The Truth That Hurts And Heals Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Those with addictions are usually blind as to how addicted they really are.

Denial goes hand in hand with any kind of addiction. Jesus had much to say to the religious leaders of his day about spiritual blindness, words we need to take to heart. 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, today you'll take us again into John Chapter 8 for more about the truth that hurts and heals. And you know, Dave, when we think about this, we have to emphasize the hurts. Oftentimes we're very much in favor of truth. What we forget is that indeed truth does sometimes hurt. And I can't help but believe that there are many people who are listening to us today who are struggling with various issues. And as you mentioned, all of us live to some extent in denial.

We shield even from ourselves, our true selves. You know, I'm so glad for this opportunity to share God's word and to give messages of hope. But we can do that because so many of you have stepped to the plate and you've become a part of what I call the Running to Win family. Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? Endurance partners are those who stand with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Want more info?

Go to RTWOffer.com, click on the endurance partner button, RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now let's go to the pulpit of Moody Church and open our hearts to the truth that helps us, but it hurts before it heals. And you know, you're very meticulous in keeping the law. You're okay. I'm okay. You're okay.

We're all okay, as long as we belong to this club. It's a lie. For God to overcome their blindness, if I can put it this way, is a greater miracle than the blindness of the prostitute down the way. That's why Jesus said that they go into the kingdom of heaven ahead of you all.

I think he sometimes spoke Texan and said they go in ahead of you all. So there's that lie. And then for those who are bound in the fleshly addictions, oh, he has a ton of lies. Lies like you'll never change. And furthermore, you're worthless. You're unloved. You don't have any real value as a person. Look at your past. Look at what people think of you. Are you accepted? Are you the center of things? No. You have every right to hate yourself considering who you are. You have every right to slash your wrists in anger.

You have every right to be anorexic and not eat so that you can control something in your life because you're angry and everything else is out of control. Let me ask you a question. Where do those kinds of thoughts come from? Do they come from God?

I don't think so. They come from Satan. And there are going to be times when you're going to struggle and you're going to have to say, begone Satan, for it is written. And you're going to have to stand on the word of God because the lies are going to want to control you. Jesus said, your father is the devil because he lies.

Don't believe his lies. So we need to know something about ourselves, something about Satan, and of course, something about God. He is gracious and merciful. And in a few moments, I'm going to be giving you an example right from the chapter eight here of that mercy and that grace, the fact that God gives us the gift of his presence. He gives us what we normally don't have and don't deserve. And he goes with us into the darkest closets of our life. He invites us to open the door and to let light shine there to deal with hidden issues that have plagued us, perhaps for years and years.

And God comes along and he is merciful and gracious. And we need to draw near to him. And if you missed last time the message I preached on how we draw near through the blood of Christ, absolutely critical to understand. Now what I'd like to do is to give you what I consider maybe three steps.

They aren't steps so much as understanding as to where you are at and the path toward hope. First of all, and you're writing now, I'm sure, because this is important. You can't get free. You can't get free. You must be set free. You must be set free. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. And if the Son makes you free, the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.

It's not a matter of willpower. It's not even a matter of memorizing verses, though I strongly advocate that and that may be part of the process. But Jesus has to enter into your world to set you free. You know, I love that Psalm years ago I preached on it, Psalm 40, where David says in his experience, and I used to know it by memory in the King James, but I'll read it here. I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction. Don't you love this phraseology out of the miry bog? And he set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth. You mean after you've been in the pit, you can still sing?

Yep. Many will see in fear and will put their trust in the Lord. How David says, I was in the pit and he drew me up from the pit. God didn't say, now, David, here's a shovel. Dig yourself out. Because if you try to dig yourself out of a pit, you're going to have trouble. You're only going to be deeper because of the self-confidence that I can handle this.

No, you can't handle it, thank you very, very much. You can fall into a pit. Years ago, I gave you the illustration of a horse of ours on the farm in a slough.

Now, you may not be acquainted with a word, but it's like miry bog. And he got in alone, but I'll tell you, he couldn't get out alone. We actually had to put a gadget around him and help him and pull him out. You can fall into the pit alone.

Nobody even has to help you. Some of you say, I didn't fall, I was pushed. Years ago in a subway, there was spray painted Humpty Dumpty was pushed. And you may feel that you were pushed into the pit.

Either way, guess what? You're not getting out alone. But in Jesus, God comes into the pit and he is there and he doesn't throw us a rope because you're too weak to grab the rope.

And even if you did, you could not pull yourself up. He says, I come into the miry bog where you are and I scoop you up and I put your feet upon a rock. And I'm the one that establish you're going and I'm the one that puts a new song in your mouth. Jesus comes to us in our need and that's why he was able to say as he did, you know, this is my body. This is my blood that was shed for you.

Why? For redemption, for reconciliation. I came into this dirty world to rescue you and I came to your level. I didn't sin, but I came to your level because you're worse off than you ever thought. I had not intervened.

It would have been a lost cause. You can't get free. You must be set free. Notice what Jesus says. He says, whoever commits sin is the servant of sin. The servant doesn't wake up in the morning and say, well, today I'm going to tell my master what to do. The servant doesn't do that. Jesus said, you have to understand sin owns you.

It's the master who tells you do this, do that. And you must recognize therefore that you are in slavery and I came to set captives free. Second, your struggle, your struggle magnifies God's grace. Your struggle magnifies God's grace. You know, I sometimes smile at God. I don't think that's irreverent to say because you know what? God actually thinks of things I don't. I mean, can you handle that?

I think so. Last weekend, we were in Nashville and St. Louis for media rallies and Tuesday morning we got on a plane from St. Louis to fly to Chicago and God knowing that I was going to speak about addictions, he knew that. I actually knew that too, but he knew it better than I.

Who does he put me next to on a plane but a man who's sitting next to me and then there's another one sitting ahead and before the plane is off, you know, we're talking. And I discovered that he was an addict who went to an organization that was set up to help addicts. They have about 200 addicts there and they stay for a number of months. They make them work. Everybody earns.

It's a remarkable organization. And so what does God do? God says, hey, you know, if you're going to speak about addictions, let me give you two guys who used to be addicted but are free now so that you can get some good information for your sermon.

So I said to this guy, so what were you into? He said, you know, it began with marijuana. By the way, this idea that marijuana should be legal and everybody buying it, I don't know exactly how that fits into our definition of progress. But, you know, I'm maybe a minority here. But anyway, it begins with marijuana.

Then it goes into harder drugs. So there he is. Okay. And then the guy ahead said, hey, I was in prison. He didn't have to give me his pedigree. He said, name it and I've done it.

Okay. Now, how do these guys who are set free, who now work for the organization, and why is it that there are people in this organization who go there addicted and they end up being Bible teachers and leading others to the path of wholeness and help and deliverance? Isn't that wonderful? Well, you see, one of the things that God does is what he wants to do is through our struggles display grace. These guys understood grace a lot better than the goody two shoes who may be listening to this message who think they don't need that much grace because they've done it all right and really, you know, oh, sure, I messed up a little bit. Like a guy said, yeah, I've sinned.

I remember taking my golf clubs and wrapping them around a tree. Oh, wow, I'm impressed with you. That's all you've done, huh? Folks, Jesus was not kind to people who didn't think they needed grace. And what he does is he motivates us by his blessed presence.

I read a book about a man who struggled with pornography and here's a couple of lines. He said, I remember many times sitting in front of my computer and the question was to click or not to click. I felt the Holy Spirit tapping me on the shoulder. I knew better. I knew that the peace of God's presence is better than this rush that I would receive. God was nevertheless even there present with me, convicting me, yes, but have you ever wondered what the way of escape is? There's no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man and God will with the temptation provide a way of escape.

So what's the way of escape? He said, the way of escape was the presence of the living God. He became my rescue and he said that I had to come to the point where the peace of God and my fellowship with God meant more to me than the pleasure that I would receive, the guilty pleasure, and that God ultimately and my fellowship with him would mean more. It is the presence of God right in the midst of our temptation. It is God's presence there that becomes the means of deliverance, the passion for God greater than our passion to sin. To learn that lesson, many failures along the way, I'm sure, but at the end of the day, we are motivated by the fact that blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

All right. And now here's the most important thing you may hear from me in this message. When you sin and when you're loaded with guilt and when you are in a lifestyle that just increases your guilt, what do you do?

You know what the big mistake many people do is? They run away from Jesus. Well, I can't handle the God thing right now. Someday when I'm out of this, someday when I'm doing better, then I can come to God.

I clean myself up and I present myself to him and now he's better and I'm better and so now he says, oh, wow, now that you've cleaned yourself up, you're welcome. In the book I read, the woman was telling about a young woman who didn't feel right unless she was in another same sex relationship and how she had this condemnation and so forth. What she needed to do is in her need, not run from Jesus, but run to Jesus. Because remember last week's message, the basis upon which we are accepted is not our performance, but what Jesus did is and even in the midst of temptation, we are reminded of the blood of Christ. We're reminded of the fact that we belong to him. We remind ourselves that we are the righteousness of God and we stand on that in the midst of the temptation until we begin to ask ourselves, what in the world am I doing as a child of God and a daughter of God doing this that displeases him? We invite the presence of God.

You know, there are some of you here who have to take the baggage that you have and all that stuff and you have to be willing to open that suitcase in the presence of Jesus, the presence of Jesus. During the time of the Reformation, there was a man who was actually a musician. He wrote music. His name was Martin Arcole. And he was a composer and he lived during the time when there was the struggle between Catholics and Protestants and he was a teacher in a Protestant school.

And I want you to catch what he wrote. He says, though my sin were as great and as many as the hairs of my head, the grass of the earth, the leaves of the tree, the sand on the seashore, the drops in the sea or the stars of heaven, yet I would not fall into despair, but I would run to the great indulgence chest, namely the grace and the overwhelming mercy of God. Run to Jesus. Don't walk. Run to Jesus. Now your Bibles are open.

The battery on your cell phone is still working. We're in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John. I want you to notice something. The beginning of the eighth chapter, you have the story of the woman who it says in verse 3 was caught in adultery. She was brought by these men and she was brought to Jesus and said this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone such. What do you say? I just absolutely smile at Jesus Christ's answer. He says, let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. Sure, I'll keep the law, but if you haven't committed a similar sin, pick up some stones and start throwing them at her. Once more he bent down and wrote on the ground, but when they heard it, they went away one by one beginning at the older ones.

They all filed out. Catch this. The woman was caught.

For her that was a gift. There is a gift of being caught, exposed in the presence of Jesus because that's how healing helps. The men also were caught.

They were caught, but they walked away with their masks fully intact. We, we may be guilty of the same thing, but so they walk out. Do you realize the contrast? Here's a woman who hears the words of Jesus. Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more. Wow. Hear our self-righteous people.

We don't have any addictions. Oh no, we, we just, we judge all those people, you know, all those people who struggle with their sexuality and so forth. We judge them. Those are who we are. The fact is what Jesus is saying is some of these people in honesty are exposed in my presence and they come with their bag of shame and I enter into their world and I bring the deliverance that they need. But you know, the people who walk away with their masks, they go back to their little hideaway unchanged.

Remember what I said at the beginning? Grace enters open doors, not closed hearts. Jesus comes to where we are and says, why don't you find a secret place somewhere?

Find time, take out an hour of your life and just open, open the suitcase. We'll look at it together. We'll bring healing. We'll bring hope and I'll set you along the right path. Many struggles, but I'll walk with you on your journey.

Now, where are you today? Do you receive the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ or do you live with the illusion that you don't need his forgiveness, you don't need his grace or you're a believer but you're still living with the illusion that you can manage it yourself. Let's pray together. And as I pray, I just want you to say this.

Whatever God has talked to you about, would you talk to him about it, please? Father, we pray today that this word may break open in the lives of people, issues that have never been addressed. Help them, Father, to take time during this week to get alone and to say, God, I'm going to open it all up and I'm going to expose it to you because like this woman, I want to hear your sins are forgiven.

Go and sin no more. Oh, Father, do that in all of our hearts. And even as we remember the Lord's death, help us to remember that he said this do in remembrance of me. My life was given for the forgiveness of many.

We love you. In Jesus' name, amen. My friend, this is Pastor Lutzer and I sincerely hope and pray that you will respond to whatever it is that God has shown you today. We're so thankful for the word of God that exposes our need, but also has a prescription for the depths of that need. Have you been blessed as a result of the ministry of these sermons? You know, you may need them and then there may be others and you believe that they need them too. Well, we're making these sermons available to you. The title of the sermon series is The Power of a Clear Conscience. And for a gift of any amount, these messages can be yours so that you can listen to them again and again.

Share them with your friends. Here's the contact information. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now I'm going to be giving you that phone number once again, but let me thank you in advance for standing with us. Together we are making a difference and we make these resources available to you to help you, as we frequently say, to make it all the way to the finish line.

So you can go to rtwoffer.com or if you prefer, you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Ask for the power of a clear conscience. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Having a clear conscience is wonderful. Next time on Running to Win, how to keep ourselves in that place of joy. We'll turn to 1 John and hear about Walking in the Light. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.