Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Jesus did not appear on earth without advance notice. Many Old Testament prophecies foretold his arrival. In the New Testament, we find an amazing prophecy given just before his birth through a man named Zechariah.
Please 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, I believe you will be taking us to Luke chapter 1 verse 77 today. Well Dave, of course, Christmas is just around the corner. And as we look at the ministry of Jesus Christ, we begin, of course, with John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Christ. And then as this series of messages continues, we'll get into the birth of Jesus.
And I know that I mentioned this last time, but I am so ready for Christmas. After all that has happened this past year, the pandemic, the political wrangling, everything that has taken place, at last we are able to focus on that which is indeed most important, that a Savior has come, who is actually qualified to save us. You know, I have in my hands a wonderful resource.
We've never offered anything quite like this before. It's entitled, A Closer Look at the Evidence, written by two scientists. By the way, if you are reading on January 24th, and I need to say that there is a reading for every day of the year, 365, and oftentimes with colored pictures and one page each reading.
Did you know that if all the capillaries in your body were laid out end to end, they would stretch around the equator two times? Well, when you read this book, you discover that there is so much scientific evidence that God is the Creator. And it comes with colored pictures. This would be a great gift for you to give to your children, to your grandchildren, especially as you anticipate the new year. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Go to rtwoffer.com, and let me say thank you for the many of you who support our ministry, rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
Ask for A Closer Look at the Evidence. And now we focus our minds and our hearts on the anticipation of Jesus Christ's birth in Luke chapter 1. And then the text goes on with this beautiful language. It says, In the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
The imagery there would have been much more pronounced and clear to the people of the first century. Sometimes when people were in a caravan, they were delayed for whatever reason, and they were overtaken by darkness. Now if you are overtaken by darkness and you're in a caravan, number one, the road is unclear.
You're not sure exactly where you should be going, and therefore you can become confused easily. It is very dangerous because you don't know what animals there are that lurk in the darkness. And the Bible says in the book of Psalms and how accurate the scripture is, that it says those who are wicked, they stumble in the darkness, and they don't even know what it is that they're stumbling over. They don't know whether they're stumbling over a piece of gold or a piece of steel or some wood that was left along the way.
They do not know. Darkness is terrible, and it's terrifying. But Jesus Christ is the sunrise. If you're in that caravan, what you are looking forward to is mourning.
You want that sun to come up, and you want the sun to bless you so that you can look around, find out where you are, find out your trajectory so that you can continue on again, on your path, but this time with certainty. The people who sat in darkness, the scripture says they saw a great light. What they saw was God entering into their world, giving them hope at a time of darkness. You see, you must understand that when Jesus came to that world at the time, it was a time of political darkness. Pompeii had captured Palestine in 63 BC. He had done that, and so they were under Roman occupation. Wherever you went, there were Roman soldiers.
And not only that, it was always humiliating, high taxes. All of these things were true of the people of that day, and they believed that Messiah was going to come, bring political deliverance, free them from Rome, and let them be a great nation. They did not understand that that will happen, but for the time being, Jesus comes as Redeemer and takes us from our sins and brings light into the human soul.
Not only politically dark, but spiritually dark. People went into the temple. They had their rituals.
They performed their ceremonies, but it was all empty. And Jesus comes and brings light to their situation, and he brings light to your situation. In the midst of your emptiness, in the midst of your frustration, in the midst of your hopelessness, Jesus is a beam of light coming to us in our need to redeem us. Now John the Baptist, he is blessed here by his father. He goes forth and he proclaims the forgiveness of sins, and in about three years' time, I think it's about three years' time, he's beheaded. So he has a three-year ministry. What a tragedy that it wasn't any longer. But yet he fulfilled the will of God in those years because the measure of a life is not in duration, but in donation.
It's not how long you live, but what you do when you are alive that really carries you along. And so John the Baptist died doing the will of God, and he was beheaded for his faith and his trust in Jesus. And by the way, if you're a doubter today, if you have honest doubts, John the Baptist had honest doubts in prison.
He sent a delegation and said, now, are you the one that we should look for or do we look for somebody else? And Jesus, when the delegation came to him, said this. He said, of those born of woman, there's none greater than John the Baptist. And he said that when John the Baptist was seated in prison doubting whether Jesus was the Messiah. And the reason that he doubted is because he too was expecting political deliverance.
He wasn't expecting a Messiah who says my kingdom is not of this world. And when Jesus didn't bring about that deliverance, he began to doubt. Honest doubts are welcome in God's presence.
What you do is you come to God, you read the Word, and you seek, and he will overcome your doubts. And Jesus was grateful for John the Baptist despite the fact that he went through a time of doubt. Now, what I'd like to do is to think about this and draw this together so that this can be transforming for all of us today as we learn the powerful transforming lessons that I see in this passage of scripture. First of all, God keeps his promises. God keeps his promises. God promised to Abraham. God promised to David.
He ratified his covenant. And here we see the beginning of the fulfillment of all that. The fulfillment is still future.
Follow carefully. There was a time when the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus was all future. It was all future. And all that we had, all that the Old Testament people had, were the prophecies. And during that period of time of hundreds of years, they asked the question, where is the promise of his coming? Hundreds of years have gone by, and it hasn't happened.
But eventually, it did. In the very same way, I remember when I was a boy attending a prophecy conference in our church, and the pastor preached in such a way that I thought the Lord was going to return before the service was over. It seemed as if the coming of Jesus was so imminent. Well, that was a long time ago, and he still hasn't come. And it's easy for us to become in the very same way to say, well, where is the promise of his coming?
2 Peter refers to this. For as, you know, the fathers fell asleep, everything is continuing the way it has always continued until the end of the age. Why all this business of looking forward to the return of Jesus? The church has been doing it for 2,000 years, and he still hasn't come. But my friend today, he will come. He will come. And we anticipate that day. There is a time coming as the Apostle Paul says, the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead will rise.
And all of those transformations are going to happen. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, we shall not all sleep. Not every generation of Christians is going to die, but we shall be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump, and the trumpet shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. So the Apostle Paul refers to that, and someday it will. And all that we have to do is to go on the promises at this point. That's all the Old Testament saints had, and God fulfilled his promises. And there are still promises that we know that God will fulfill in the future.
It will happen, amazingly, because God keeps his promises. Secondly, Christmas is not about gifts and parties. I heard on the radio this morning that on so-called Black Friday, Americans spent $9 billion. I can't believe that, $9 billion. And when you realize that a billion—isn't a billion a thousand million? I think a billion is a thousand million. I mean, that to me is absolutely astounding. They didn't get a penny from me, but they apparently got it from somebody else.
Amazing. I was very careful in what I said. I think I figured it out ahead of time, because you've probably heard that five out of four people have trouble with mathematics. But the fact is, that much money, that is not Christmas. It's not Christmas. Christmas is the inbreaking of God, the intervention of God to redeem us from our sins, to pay a penalty, to pay for our sin in such a way that we could be loosed from our sins and from our bondages and bring us into God's presence and declare us as righteous as God himself is. That's what Christmas is all about.
And the fact is that we miss it all. You'll notice he says that Jesus Christ redeemed us. This is in verse 68. He has redeemed his people.
Verse 77, he brought forgiveness for their sins. And when you think of the mystery of God, and I'd like to preach on that, you may have the opportunity to preach on the mysteries of God. When you think of that, you realize that God is mysterious, but what do we do in our mystery?
What do we do when we can't figure God out? We rush to Jesus, who is God in the flesh, and there we see more concretely and definitely what God is all about. And we realize that his program is to save sinners from their sins, and that's what it is that God wants to bring about, and that's what Christmas is. It may involve the rejoicing of our families. It may be the giving of gifts in context, but it is certainly not what the merchants along Michigan Avenue think it is.
That is not Christmas, how we have distorted it. There's a final lesson, and that is this, that the coming of Jesus doesn't benefit everybody. The coming of Jesus doesn't benefit everybody. You look at the opening chapters here in the book of Luke. Who does the coming of Jesus benefit? Well, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. You have Mary and Joseph, of course. You have Simeon.
You have Anna. And later on, there are going to be many people who are going to believe on Jesus, but don't get the idea that the coming of Jesus somehow is beneficial to everyone. In fact, later on in a message, we're going to point out how that Jesus actually turns out to be a stumbling block to many people. The fact is that unless our hearts are tuned to him and have faith in him, trust in him, his coming does not benefit us at all.
It doesn't benefit us. You know, this week, and I'm not sure why, there's a parable that Jesus told that has been swimming around in my mind. Jesus said that there is such a thing as the wheat and the tares that they grow together. Because apparently there are tares, that is a certain kind of weed, that looks like wheat.
So you and I don't know who's who. But Jesus said it will be separated at the harvest. And even here today, there could be those of you who have never trusted Christ as Savior. Even those of you who think you have, you may never have believed on Jesus as Savior. And you may not be the real deal.
You may be a tare, so to speak, amid wheat. Let me illustrate it this way. There was a counterfeit $20 bill that brought some groceries. It did a number of things. Purchased groceries, it helped people along the way.
But in the end, it was disqualified when it was brought to the bank and seemed to be fake. In the very same way, I urge you today to ask yourself whether or not you are wheat or whether you are tares amid the wheat. Not everybody benefits from the coming of Jesus Christ. If you believe on him and receive him as your Savior, it is then that we benefit in his redemption, his freedom that he brings from sin.
It is us being reconciled to God and the only way to be reconciled, the only way to be reconciled, through God's chosen Redeemer, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You may be listening to this in many different ways, but for the people who are here today, could I urge you today, ask yourself who you are and whether or not the coming of Jesus benefited you. And above all, if you are a believer, eulogize God.
In doing so, we honor him. Let's pray together. Our Father, we ask today that in grace you shall come to us, that we might understand you better and appreciate the redemption that came to us in Jesus our Lord. Now throughout this congregation we pray, may your Holy Spirit work mightily. May you show your glory and your strength.
Overcome our darkness. Help us to see that we exist to bring you honor and glory and praise. And above all, we give you thanks. We give you thanks for the birth of Jesus, our Redeemer. In his name we pray.
Amen. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer. Let me ask you a question. Who was that baby in a manger? Who was that baby that was reared by Mary and Joseph? That baby was the Son of God.
There was a part of him that nobody could see. He was God, a very God. And what does the Bible say about Jesus? It says that he is the creator. By him were all things created. So let's think about that for a moment and realize that when we look at creation and how intricate it is, we're reminded of the fact that Jesus is the creator. He is the wisdom of God. He is the power of God. So when we worship the baby in the manger, we are worshiping God, a very God. I can't tell you how excited I am that I have in my hands a book entitled A Closer Look at the Evidence, written by two scientists, one reading for every single day of the coming year. And did you know, for example, that a woman's fertilized egg is a complete human being with a full set of instructions?
Well, what you will learn is that creation points to the creator, Jesus. For a gift of any amount, this can be yours. Here's what you do. You go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com.
Or if you prefer, you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. A Closer Look at the Evidence. It will help us to worship the baby in the manger, recognizing, as I've already mentioned, that there was more to him than the human eye could see. We love him, and we worship him. It's time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Jeremiah 29, 11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. That's a verse that Warren in Fairfield, Illinois, wants help with.
He hears us online and has this question. I think a lot of passages, such as Jeremiah 29, 11, are quoted sometimes, but it seems these snippets are often taken out of context. From your preaching, God had to allow bad things to happen to people. How do we know when God's promises are meant for everyone that believes on Jesus and when they don't? I find myself fearing which promises are for me, or when may I be crushed? Well, your question involves various layers, if I might put it that way, so I need to think carefully as I attempt to answer it.
Let's try to take it apart. First of all, you mentioned Jeremiah 29, 11. That promise, which is often quoted where the scripture says, you know the plans that I have for thee, says the Lord, plans to give you a future and a hope. You are quite right in suggesting that that is not directly a promise to the church. It was really a promise to Israel when they were there in captivity in Babylon.
God was saying, I'm going to bring you back, and I'm going to make you great again. So that was a promise for Israel. On the other hand, those kinds of promises can apply to us in a secondary sense, because we also belong to God, and certainly we'd agree that God's plans toward us are good as well. In answer to the question of what promises can you believe, it is safest, however, for us to think of the promises of the New Testament, because those promises are specifically given to us, whether they are the wonderful promises of Romans chapter 8, that God will never leave us, or as we mentioned in Romans 8, that the love of Christ is going to be with us and that nothing can separate us from his love, or the passage that I almost quoted from Hebrews chapter 13, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. On and on, the New Testament has all of these promises.
They are the ones that we should cleave to. Now in answer to your question of when will you be crushed, not sure exactly how to answer that because I'm not sure that you will be crushed. When we talk about God's discipline in the Christian life, we usually don't talk about it as a crushing.
Crushing, usually we associate with judgment. Does God discipline us? Yes. Does he take us through hard times?
Yes, if that's what your question is, indeed, that may be in your future. But during those times, even as we do during times of peace and hope, we cleave to those promises of the New Testament. And we believe at the end of the day that everything Jesus said was true, and that if we come to him and believe on him, we'll be saved.
And as we go through the New Testament, we see one promise piled upon another, that no matter how rough it is during this life, there's a much better life to come. Some words of counsel and hope for Warren from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, 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, Illinois, 60614. The things Jesus said caused bickering and strife among those opposed to changing their ways. Next time on Running to Win, an amazing revelation given to his mother Mary about the one who would confound the world. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
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