Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.
In Bible times, all roads led to Rome. Some feel that all spiritual roads lead to heaven, even those that never intersect. They say anyone who is sincere in their belief deserves a shot at heaven. Today we look at fairness from God's point of view. 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, why do so many people assume that God is obligated to save followers of other religions? Well, Dave, as you hinted in your introduction, we think that that would only be fair.
But what we forget is that fairness and justice are oftentimes not the same thing. So even as people listen today, I trust that they will understand that we are trying to be very biblical in our understanding of other religions and the way in which God treats those who are sincere, but they may be believing in false truths. I want to thank the many of you who support the ministry of Running to Win. If you've been listening to us, you know that we are always commending to people the gospel of Jesus Christ. We love the gospel, and because of people like you, we are sharing it around the world.
Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. I want you to think about it. I want you to pray about it. I want you to listen now.
But immediately following the message, I'll give you some info. For now, indeed, let us listen. Don't ever think that God is going to take people from other religions and say, I'm going to send you to hell because you never believed in Jesus. That would be manifestly unfair. How in the world were they supposed to believe in Jesus if they never heard of him? That will not be the standard of judgment. The standard of judgment is by available light, not light that is unavailable.
Very important throughout the scriptures. Now you say, well then, how will these people do? Well, I need to give you the bad news that despite general revelation, the light of nature and the light of conscience, there are going to be several things revealed. First of all, nobody really passes the grade because nobody lives up to what he knows is right. Nobody lives up to what he knows is right. Some people will do better than others, and God is definitely going to take that into account. Jesus made that very, very clear that a person's judgment is based on what he knew. He who knew his Lord's will and didn't do it will receive one degree of punishment. The person who didn't know God's will is going to receive another.
Of course that's the way God is going to run it. But at the end of the day, the bottom line is that no one will have lived up to what he knew. And we're not talking about other religions. I'm talking about myself. I'm talking about you. Do you live up to what you know to be true?
I don't think so. There have been many times when I've done things that I knew were wrong and I did them anyway. It's just the natural fallenness that we have. So the answer is nobody's going to do very well because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Furthermore, the light of nature and the light of conscience cannot give us what we need. Remember what we need.
Don't lose sight of it. We need the righteousness of Christ credited to us because without that credit, we will not get to heaven because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Therefore, what we need to understand is that general revelation of nature and conscience is not enough to save someone. You need the righteousness of Jesus. Now having said that, what happens to the sincere seekers in other religions?
The ones who are totally honest, the ones who say that the God that I'm serving can't be the right God because of my conscience, because of nature, I want to serve the true God no matter what. I believe that the Bible teaches that God is obligated to give them that special revelation, to lead them in the truth because if they seek like that, they shall find. There are many stories of that that come to us from church history, from missions where there have been people who have sought the living and the true God and God connected them. God connected them with someone who could share the gospel. Listen to what the words of the apostle Paul says on Mars Hill.
I just want you to read it and you can look at the text later. He says the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by hands. For from one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth and he determined the times for them and set the exact places where they should live. God did this so men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.
As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Notice that the Bible says that the purpose of general revelation, God even putting certain people in one part of the world and other people in another, is that men might grope for God, that was the old King James translation there, and that perhaps they might find him. Some of you may know that a couple of months ago on WMBI I was on with a young man from Jerusalem and this man was brought up a Muslim. He was very committed to the Muslim faith, a radical if you please. He was also educated in a Muslim university but he could not find peace with God because of his sense of sin. He knew that whatever may be said about other prophets in the world, they weren't saviors.
Teachers, yes, but not saviors, not somebody who could clean him up and take him to God. So he began to seek and wonder with his great restlessness and you may recall if you were listening he had a dream about Jesus and his dream was so compelling that he could not get away from it. And later on someone gave him a New Testament and he began to read the New Testament and so forth and he came to saving faith in Jesus Christ and stories like that are coming to us and we're discovering that those who work in different religions occasionally will find people just like that. Now the simple fact is this, that beyond this we cannot go in the Bible. You know the scripture says the secret things belong unto the Lord our God but those things which are revealed are for us and for our children. So far as we know every time in the scriptures that someone is saved he needs to hear the message but God in creative ways gets the message to those who are desperately and honestly seeking.
Let's go to a fourth question. I've talked about the basis of judgment. Let's talk briefly about the final judgment. Here you have people who have come to faith in Christ and Jesus has borne their debt.
He has paid their penalty. That's what the cross and the resurrection of Christ is all about. So they of course are accepted by God. Those who stand and they have not trusted Jesus and we're not just talking about people who've never heard, we're talking about millions of Americans who have heard but have rejected Christ. And I'll say a word about them in just a moment but they are standing before God.
They are bearing then for themselves their own penalty. Now is God obligated to save everyone? No, in fact he was not obligated to save any of us.
You know it's interesting that when you come to the doctrine of the fall of Satan and all of the angels that fell with him, the tens of thousands that fell with him. The Bible expressly says that there's no sacrifice for them. There's no possibility of them ever being redeemed. God did not feel an obligation to redeem them and we would not charge God with injustice. We would say that he was perfectly just in doing that.
I suppose that if he wanted to there might have been a way to reconcile and redeem but he's not chosen that. God is not obligated to save everyone. He is obligated to treat them justly.
That is an obligation found from Genesis to Revelation. You say, well, is it fair? Well, that's a very loaded question because the whole business of what is fair is so wrapped up with all kinds of human notions about fairness that it's a very difficult question to answer.
For example, we may say in the minds of some people fairness means everybody gets treated alike. Well, if there's anything clear in scriptures, God does not treat everybody alike. Look at that earthquake in Turkey and by the way, the next message in this series is the lie that God takes no personal responsibility for natural disasters and I'm going to prove to you scripturally that he does take responsibility for them. So look at what's happened in Turkey. Look at what happened in Mexico. Look at what has happened in different parts of the world with all of the natural calamities, the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the earthquakes. Is that fair?
I mean, we've never had an earthquake. God does not treat everyone alike, if that's what you mean. He did not treat Hammurabi, the way in which he treated Abraham, but he is just. He is just. And when his justice is exercised, his love must be involved with that justice. And when his love is exercised, it must be also a just love.
His attributes work together in concert, but there's no doubt that sometimes we see clearly the justice of God, at other times we see more clearly the love of God and God has a right to be God. And that's the difficult thing for us to accept, isn't it? Someone told me the other day that there is a movie by the name of Ruby.
And in the movie, apparently, there was a young man who tried to get into some kind of an athletic squad or whatever. And a man from Notre Dame, a professor from Notre Dame was speaking to the young man and said these words, I think they're classic. He said, after 30 years of lecturing, he has come to two incontrovertible conclusions. He said, number one, he has concluded that there is a God. And number two, I'm not him.
That is that is worth 30 years of lecturing right there. There is a God and I'm not him. You see, whether you like the way in which God runs his universe, can I remind you that God did not choose the attributes that he has? He didn't say, well, you know, I'm going to choose to be loving. I'm going to be choosing to be merciful.
I'm going to be choosing. No, man, like John Piper says, he's stuck with being God. And therefore, we have to respond to the God that exists, not the God that we would like to have. William Cowper, who went through his own spiritual metamorphosis and great difficulty and struggle. And someday I'll tell you his whole story.
He gave us many hymns and many poems and became a friend of John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound. Cowper was talking about those who'd like to see God run the universe differently. People who look in the sky and say, I want you to be fair according to my standards. Cowper says they snatch from God's hand the balance and the rod. They re-judge his justice and become the judge of God.
Watch it. Two incontrovertible conclusions. There is a God, and I'm not him. So how are you going to respond to this message?
How are you going to respond to it? Let me give you two very important conclusions that we've been led to so far. Conclusion number one is that the proclamation of Christ is urgent. That's why we have the missions at Moody Church. That's why we believe so strongly that when Jesus said, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel, he meant what he said. And we all want to have a part in it. We believe that missions is the centrifugal force that drives us to share the good light of the gospel.
In fact, here's the exciting thing. People say today, well, you know, we're into diversity. Well, I'm glad that you're into diversity. When is into diversity? People say, well, you know, it depends on which continent you were born as to whether or not you're going to become a Christian.
That's not true at all. The Bible says that in the end time there are going to be people from every nation and tongue and people. And there are some countries in Africa who have more born again Christians than some states in our United States. The gospel is a gospel for the world. Jesus died for the world. He is the savior for the world, not just the Western world. And that's why we have to be so concerned about sharing the good news of the gospel, because if I might clearly say eternity hinges on your relationship with Jesus Christ.
And that's why we will never lose, God willing, our missionary zeal and vision for the whole world, for our city, for our neighborhoods, but the world too. Let me give you a second conclusion. And now folks, you have been listening very, very carefully.
I can tell that because things are quiet in here. Please continue to listen to what I'm going to say now. I would rather die as a person who had never heard of Christ, like that woman, that mother that I began this message with. I would rather die as a person who had never heard of Christ than a person who has heard the gospel and rejected Christ, especially those who reject him because he's not fair. Or those who say, it can't be that way because my God is more tolerant. Or people who come with a predisposition to reject God's sovereignty and therefore who turn away from the message that could save them if they believed and humbled themselves and accepted it. What am I saying?
My experience has been, and remember my experience is limited because I'm so young. My experience has been that people who are so worried about people who belong to other religions are not worried nearly enough about themselves. Because most of these people are people who say, I'm rejecting Christianity. I'm accepting Jesus as a teacher, but I'm not accepting him as a savior. I'm saying if you are concerned about other religions, good.
Some of us are too, but you had better be concerned about yourself first. There are three different possibilities, three different reactions regarding the message that I've preached today. First of all is agnosticism, to simply say I'm going to prefer to just go on my own way and I'm not going to accept what the Bible has to say in all this business of Jesus. That's one option and many people are taking it. Agnosticism.
Another is anger. Like one man told me that if there is a hell, I want to go there and I'm going to defy God throughout all of eternity no matter how long I burn. Utter foolishness, stupidity. Don't go there. Don't go there. Don't go there. Bible says regarding the nations of the world, he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. We're talking about a very holy God and the Bible says it is a fearful thing to fall into his hands unprepared. You don't want to do that.
You don't want to do that. Another possibility, we have looked at agnosticism, anger. The other possibility is awe.
Say wow. If that's the God, if that's the God that the Bible represents, I'd better get my act together. I'd better become his worshiper. I'd better get to know his son because apart from his son there can be no salvation and therefore what I'm going to do is I'm going to receive his son as my savior and believe in him that I might be saved. Now that's another option and that's the one I'm urging you and pleading with you.
Please take that option. What about the matter of bigotry? You know in the Old Testament God chose the Jews. No question about it. Did it lead to bigotry?
Yes it did unfortunately. You look at some of the passages in the Bible that's very clear. Can that lead to bigotry in our lives? Absolutely. Tragically it's possible. What do we do? Do we become bigoted?
No. When we understand this we are humbled. We're saying God why me?
Why do I have the opportunity? And we bow in the presence of sovereign God and say I will never, never, never take credit in humility and brokenness. I will share the good news of the gospel. Never with the self-righteous attitude of we're right and you're wrong but rather we're all wrong and Jesus is right. That's the way in which we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. What is the difference between Christianity and the other options out there? Well one is that all the other options are people trying to get to God, seeking him, groping for him as the old King James said and the other is a revealed religion where God comes down and God saves and as a result of that salvation is a free gift. In no other religion do you have that. One time I was with a man on the plane and he said you know there are just a lot of religions in the world and I said yeah but fundamentally only two. Let's take a piece of paper and on one side you write down all the religions that believe that you have to be a good person to get to heaven and that's the way to become a good person that you have to work your way to heaven. Let's put all the religions of the world that believe that in some form on this sheet of paper. Over here all those who believe that salvation is a free gift to those who humble themselves and receive it.
Let's put all the ones on that side of the slip of paper. Well you know only Christianity was on that one side and it has to be a free gift. Think about it. We do not have the righteousness that God requires. Christ is the only one who has it. We cannot cooperate and add to his righteousness and make it better so we simply humble ourselves and we receive that gift. That's what makes Christianity so unique but its uniqueness is its stumbling block because people say well I want to work at it or I can just accept Jesus and live like I like.
The unconverted say they have no notion of the radical change God brings about when people are saved. In the country of India there was a missionary who made friends with a Hindu pearl diver and they became good friends and the Hindu was a very loving man and one day he gave the missionary one of the most beautiful exquisite pearls that one could possibly even imagine and the missionary said to him he said I need to pay you for this. I can't accept it as a free gift indeed and the pearl diver said absolutely not.
He said you must accept it free. You cannot pay me because I need to tell you that this pearl was retrieved by my only son who drowned and died in the process. If you were to pay me it would be an insult for the blood of my son, the life of my son and the missionary said you realize what you've just said. You have had such a hard time with this whole idea that salvation is a free gift.
You thought that you had to go to Delhi on your knees and so forth. You thought you thought it was so hard but don't you understand that the reason you can't pay for it is because God sent his only son and gives us a pearl a gift that is so priceless it is an insult to think that you can buy it and the pearl diver understood the wonder of the gospel and believed. What a marvelous message. Let's give our lives to proclaim it around the world and to those who you who are listening here in this church or listening by radio let me tell you that through Christ there is a gift that you cannot buy and it's the message that we want to give to the entire world. My friend this is Pastor Lutzer and when the time comes for me to die I trust that the message that you have just heard and the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ will be upon my mind and my lips. I love the gospel. I'm holding in my hands a letter from someone who says I grew up in a devoutly religious home but since I became a born-again Christian in 2017 I listen to you daily and then she goes on to say since I've surrendered my life to Jesus Christ my mission is to use my experience and my mistakes to help bring other people to Christ. I share that because this testimony is your testimony. Would you consider helping us here at the ministry by becoming an endurance partner?
I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy so that you can write this down so that you can get some info. Here is what you do go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer and of course rtwoffer is all one word. rtwoffer.com when you're there you click on the endurance partner button or if you prefer pick up the phone and 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. Is God involved in calamities like tsunamis which kill thousands or do we turn to mother nature when we seek the cause? Next time on Running to Win you'll hear a strong affirmation that God indeed is the driving force behind nature even in its most tragic moments. Join us as Pastor Erwin Lutzer speaks on lie number six that God is not responsible for natural disasters. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
