Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The racetrack of life is smoother when things are right with mom and dad. Good relationships mean happiness. Bad ones bring sorrow. Today, more teaching on God's command designed to ensure stable homes and well-adjusted families.
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, senior living communities are on the rise as many of today's families are too busy with work and their own affairs to care for their parents. You know, Dave, I want to speak to this with a degree of sensitivity.
I'm sure that there are many people listening right now. They may be alone. And sometimes when they are in nursing homes, that might actually be the best for them. Frequently, children live far away and they can't visit their parents very often, but those parents have to understand that the presence of God is with them. even there.
But your wider point about the break up of the family oftentimes there is a great deal of fragmentation that, of course, is very painful. We here at Running to Win deeply appreciate the many of you who support us regularly. And it's because of you. this ministry can continue around the world. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I would like to give you some information that you might like to investigate.
Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers, with their gifts. Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com.
When you're there, you click on the Endurance Partner button or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-18. ninety three thirty seven. Let all of us answer this question. What is my responsibility? toward members of my family.
Okay. You know what the Bible says in the Old Testament? God says, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him be put to death. It also says, He that striketh mother or father, let him be put to death. God is saying, Honor your father and your mother, that it may be well with you.
You say, but my parents are so strict, they are so harsh, they belong to the previous century. Listen, young people, God may know that you needed parents just like that to keep you out of evil. You know? He just might know what's best for you, and since we don't have any opportunity to choose our parents. God has placed us under their authority, and we ought to recognize that they are accountable to God, even if they mislead us, certainly, but that we are subject to them.
Why? That it may be well with us. says the text of Scripture.
Now, honor them with our actions, with our attitude, but also with the attention. That we should give them, with the attention that we should give them. And here I speak particularly of those of us who are older children who have a responsibility for aged parents. In fact, I think that when God gave the Ten Commandments, He very probably had in mind the responsibility of young people taking care of their older parents as they approached old age. The Bible says in Leviticus chapter 19, verse 32: it says, Honor the aged and revere God.
That's interesting. Leviticus 19:32, God places those two together in the very same verse. He says the person with the gray head should be honored. Says that in a number of places in the Old Testament, and that passage in Leviticus says that. God says, respect them, honor them, and revere God.
We're living in a society when old people are a drain on the economy. We're living at a time when they constantly are being set aside. They're being put into nursing homes, and sometimes that may be a necessity. I don't want to lay any guilt upon people for that in certain circumstances. One day I was in one of those homes, and I asked the woman that was in charge, I said, How many do you think, how many of these people have children that come here with some degree of regularity, at least a few times a year, and visit them?
And I was just astounded at her answer. She said about 30. thirty percent. And I said, do you mean to tell me that there are seventy percent of these people that are in here, these aged people who have no relatives, no friends, no children that ever come to see them? And she said, yes.
I mean, can you imagine what that must be like? Number of years ago, must be at least ten. I knew a woman who told me a remarkable story. She said that her children totally disowned her, totally. She'd not heard from them in years.
They acted as if she did not exist. They would not respond to any letters. They would not give her any information. They would not allow her to see her grandchildren. She had two daughters.
I even wrote a letter to those daughters hoping that somehow they could be reconciled to their mother. She said, The last time I saw them was when my husband died. They came to the funeral and they would not speak to me. They came only to the funeral home and left.
Now, frankly, friends, I don't know what that mother did to bring this dishonor upon her. But I would simply say that I can't think of anything that any mother could possibly do. that would cause her to deserve such rejection and such alienation. That's tragic. And the Bible says that we have a responsibility to those who are our parents to take care of them.
And Jesus scathed the Pharisees because they found ways around that responsibility. Turn with me for just a moment to the fifteenth chapter of Matthew. Matthew 15. These Pharisees had it worked out in such a way that they could circumvent the commandment of God, and Jesus was angry with them as a result of it. It says in Matthew chapter 15, verse 3: Jesus is speaking.
And he says to them, Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of tradition? For God said, Honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death. That's Christ's interpretation of the Old Testament. You don't even have to curse them. Jesus said, You speak evil of your father or your mother, let him be put to death.
Parenthesis. God has not changed his mind about this. The fact that we do not put children to death is because we are under a different era when there are certain penalties that God does not ask us to implement, but that He takes care of these matters. And but God's opinion of rebellious children has not changed. It says, He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.
But now Jesus said in verse 5, But you say, Whosoever shall say to his father or mother, And now, here is a translation of it. Anything of mine you might have been helped by has been given to God. He is not to dishonor his father or his mother. Then Jesus said, and I'll explain in a moment what he means: you have invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. What the Pharisees did was this.
Here they had money. Good. Money. God had said, Honor your father and your mother, take care of your aged parents. They said to themselves, We've got to find some way around that.
So let's take this money and let's dedicate it to God. And if we dedicate this money to God, He is a higher power than our parents. Then we can say, this is God's money, and therefore we can use it for our own investments. God entrusts His money to us, but we do not need to give it to our mom and dad. And Jesus said, Because of traditions like this, you are invalidating the word of God.
You are finding, by theological sleight of hand, you are finding ways to circumvent the responsibility that God puts upon your shoulders to take care of the aged. They took care of you, and now you have a responsibility to take care of them. You say, well, how do we do this?
Well, first of all, certainly economically. From the standpoint of economics, if they need money, if they need support. You know that the Bible says in 1 Timothy 5:4, if you do not take care of those in your household, you have denied the faith and you are worse than an infidel. I don't think that only means that I have a responsibility to my wife and to my children. That responsibility in those days involved the extended family as well.
You're saying, does that mean that grandparents always have to move in with children? Uh not always, though in some instances it may mean that. Certainly, it has economic implications. It has, more importantly, social implications, where the aged people are felt as if they are a part of the family and they are not rejected simply because they have become ill or because they create inconvenience for us and a difficulty in terms of our schedules, where we are willing to draw a circle and include them even at sacrifice and expense to us. A number of years ago on television, there was a little vignette that was trying to emphasize the needs of the aged.
There was, in the first frame, there was the picture of a grandfather. A father. And the sun. And the grandfather, his hands were very shaky. He could no longer hold a bowl.
with steadiness, and so he happened to drop A very precious piece of china onto the floor, and it shattered. And the father namely the man's son was very angry. You know, that's the trouble with old people like this. They mess things up, they don't know even how to hold a bowl anymore.
So he took his father and he banished him into a room, closed the door, and gave him a wooden bowl. You can drop that. A couple of days later, the father was out in the yard and saw his son at work. He said, Son, what are you doing? Noticed that the boy was carving something.
Said, what are you up to? The boy held in his hand an almost finished bowl and said, Dad, I'm making this for you.
Now Bottom line. Bottom line. You'd better watch the way you treat your parents because that's possibly the way in which your children will treat you. God says, honor them, that it may be well with you. Isn't it amazing to think that someday we will be old and our hands will shake and we won't be able to hold that bowl?
You'd better watch the way you treat your parents because it may well be that that's the way you'll be treated. And I can think of nothing as hurtful as being rejected by the very ones that you bore into the world, the ones in which you nurtured and helped along, and now suddenly, because you're a burden and because you're old, and because you cause such inconvenience to their schedules, you are put away somewhere. and there's very little love in communication. God says honor them. If you're selfish, honor them.
Why? That it may be well with you, the text says.
Now, I can imagine that there's someone here sitting saying, I just wish this sermon was over because I never had parents who loved me, you may say. You may say that you were rejected, you were abused, you perhaps were born illegitimately. Maybe you have in the back of your mind a lot of questions about your own identity and as to who you really are, and maybe even who your parents really are. And you say, I didn't have all of these social niceties that many people like you, Pastor Lutzer, had being reared in a good home. Does that mean that you have to be a social misfit for the rest of your life?
Does that mean that there is no way for you to have emotional wholeness?
Well, I'm glad to be able to tell you today the answer is no. There's hope for you, there's hope for anyone. Because, first of all, the body of Jesus Christ has a responsibility to take up the slack where there has been failure. And sometimes we're not very good at that, but I trust that we are getting better at it. Recognizing that we all have to take upon ourselves sometimes beyond our physical family those who may have felt left out.
of earthly families. But also, the Bible holds special promises for those who are without an earthly family. That's why God said repeatedly in the Old Testament: He says, I will be a father to the orphan. No earthly father, no earthly mother. God says, I'm going to move in and take over.
I'm going to fill up the vacuum. I'm going to. Take up the slag. And so God says also, I will be a father, he says to the widows. Because now they are without a mate, and God says, I'm going to have to move in and, in a very special way, take certain responsibilities now that that woman does not have a husband.
And that's why David says, even though my father and my mother forsake me, they don't understand me, and so they turn against me and they reject me. He says, The Lord will take me up. I become a member, he says, of the new family, and God moves in and takes over. Yeah, there are lots of scars and lots of hurts. We could not even begin to bear them if we knew all the hurts that are in existence in a radius of a mile around this church.
We couldn't even enter into them if we knew. The hurt and the alienation and the rejection of children and the tearing of emotions as a result of the splitting of the families. We can't even begin to bear the hurt. But there is a God who is able to heal. and to bring wholeness where there is brokenness.
as someone says God can make you whole if you give him all the pieces. And that's what God wants us to do. All of us, I think, remember Ethel Waters. We remember her primarily Because she used to attend many of the Billy Graham meetings, and in those large crusades, she would sing, His Eye is on the sparrow. And uh she'd end by saying, I know he watches Me, she would sing.
Now, Ethel Waters was the product of a rape relationship. A 14-year-old girl was raped, and Ethel was conceived and born. If she had been living in our day and age, it would have been a classic instance when an abortion should have been. performed. But she lived at a time when you just had a baby if you were pregnant.
But as a result of that rape relationship, Ethel was born and rejected. I remember hearing her say, Every child needs at least one lap to sit on. Every child should have at least two laps. To sit on, and then hopefully some others, some uncles and aunts and grandparents, too. But Ethel said, I never had a lap.
To set on. That was her way of saying, I was rejected, shunted about. Who wants a child conceived in that kind of a relationship? But then, as Ethel grew older and received Jesus Christ as her Savior, she said, You know, I don't have time to even think about my past hurts. She says, I am so busy praising the Lord.
Well, you know, I can't help but think that his eye was on that sparrow. His eye was on that sparrow. And I say to those of you today whose hearts are heavy because you have come from alienation and hurt and rejection, that when your father and your mother forsake you, and when the circumstances of your birth are questionable and you can't figure it all out, God is there to pick you up, to bring you into the family, to include you, to call you by name, and to say, You're mine, and I'm going to move in and make up for the loss. that you should have had but didn't. Do you belong to a Savior who's able to do that today?
Some of you, perhaps, with hurt in your life, do you know Christ personally? He wants to forgive you, to receive you, to love you, to welcome you forever. Into God's father. Family. Let's pray.
Her father. Today we want to thank you so much. For your Wonder. and your grace to us as your people. Father, we want to thank you today for the good homes that many of us have had.
But we think particularly of those who can't say that. We ask today that you might heal. The brokenhearted. That you might set at liberty those that are bruised. We pray that you might move in.
In those areas where there's been a vacuum, where there's been hurt and rejection. And we ask today for those who do not know Christ personally as Savior. We pray that they might believe on you. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Uh My friend, this is Pastor Lutzer.
Let me ask you a question. What comes to mind when I mention the word family? For many of you, That elicits very positive thoughts. for many of you very negative and painful thoughts. But isn't it wonderful that in the midst of this broken world we become a member of the family of God?
and forever in heaven we will all finally be family a perfect family, I might say. Let me ask you a question. Are you blessed as a result of the ministry of running to win? If so, it's because other people just like you have invested in this ministry. Do you have a pen or pencil handy?
I'd like you to investigate the possibility of becoming what we call an endurance partner. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer. com. That's rtwoffer.com and click on the Endurance Partner button.
or you can pick up the phone and call us at one eight eight eight two one eight ninety three thirty seven. When I think of running to win, I actually think of the family the family of God that supports this ministry. How about investigating becoming an endurance partner? Right now you can go to your computer, type in rtwoffer.com, click on the endurance partner button. It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question you may have about the Bible or the Christian life.
When you say Bible, some feel only one translation qualifies to be called the Bible. Stephen listens to Running to Win and faces this dilemma. My father and brother are strict King James version only, and think anyone else who isn't is terribly wrong and liberal. If I were to tell them that I read and study other translations, they'd lose respect for me, and treat me differently. I currently have to hide my other translations every time they come to visit.
Should I confront them about this issue, and if so, how?
Well, Stephen, ultimately I can't answer that question for you, because only you know the dynamics of your father and brother and family and what kind of a situation would arise if you were to confront them. I think you should, but I mean that's a judgment call that you need to make. Let me say this. There are those who believe that the King James is the only Bible we should use. I believe that they are very wrong.
The King James, of course, goes back many centuries. It was a very good translation. It influenced English literature. But at the same time language changes. and translations are not inspired by God.
Sometimes there is a much better way of saying something. particularly as language is in flux and you have new expressions. The King James Version of the Bible certainly served its generations, but we do live in a different age.
Now there's something else. There are many scholars who dedicate their lives to finding the most accurate, MANUSCRIPS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By finding, I don't mean that they're out looking for them. I mean that they have the hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts that we have, and they compare them. and they contrast them, and they do studies of them to find the very best manuscripts available.
What is a good manuscript? It's a manuscript that as far as possible goes back to the original. And so the text from which the King James was translated, most scholars to day believe that we have improved the accuracy of the text through all of these many years of scholarship, That's one reason why we need new translations. There are minor changes, and I emphasize minor changes in the text.
Furthermore, there are some very contemporary ways to say the same truth. You find this, for example, if you have a more contemporary translation of the Bible.
Now, I personally use uh two or three different Bibles.
some are much more directly what shall I say literal from the text. Others are paraphrases or translations that are much more contemporary, and you can benefit from them all. I'm sorry that your brother and your father have made such a big issue of this. I would ask you to be cautious and careful, but maybe at some time. After you've read a book on the subject, and there are many of the books that are out there that are good, after some time.
Maybe what you should do is to sit down with them and have a long talk. But that's your judgment, Stephen. God bless you. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, you can.
All you have to do is go to our website at rtwoffer dot com, and click there on Ask Pastor Or you can call us with a question at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. That's okay. You can write to us at Running2Win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Each of us has a strong desire for intimacy.
It's a natural, God-given desire. But keeping our sex drives under control is one of our biggest challenges. Sex in its proper place is a great gift, while passions out of control can ruin one's future. That's why God gave us commandment number 7. This commandment is still in force even in a sex mad culture.
Next time on Running to Win, more in our study of the Ten Commandments as we look into the meaning of you shall not commit adultery. Don't miss living with your passions. Running to win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister.
Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
