The New Testament Part 1 #2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If the drama of redemption were a play, it would have two acts, the Old and New Testaments. The central theme is that of a sacrifice. In Act 1, animals were killed at a temple in Jerusalem. In Act 2, the real sacrifice is revealed, the one that takes away sin forever.

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, in a nutshell, why does God require a sacrifice for sin to be taken away? You know, Dave, it's all about God's holiness and the requirement that he has that sin be paid for. But the remarkable thing is that God demands perfection of all of us, and God supplies what he demands. That's the uniqueness of the Christian faith.

I love the gospel because it answers all of the deep questions that are within our hearts regarding our relationship with God. He supplies what he demands. No other religion even comes close to such grace and such mercy. I've written a book entitled When a Nation Forgets God – Seven Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany. One of the things that we should be learning are some very obvious lessons, not just from Germany but other countries, and then we should apply them to ourselves, and that's what I do in this book. Seven Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany. The title of the book, the full title is When a Nation Forgets God – Seven Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany.

For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com.

That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now let us once again open our Bibles as we discuss the drama of God's redemption. And he says, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. And the Jews said, this temple has been 46 years in building and you're gonna raise it up in three days? And then John adds, but he spoke of the temple of his body. Jesus is the temple. In fact, in John 1-14, the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. It dwelt with us. What was the tabernacle, the temple of the Old Testament?

What was it all about? It was the meeting place between God and man. Because God always wants to meet with his people and God says, I want to take you through this ritual so that you understand the seriousness of sin and you will have a high priest who will represent you to me. He has to make sacrifice for his own sins first, but he'll represent you to me and I'll represent what I have to say through him to you.

Jesus abolished all that because Jesus is high priest. Now the high priest in the Old Testament, he offered bulls and goats on the altar. Jesus turns out to be not just the priest, but also the offering.

He offers himself. He is the lamb and he is the priest. And so he did away with the temple. We here at Moody Church do not have an altar. Now maybe you were brought up in a church that had an altar. They talked about the altar. Well usually up front here we have a communion table. We have stairs that lead to the lower platform, but you'll never hear me say come to the altar.

Why? We don't have one. Jesus did away with the need for an altar. We do no longer offer sacrifices. His sacrifice, the Bible says, sanctifies us eternally by one offering. He's perfected all those who are sanctified. He is our high priest. Don't you love him?

Don't you love him when you think of what he's done on our behalf? Jesus also is the end of the law. Paul says Jesus is the end of the law to all those who believe. You know you read the Old Testament law. That's why I suggested when you read the book of Leviticus and some of these passages in the Old Testament, I gave you permission to speed read them.

And I've received some feedback from that, but it's all been good. People say you know this time I'm going to get beyond Leviticus when I read through the Bible. We don't understand all those laws. Now they're rich in meaning if we stop and study them. But you'll never get through your Bible if you're going to stop and study everywhere.

What you should do is designate and say I want to investigate this and then you study those more carefully in a different time. But all these rituals, all these laws, there was the moral law, there was the ceremonial law, there was the civil law. Jesus is the end. He fulfills it all and says I release you from the obligation of fulfilling the law. Now the reason is because the law could never be fulfilled by the people. They would stand and they'd say all that the Lord has said we will do. And then moments later they were rebelling against God and breaking their covenant. They couldn't keep it and you can't keep it. The law though was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.

It showed us the great need that we have. And Jesus said now you're no longer going to be under that law. Now there is the law of Christ. We're not lawless. If you go from America to Canada, let's shall we say, to choose a country arbitrarily, if you go from America to Canada, you'll be under Canadian law. Now many of these laws will be the same, laws against murder, laws against theft, but you are under a new dispensation and new set of laws and we as Christians are. Why? Because there was no way that we could keep the law and God says if I'm going to save you, if I'm going to save you, I have to take the law and set it aside because you can't keep it.

I'm going to keep it for you. And the Bible says cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree because the law had curses. Jesus said, I will become a curse for you so that you can be free and you no longer are under obligation to be saved by works, which could never save you anyway. Christ is the end of the law by faith in Christ, Paul says in Romans chapter 10. Now, how do the gospels end?

Well, they end by Jesus saying, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. And that's why we have missionaries in Haiti and missionaries in India and missionaries around the world. And when we get to the book of Acts, when we get to Acts, what we discover is that the Apostle Paul is dramatically converted and the book of Acts is basically the story of how the gospel gets from Jerusalem to what we call Asia Minor, it is called Turkey today, and then beyond to Greece and eventually to Rome. And that's the story of the book of Acts. And this man, Paul, who was especially designated by God and called by God, wrote letters. And he wrote letters to different churches. He wrote a total of 13 of the books of the New Testament. And most of them were to churches.

But then there were some letters also to individuals. And such as Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, he wrote these letters as well. Now, we don't know who wrote the book of Hebrews, but what we do know is that it belongs in the canon.

Interesting story that we have to omit. But the book of Hebrews is just a fulfillment and an explanation of the book of Leviticus in light of all that Jesus has done. And then you have some other writers such as James and Peter and John writes three letters. And then John has that marvelous, marvelous revelation from God that is a mystery to people.

And much of it is a mystery to all of us. But there's a special blessing to those who read it. And what I want to do when we do the next session is to open the book up for you in such a way that you say, I'm going to read it and read it and read it because it says, blessed are those who hear it and who obey the words of this prophecy and what a prophecy it is. Well, that's the 26 books of the New Testament.

Don't you think I did pretty well in about 20 minutes? The question is, where does this leave us and what is the bottom line? What is the bottom line? First of all, I want us to think about the integrity of God, the question of whether or not God keeps his promises. God's integrity was seen by the coming of the New Testament and the events of the New Testament. But I can imagine because the coming of Jesus and the life of Abraham about 1,800 years before that, I can imagine during those 400 silent years, in addition to all the other centuries that I've talked about, that people began to wonder, where is his promise? I mean, he promises a messiah, he promises a seed, nothing going on year after year, generation after generation, century after century. Where is God? And the people were asking that question. But then suddenly an answer came.

Cry of a newborn baby in Bethlehem. God kept his promise. Let us not be confused because God takes so long sometimes in keeping his promise. You know, there are two different kinds of trees, many different kinds of trees. I'm told that almonds, the almond tree buds very quickly and bears its fruit.

But the mulberry, the mulberry bushes and the mulberry trees sometimes bear fruit over a period of 75 to 100 years. And some of God's promises are instant. God says, I'm going to do something and he does it right away. And then there are promises of God that linger on and we wonder whether we can believe him. That's why Abraham, the Bible says, died not having seen the promises. We die with unfulfilled promises, no doubt about it. But we die in hope and we die in faith and someday Abraham will still see those promises fulfilled in ways that he could never have dreamed.

Now the same kind of skepticism that existed back then no doubt exists today. And that's why in the book of 2 Peter, we have these words of Peter writing to a skeptical audience and this is what he says. You should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.

Now catch this. Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires and they will say, where is the promise of his coming? Forever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning. And so today you have scoffers who say, you know, you talk about the return of Jesus. Jesus is coming back to earth. But where is he?

Year after year, month after month. When I was growing up, we used to have prophecy conferences and you felt for sure that before the meeting was over, Jesus was going to come. And he still isn't here. I don't think it's going to be hundreds of years. I think it's going to be a lot less than that, but we don't really know when Jesus is coming. The events of the world are coming together in such a way that it's startling.

But at the same time, let's not think we know. But there will be scoffers who will say, well, where is the promise of his coming? He promised to come, but where is he? And then someday the heavens open and Jesus shows up according to God's timetable and not ours. Clouds are a promise. Rain is the fulfillment.

Old Testament clouds. God says, I'm going to do this. I'm going to send a redeemer. I'm going to send a king.

I'm going to crush the head of the serpent. New Testament, the rain comes and Jesus comes to this earth and fulfills the promises. But not even he fulfilled all of them yet, but they will be fulfilled. You're going through a trial today. I want you to think of the promises of God like stars.

The darker the night, the more clearly they can be seen. Hang on to the promises because they are yes and yes in Jesus. We serve and we worship a God who has integrity. Second, it is not just the integrity of God. It is the redemption of God. If you get lost in the Old Testament, if you get lost in Leviticus and Numbers and some of the rituals of the Old Testament that we don't understand very well, always remember what the dilemma was. As I explained in the first message in this series in the Old Testament, the issue is this. God is devising a way by which he can have fellowship with us without contaminating himself by sin and without compromising his holiness. And the rituals were to remind people of their sinfulness, God's holiness, and the way that he is devising. Today, of course, we don't have those rituals. As I explained, they are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And how wondrously Old Testament, you could be ceremonially clean.

You know, you could wash your hands. You could go through the rituals at the labor, but it didn't change your heart necessarily. New Covenant, God says, I will write my law into their hearts. And the law of God is written into the hearts of all those who believe in Jesus and trust him. And that's why when we get saved, as we use the terminology, which is very biblical, God actually changes our desires so that we begin to love him. We begin to have different priorities because under the New Covenant, we receive a new heart. Those who are in Christ, old things are passed away.

Behold, all things have become new. And the story of the Bible, the storyline, the drama of redemption is God answering this simple question as I posed it. And then Jesus comes on the cross and dies on the cross. And he meets all of God's requirements. His holy life meets all the requirements of the law.

He lives it perfectly. And he says to you and to me now on the basis of my righteousness, my gift to you, if you receive it, you are acquitted by God and you can have fellowship with him. And he remains entirely holy and justice is fully satisfied. That is the good news of the gospel. Why would anyone, why would anyone think about rejecting Jesus?

It is unthinkable. Finally, we have not only the integrity of God and the redemption of God, but the condescension, the condescension of God. That is, I mean, and I'll even use the word humiliation of God.

A church historian said that Christianity is the only religion to have as its central event the humiliation of God. Islam cannot accept this. To them Allah always has to be victorious. Allah cannot humble himself.

Allah cannot become a man. And Allah cannot allow himself to be crucified. Jesus comes in against all reason because you and I would not have done it this way. Against all reason is able to come out of heaven, to leave his glories, to become a baby, to grow up a man as the son of God, as the second member of the Trinity, humble himself, take all the curses and the accusations that were heaped upon him, to have him humiliated in the eyes of others, to die on a cross naked along with two other criminals.

Only Christianity can say that God did that. If that isn't mercy, if that isn't grace, if that isn't the unbelievable gift that God offers you today, you may be watching this by way of our internet ministry. You may be hearing this on the radio and of course the large crowd that is here today at the Moody Church. When you receive Christ, you receive the victor, you receive a king, you receive a savior, you receive a priest and you receive a liberator, liberates you from the law.

Why would you reject him? You may be seated in the balcony today but you know that you need a savior. I ask you to reach out and say by faith I receive him as mine.

And you see that's why we sing, lifted up was he to die, it is finished was his cry, now in heaven exalted high, hallelujah, what a savior, what a savior. And if you will let us pray. Father, we stand amazed in the presence of Jesus. We thank you that the promises that you have given were fulfilled with integrity and those still unfulfilled will be. We ask today that you will help us to cleave to the promises because we live by promises not explanations. We ask in the darkness of the night that the stars might shine very brightly as we look at him and remember what he did on our behalf. May we love your word, may we love you, may you work in us to bring about the transformation we need and for those who have never trusted Christ as savior, may they do that even where they are seated right now and say Jesus be mine. I pray in his name, amen. And my dear friend from my heart to yours, if you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your savior, would you do that right now? Would you receive Jesus Christ's sacrifice, remembering that he is the sin bearer for those who believe on him?

The Ministry of Running to Win exists to help people make it all the way to the finish line. And in this series of messages, we have tried to show how the various books of the Bible all fit together. This series is actually available in a CD form or DVD.

And along with that, we give you a color chart of where all the books of the Bible fit and how they come together. For a gift of any amount, this can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'm going to be giving you that phone number once again, but remember it's the drama of redemption, helping us to understand the Bible storyline from beginning in the book of Genesis to Revelation, how the Bible ultimately is all about Jesus. For a gift of any amount, this can be yours.

As I mentioned, as a CD or a DVD, you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question you may have about the Bible or the Christian life. Will heaven be all gladness and light? A listener named Gary is not so sure, Pastor Lutzer. He says, I know the Bible says there won't be any tears or sadness in heaven, but how can we be happy knowing that people we love are not in heaven, but in hell?

Well first of all, let me say this, Gary, that your question is an excellent one, and we've all wrestled with it. But I think the best we can do is to understand that when we get to heaven, we are going to view things from God's standpoint. If God can be glad, if God can be content throughout all of eternity, if God can be joyful and happy—and by the way, Gary, how could we possibly rejoice in the Lord unless he were a rejoicing God? But my point is this, if God can be content with what has happened, we also will be. I think it was Jonathan Edwards, and I hope that I can quote this in a general way at least correctly. He said that we will rejoice in God's judgment in heaven, not because we are unloving, but because we are perfectly loving, just like God.

So if you think of it from that standpoint, we'll see things from God's point of view, and I believe that we will be satisfied that God did right, and that yes, we will be enjoying God throughout all of eternity, despite the reality of hell. Some wise counsel on a tough issue from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer.

If you'd like to hear your question answered, you can. Go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or, 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, IL 60614. Written in apocalyptic language, the book of Revelation portrays the future yet to be, the glorious return of Jesus, the resurrections, the judgments, the millennial reign, and then the eternity which follows. Next time, fasten your seatbelts as we begin our flight through the entire book of Revelation. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.