Rescued From Hopelessness Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. There's more to being saved than most people realize. It involves being given a series of wonderful gifts from the hand of God.

Those gifts include the trials we experience, trials that produce perseverance, character and hope, all wrapped up in the love of God poured out in our hearts. 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, for many, hope is in short supply.

Point us to where we're going today. Well, Dave, you've already hinted at it by connecting the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ and faith enables us to endure trials. And the Apostle Paul recognized that the gospel not only connects us with God, but it enables us to live life. And that's the good news of the gospel. And that's the hope to which we are going to be pointing. I need to remind our listening audience that these messages are available for a gift of any amount.

They can be yours. You can go to RTWOffer.com, or if you prefer, you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, I need to tell you that we have a study guide with these messages, a personal study guide that will help you to go deeper. It will help you to ponder the depth of what the Apostle Paul is writing. And as a result of that, you will have greater hope.

Once again, go to RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And if you find in your life that hope is in short supply, you listen right now. So the third gift that I'm emphasizing here is the ability to joy, have joy in the midst of our suffering. And that joy can only come through faith, through trust, through thanksgiving. Well, there's another one we have time for, and that is hope. You'll notice, in fact, it is our trials that lead to endurance, character, and then hope.

And of course, it's been said a thousand times, but I need to say it again. It is not hope the way in which we use the word today. For example, I can imagine someone saying, I hope that the Cubs will win the World Series next year. Now, you can say that, and you can hope that, and you'll discover that tens of thousands of people have been hoping that for a long time.

You know, if you're new to Chicago, you should know that we can actually buy a Cubs t-shirt that says anyone can have a bad century. Paul is not talking about that kind of hope. Paul is talking about an earnest expectation, convinced, absolutely convinced that Jesus will triumph, that these things too shall pass, that darkness someday shall come to an end, and that victory will be won, has been won by Jesus and will be applied, and the hope and the sure knowledge that the suffering of this present world is not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.

That is the hope, and I give you hope today. If you have never trusted Christ as Savior, I'm glad that you are listening to this message. It will help you to understand all of the blessings that come along with Jesus, and one of the most encouraging is the gift of hope, the certain conviction, the confident expectation that in the end, Jesus wins, and you win too.

You win too because he wins. Now there's another gift, and I'd like to transition here in this passage to what it cost God. The gifts are free in Jesus, you must understand. He who spared not his own son, as I quoted earlier, with him freely, he gives all things.

I've listed three or four. But it's all based on the sacrifice of Christ and the love of God. So it cost God.

The gifts are free to us, but it cost God plenty. It cost God his son. Now notice Jesus died, and now we're in verse 6. For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Now there are three categories of people for whom Jesus died. And if you don't fit into any of these categories, then I'm really sorry because you'll never take advantage of what Jesus did for you. So I'm going to give you these categories based on the text, your Bibles are open, you can see it there, what the categories are for whom Jesus died.

And here they are. First of all, while we were still weak, powerless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Do you feel powerless morally? Do you feel powerless because you know you don't have the ability to save yourself, that self-salvation can't work for you? Do you understand that?

That's necessary to grasp. And then you'll notice it says in verse 8, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, there's another category. Of course, those who are weak and sinners are really the same people, but he's describing them differently. So he died for us as weak, he died for us as sinners, and then it says in verse 10, for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, while he also died for us as enemies, as hostile, as weak, as sinners, and as being hostile. Jesus, while we were still enemies with God, when Jesus died on the cross, you hadn't even been born yet obviously, and you and I are basically born as enemies of God, and we shall see this in the next message. And while we were weak, while we were in our sins, and while we were enemies with God in ways that we didn't understand, even then Jesus died for us. No wonder Paul says that it was because of his love, in verse 8, God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners. Now I'm going to say something to you that in the next few moments that will be revolutionary and will change your heart if you're open to receive it. When the Bible says that God loves us, what does he actually mean? Dr. Don Carson of Trinity Seminary has written an interesting little book on the love of God, which is really quite a challenge in Scripture because God loves in different ways. But he says this, picture Charles and Susan walking down a beach hand in hand.

They've kicked off their shoes and the wet sand squishes between their toes. Charles turns to Susan, gazes deeply into her large hazel eyes and says, Susan, I love you, I really do. What does he mean?

If we assume he has some decency and Christian virtue, the least he means is something like this. Susan, you mean everything to me. I can't live without you. Your smile paralyzes me from 50 yards. Your sparkling good humor, your beautiful eyes, the scent of your hair, everything about you transfixes me. I love you. What he most certainly Carson continues does not mean is Susan, in spite of the fact that your nose is so large it belongs in the cartoons. Your hair is so greasy it could lubricate an 18-wheeler. Your knees are so bony a camel looks elegant.

Your personality makes Attila the Hun look sweet. But Susan, I love you. Now Carson asks the question, when God loves us, what is that like? What does he mean? Does he mean something like, you mean everything to me? I can't live without you. Your personality, your witty conversation, your beauty, your smile, everything about you transfixes me and I love you. Is that what God means?

Of course not. When he loves us, does not God rather mean something like this? Listen, morally speaking, you've got a huge nose and greasy hair. Your disjointed knees and terribly selfish personality, your sinfulness makes you disgustingly ugly to me. But I love you. Not because you're attractive, but because I've chosen to love you. I want all of you to hear me now.

This is revolutionary. Do you know why you and I find it so hard to believe that God loves us as much as he loves Jesus? Which is what the Bible says. After all, God would not have given his son if he loved his son more than he loved us.

He just said, I love my son too much to redeem you. But it says in John 17 that the father loves us as he loves Jesus. You know why you and I can't accept it? Because deeply ingrained within us, and I struggle with this very much. Deeply within us is this idea that we have to earn God's love and somehow, somehow we have to make ourselves worthy of it. And so at the end of the day, you and I don't really believe that God loves us.

Let me tell you something. If you and I believe that God really loved us, we'd be all free of jealousy. We wouldn't have to be jealous of anyone else.

We wouldn't have to compete. We'd be totally content with the way in which God made us. We would be happy just to be loved by him and we would let him love us without all the pressure of performance. We would just bask in God's love and say, here I am with all of my warts and sins and good intentions, which I never fulfill. All of my broken dreams, full of what I am, but there you are because I've received Christ as savior. You love me as if I am him and I'm just going to rejoice in that. We would be content.

No more striving, no more struggling, no more obsessing. We'd say, you know, I belong to God and he loves me. That'll carry me through from here all the way to heaven. I can make it, right?

Can we make it? Because he loves us that much. And so God loves us. What's the bottom line here regarding hopelessness? First of all, hopelessness, hope rather, which overcomes hopelessness. Hope begins by having peace with God, peace with God right there in verse one. That's the beginning of hope. And I say to all of you today that until you deal with that issue, your hope is futile. It's a bad hope.

It's a hope that will get you nowhere. During the days of David Livingston, the great missionary in South Africa, there were some Zulu tribes that were at war with one another. And one of the chiefs and one of the tribes said to David Livingston that we were at war and this tribe came and plundered us and took my son with them. How can I have peace with them when they treat my son in this way? What the Bible says is this, that until you deal with God's son, you can't have the peace with God. You have to deal with his son. You have to deal with the fact that Jesus died for sinners.

You need to receive him. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the beginning point. Now at last, having dealt with God's son and no longer being at war with him, as God says, I'm no longer at war with you because you're my child. That's the beginning point in hope.

Because what that means is no matter how bad things get, your relationship with the Father is always intact, always dependable. So that's the first lesson regarding hope. There's a second too, and that is hope continues. Hope continues not by looking at our emotions, which are so flexible and tell us so many different lies. Our emotions lie to us all the time, but rather looking beyond ourselves to those truths in which we are secure. To those of you today going through that dark tunnel of hopelessness, if you're a Christian, remember this. You are as loved in the darkness as you are in the light. You are loved and you are cared for, and in the end, it will be okay.

You don't need to end it or try to end it because you know that this too shall pass. Your emotions are lying to you when you think that God doesn't love you and things are hopeless. So what you need to do is to dip into the deep reservoir of Scripture and read and meditate on all that God has revealed. I encourage you to use the Psalms. During a particularly difficult period in my life, I tried to read through the Psalms at least once a month by reading several of them a day. I had a schedule.

Notice this. I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction out of the miry bog. I memorized it in the King James and it says the miry clay, but this is good out of the bog.

Some of you are in that pit of destruction. And he set my feet upon a rock. He made my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

Wow. So in the midst of David's experiences here of rejection, though my father and mother forsake me, David says, the Lord will pick me up. And he went through his own depression. You remember he said, why art thou cast down on my soul? That word cast down is sometimes used for sheep when they are, they get into a position where they roll on their back and can't get up without help.

They can use their legs, but their legs simply beat the air because the center of gravity is such that if they are cast down, they can't get back up without a shepherd. David says, why am I cast down on my soul? Here I am in my despair and there's no hope at the end of the tunnel. Why art thou cast down on my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God.

Wow. So God is there to bring you up from the pit. God is there to give you hope in the midst of your hopelessness. God is there with us. And he walks through the tunnels with us and our emotions lie continually to us. And we have to say, I'm going by an objective standard, namely God and his word.

And I have to hang in. As the Bible says, he that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all with him freely at no charge. He gives us all things.

I love that song that perhaps you and I have sung from time to time. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand. God gives hope to the hopeless. He gives light where there is darkness. And Jesus came to rescue us, to give us dignity, purpose, and hope. No matter where you're at today, God has a plan for you. If he didn't, he'd have already taken you to glory. God is here.

And if you've never trusted Christ as savior, you have to deal with his son before you can say you have peace with God. Would you join me as we pray? Father, we stand amazed at how freely you give blessings. We thank you that today wrapped up in Jesus is all that we need. And through your people, through groups that meet together and pray together, we can be given hope as we're reminded of your promises and reminded of all those who love us. Now, whatever your need is today, would you just talk to God for a moment? Would you thank him for his gifts?

And may those who've not trusted him believe on him right now. In Jesus' name, amen. You know, my friend, if you've never believed the gospel of Jesus Christ, this would be a wonderful time for you to acknowledge your sinfulness and then trust Jesus as your savior.

I believe that you are listening to this broadcast not by accident, but by divine design. And if you already know Christ as savior, why don't you give thanks to him right now for the wonder of salvation, for the fact that he received you and he received me, all because of our faith and trust in Jesus Christ our Lord. And by the way, the title of this series of messages is Rescued What God Did to Save Us. Can you think of anything more important than to understand what God did to save us?

I don't think so. And perhaps there is no book in the New Testament that lays it out as clearly as the book of Romans. This sermon series can be yours so that you can listen to it again and again, share it with your friends. The title is Rescued What God Did to Save Us.

For a gift of any amount, here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337. Ask for the series Rescued What God Did to Save Us.

And the good news is that along with this series of messages, we now have a study guide, a personal study guide that will help you to go deeper into the wonderful teachings of the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans. Once again, let me give you that contact information, rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Thanks in advance for helping us.

The Ministry of Running to Win continues in more than 20 different countries, including throughout the Middle East. But it's all happening because we have people praying for us and we have folks like you. Together, we're making a difference. It's time now for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Today, an anonymous listener has written asking this, I have a question regarding a practice taught in the book, A Blessing for Your Spirit by Gunter and Burke. The authors teach you that you can bless a person by directly addressing their spirit.

I don't know if this is done in the person's absence, presence, or either way. A couple of samples are, Joe, I call your spirit to attention in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Listen with your spirit to God's word for you. Then you quote verses from Psalm 139, I bless you, Joe, because you are fearfully and wonderfully made. I believe the author's intentions are good, but is this practice biblical?

No, I don't think that it is biblical. I don't see anything in the scripture that tells me I should address a spirit, the spirit of a person that way, and bless them. Now, there is something like that in the Book of Numbers where it says, May the Lord shine his face upon you and be gracious unto you. You remember that benediction, and then it says, In this way you will put the name of God on the children of Israel. So, I believe that there is a sense in which we can bless people. When I give a benediction here at the Moody Church, I intend that it is a blessing. But there's nothing in the scripture that tells me I should address somebody's spirit.

I can address them, but as far as addressing their spirit, I think the scripture is silent about that. 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 N. LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. The outcome of sin is permanent separation from God. Next time, a short history of sin and what God did to save us from its penalty. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.