we're going to point out.
There may not be an intellectually totally satisfying answer. Can we trust him and believe him and simply confess that his ways are past finding out? First of all, God hides. This is the high and lofty one who lives forever, whose name is holy. I live in a high and holy place.
We call it transcendence. But God also seeks. You know, the scripture says the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, seeking those whose hearts are perfect towards him.
That's the incredible contrast. Notice, and I dwell, however, with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit to revive the spirits of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. And may I say that there is an unbreakable link between part A in that verse and part B. Could you imagine being in the presence of God, who is most holy, the lofty and the holy one, and not having a contrite heart? Is it even thinkable? Do you think that people are going to waltz into God's presence, thinking they're going to impress him if they're coming into the presence of the living God who knows every last single hidden thing? Are you thinking that?
No, of course not. Calvin said these words. Without the knowledge of God, there is no knowledge of the self. He says he is certain that no man achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face and then descends from contemplating God to scrutinizing himself. You know, the reason we've lost our way is because we've lost God. And so people don't know themselves. They write books about the self, like One Day My Soul Opened Up or some other book about conversations with God or the celestial prophecy and a hundred other books like that, all about the soul. But the problem is there's no way that people can know the soul unless they first know God.
Our opinions are skewed. There is a story about a factory that would have a whistle that would go off at 12 noon exactly every day. And there was also a town clock. And as these two were in sync, and they always were, townspeople began to wonder about the crazy time that it was beginning to be. And then they discovered something.
The factory gauged its whistle by the town clock, but the town clock was always corrected in accordance with the whistle at the factory. The problem is without some objective standard, without God, we don't know who we are. All that I want you to know is that your soul is much more sinful than you ever know it to be. The Bible says, in fact, who can even know the human heart. You have no idea who you are until you're in God's presence. Listen to what was said in the New York Times.
The New York Times. Sin isn't something that many people, including most churches, have spent time talking about or worrying about during the years of the cultural, that is, sexual revolution. But we will say this for sin. At least it offered a frame of reference for personal behavior. And when the frame was dismantled, guilt wasn't the only thing that fell away. We also lost our guidewire of personal responsibility. Everyone was left on his or her own.
It now appears that many wrecked people could have used a roadmap. Ministers and priests gave away voluntarily to clinics and counselors, and it goes on to say that today parents can hardly even talk to their children and are told they shouldn't talk to them about sin because they wouldn't understand anyway. We have lost our way.
We've lost our way. What does God offer us when we come to him in his presence? Well, first of all, of course, we begin to understand who we are.
We are sinners. But also, we begin to understand his grace. The passage that was read earlier said, seek the Lord while he may be found.
Call upon him while he is near. Come, forsake your ways and he will abundantly pardon. Now, we're offended because we are sinners, but we're also offended at God's generous forgiveness when we come to know him in Jesus Christ. Remember when the Columbine shootings took place, what was it, 13 young people shot and they had 15 crosses, two of them also representing the shooters.
And people in the community complained and said, take those two crosses down because we should not honor them. You see, the cross of Jesus Christ not only reminds us of sin, but it also reminds us of grace. And we do not like grace when it is given to people whom we think don't deserve it. It is said that Ted Bundy, you remember who killed many years ago, 28 young women accepted Christ as savior before he was executed.
Now, I'm not sure of that, but let's suppose the story is true. He will be in heaven and there's something within me, particularly if one of those women had been my daughters. There's something within me that says he ought to burn and I resent the fact that he's going to be in heaven. That's part of grace. God thinks differently than we do about sin, but he also thinks differently than we do about grace. He is the God who gives us his love and his grace. But now he's a God who hides. He's a God who seeks, who ministers grace, but he's also a God who rewards.
I come now to the most important challenge of this message. In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 6, it says, he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he rewards those who diligently seek him out. In the 14th century, there was a book written entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. I checked it out of a library this week, 14th century book, of course, modern translations and updates, but this mystic was contemplating God and he used this analogy. He said between us and God, there is a cloud and he said that behind the cloud is the divine presence.
But in this life, no matter how far we go along, we always have that cloud of unknowing. There is so much about God that we do not know, but rather than letting that discourage us, it encourages us to press further and further to know him as far as he can be known in this life. And those who are consumed with that passion, they are the ones who get to rejoice in God. First, I quoted in the service this morning earlier, let those who seek God rejoice, let them be glad. But finally, this raging thirst within us is quenched in the presence of the living God and the more we know him, the more we love him and it keeps pursuing us until on and on we go to find out God and all we can possibly know and experience.
There is a story about a farmer who had an orchard and he planted some very sour apples around the outer part because these apples would fall on the other side of the fence, the kids would eat them, they were so bitter and sour, the kids never bothered going into the orchard. But inside the orchard where he invited his friends, that's where all the sweetness was and all the refreshment. You know, Christianity is a little bit like that. On the perimeter, you get these ideas of sin and conviction and we don't like that, we don't want a God before whom we must bow, we want a God whom we can control. So you get all of this hard theology and you get this whole problem of people sometimes being a disappointment to you and you get all, but once you get through all that and you begin to pursue God in the scriptures and you begin to seek him and wait on him, the refreshment of strength and encouragement and sheer joy begins to come to you. And God becomes what C.S.
Lewis called the all satisfying object. Now here's what happens in the Christian life. There are people who are pursuing God and then they come to a barrier.
Maybe it's an addiction in their lives, maybe it is some sin, maybe it is some bitterness and they never get beyond it, that's where they stay. What God wants us to do is to break through those barriers and keep pressing forward, forward, forward until we know him as well as we can. And suddenly the rest that we look for is ours and the cleansing that we desire is ours because we find our all in thee as Augustine said. And by the way there have been saints who have so desired God, they have so thirsted for him to quote Augustine again. He said, Oh Lord, it is said, no man can see thee and live.
Let me die that I might behold thy face. Blessed are those who see God that way and the promises that he rewards those who diligently seek him out. John Piper whose wonderful books have been a blessing to so many people says that God is most glorified in us when we are satisfied with him.
What does the text say? He comes to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite and to meet the deepest level of our thirst and need. Blessed are those who seek him out.
He hides, much about him we'll never know. He seeks, may we be among those who respond. He rewards, let's go for it, let's go for God. The hymn writer wrote, there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God, a place where sin cannot molest near to the heart of God. Jesus, O blessed Redeemer, hold us near to the heart of God. My friend today, this is Pastor Lutzer. In our very distracted world, we need to remember that there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God. And certainly we cannot find out everything about God. As a matter of fact, Jonathan Edwards says that the ideas of God will go on throughout all eternity. But I invite you to know him through Jesus Christ our Lord, then to rest in his promises.
And in this way, we will have the assurance that we are trusting someone who sees the future, he can see around corners, and he has our future in his hands. For a gift of any amount, we're making available a book entitled Ten Lies About God. I wrote this book to help us to understand the biblical God, to also critique the culture.
Because as I've always emphasized, people love to talk about God just as long as he is the God of their own making. For a gift of any amount, we're making this resource available for you. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Of course, rtwoffer is all one word. rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337.
That's 1-888-218-9337. Any marathon runner will tell you there's only one goal line and only one route that gets you there. Rules are rules. You have to follow the track to win. Next time on Running to Win, we explore a tough subject. Erwin Lutzer will speak on lie number five, that God is obligated to save followers of other religions. Plan to join us. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
