Extraordinary Death Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The love of God was put on display when Jesus went to the cross to die for our sins.

His sacrifice was visible that day in Jerusalem, and it's visible by faith to those who trust him for the salvation his death purchased. 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 we learn about a big theological word. Tell us about justification. Dave, I love to talk about the word justification. I have to confess that even after graduating from seminary, I never really appreciated this word. Of course, I knew that justification meant that it is just as if we'd never sinned, and I appreciated that.

But later on, I began to understand the full import of what that word means. The fact that God demands absolute perfection from us, and then he supplies what he demands. So as Lutzer discovered, now it doesn't matter how high God's standard is, as long as I don't have to meet it, Christ meets it for me. And it's not just as if I have been declared righteous. It's as if I have lived a perfect life of righteousness. He stands in for me.

I love to talk about that. My friend today, if you are blessed as a result of the ministry of Running to Win, would you consider becoming an endurance partner? Endurance partners are those who stand with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts.

I like to think of them as people who join the Running to Win family. Of course, you want more information, here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's all one word, rtwoffer.com. Click on the endurance partner button.

Or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337. And now I want you to listen carefully as we understand better the depth and the assurance of our salvation. And I can assure you, it's all because of Jesus. Years ago, there were some atheists who wanted to mock God. So they wrote a pamphlet, a little tract, in which they said, look at God. In the Old Testament, Abraham was a liar and he's called a friend of God. Jacob was a cheater and yet he is called a prince of God. David, an adulterer and a murderer. And he was, quote, a man after God's own heart. Now, said the atheists, what kind of a God associates with people like that?

In their perverse way, they had a point, didn't they? That's the question of the Gospel. How does God associate with sinners and still retain his integrity?

How can the scandal be removed from his name? Even though he associates with us who are sinners. So the Bible teaches that God remained just, but he also became the justifier. God says, I sure can't look to man to rectify this relationship. That's for sure.

That's already been excluded. But God says, I will do it. I, as God the Father, will allow God the Son who is me in the flesh, three persons, but one God. God the Son will go. He will become one with humanity, though remaining distinct from it and being sinless. And he will offer a sacrifice which I will receive. And so it will be God the Son making a sacrifice to God the Father without so much as one bit of human initiative or effort or works involved.

None. Salvation will be of the Lord. I'm told there was a man in California who was caught speeding and who went to court to pay his fine and the judge read him the sentence. He had to pay the fine.

But after the sentence was read, the judge left the bench, stood by the defendant and paid the fine for him. That's what God does. How does God associate with sinners? How does he do it without spurning his own reputation or denying his own honor? He says, these sinners who have done nothing to their salvation and to rectify their relationship with me, every single demand that I could ever ask of them has been met and I have been the one who has met it. Now my friend, those of you who are students of comparative religion who are interested in finding the common center of all religions, you go to the libraries, you study the textbooks, you travel to different countries, you search it out, you find whether there is another religion that teaches that man has absolutely nothing to do with reconciliation.

It is God who does it all on the basis of his mercy, love and still retains his justice. You seek it out. There is none.

There is none. All the other religions say that it is your responsibility to become enlightened. It is your responsibility to follow the eightfold path. It is your responsibility to do the will of Allah, but nobody knows how high Allah's standards are.

All that you can do is hope, but everybody else says it is up to you and the Bible says Jesus paid it all. There is no other religion like that. Imagine God plans it. God initiates it. God completes it. And number four, God freely offers it. God freely offers it.

Now if you're thinking, and I know you are, everybody who comes here thinks you already knew what the fourth point was going to be. Obviously it has to be given freely, obviously, because we have no part in having worked it out. We've already agreed that we are on the other side of the chasm and there is nothing that we can do to take a step in God's direction. God must reach over, and in the incarnation he did, and that's why Christ had to be God, because a Savior not quite God would be like a bridge that was broken at the farthest end.

He had to be God and man, and he had to do it all, and then offer it freely. By grace you're saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, not of sacraments, not of a cooperative effort, lest any man should boast. Look at what Paul says, put your finger on the text. Verse 27, where is boasting then?

It is excluded by what kind of law of works? No, but by the law of faith. Who is there then who can say, I worked out my salvation because I earned it?

None. Every mouth is stopped, every mouth is guilty. It is offered only to those who personally believe. You say, well, why does God limit it to those who believe? Well, I need to tell you that God enjoys being believed. That's why the Bible says that our faith is so important. It is more important than gold that perishes, and the reason that God sends trials into our life even after we have accepted Christ as Savior is because God says, I want you to go on believing me so that you have something to offer me when I see you.

Faith, faith. But even the faith with which we initially believe is not a work, it is a gift from God. Salvation from beginning to end is of the Lord. He offers it freely through faith.

And you know, of course, another consequence of that is the fact that he can give it to anybody who believes. You know, I'm talking to some of you who think today that you cannot receive Christ as your Savior because of the enormity of your sin. If you are willing to admit how bad you are, you're in a good position to receive this free gift. Sometimes God has more trouble with those who think they aren't so bad and don't need it. You may say, well, I have to work out the consequences of my own sin.

I'm in a mess that I've created. Well, I want you to know that we do not believe in karma. Thank God that cruel, impersonal law that says that everybody gets exactly what he deserves because of what he did in a previous existence.

No. I'm here to tell you today that grace means that we don't have to get what we deserved because Jesus Christ took the suffering that he didn't deserve, that we might receive the forgiveness that we don't deserve. And no matter how bad your need, no matter how deep the pit into which you have fallen, God does not find it harder to give you the gift than he does some person who's not even acquainted with some of the sins that you've committed. You know, if you're giving out free gifts, it is easy to give them to the criminals.

It is easy to give them to the immoral as it is to the self-righteous who perhaps don't even recognize how desperately they need it. Free gift to those who believe. So God plans redemption. God begins it. He completes it. He offers it to us freely and he guarantees it. He guarantees it. This comes with God's stamp of approval.

It means that once we have come to that place of savingly believing in Christ, we will be gods forever. Oh, you say, well, we might want to give the gift back. Well, it's not quite that easy, I need to say. It's not easy to give this gift back.

In fact, let me be clearer, it is impossible to give it back. It involves so many of God's attributes. It involves the truth of God regarding sin and regarding us. It involves the mercy of God of having declared us righteous in his presence. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again. It involves the integrity of God of having purchased those who believe and then being unable to take them to glory.

That is unthinkable. It involves the faithfulness of God in granting us the Holy Spirit within our hearts. It involves the creative power of God. It says if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. God does a miracle within. He has to speak the word to change us.

All of this is involved. And if you're a believer today, you are already seated with Christ in heaven and you can't be thrown out of heaven unless he is thrown out of heaven and he is not going to be thrown out of heaven. It comes guaranteed by God. And then finally, it comes giving us a future with God, a future with God. Now, you know, there are many people who believe in reincarnation. Shirley MacLaine says that you just keep being recycled.

It's like shooting a movie and you keep redoing it until you get it right. The problem is that there is not only evolution in the process, there is sometimes devolution and some people think that you come into the next existence being a mouse or an ant or a reptile of some sort. Christianity has nothing to do with that.

No, no, that absolutely not, absolutely not. But Christianity says that when you die, your body is actually going to be raised from the dead, the body that you brought with you today. And it is impossible to come to Moody Church without a body, I might add.

We do make that limitation. The very body that you brought with you is going to be put in the grave someday. It is going to be raised. It is going to be recreated.

And it's going to look something like the one that you brought here today, but much better. And the mind and all your memories and your memories and everything else is going to be a part of you and you're going to be totally and completely whole personally in the presence of a personal God forever. There is no other religion in all the world that believes that. All the other religions give an expression of human experience in an attempt to somehow get at the divine.

And many, many books have been written about that, many, many muddled books, many, many contradictory books because everybody has a different experience. Christianity, as we have learned in previous messages, says that God has spoken, he has given us clarity, and he in mercy has done it all. Not the cosmic Christ, but Jesus of Nazareth, the only qualified savior of the world.

Now I need to remind you that we're living in a day and age when all kinds of saviors are popping up. Arthro Guthrie who was at the parliament of world religions, who's into Buddhism and Hinduism and Christianity and that wonderful amalgamation that we showed in previous messages can never be pulled off, said that he had a vision of Jesus 17 years ago that totally changed him. He was in the back porch, he says, and Jesus appeared to him and Jesus was light and Jesus was love. And he said, you can believe me or not believe me, but he said it was just wonderful to behold Jesus. I was listening to a tape this past week of another pastor who said that he was talking to another pastor and this pastor says, while I am shaving in the morning, Jesus comes and puts his arm around me. Isn't that sweet? I wonder if the man keeps shaving.

I wonder. There was a televangelist a number of years ago who said that Jesus came to him and they spent seven and a half hours talking about some things which now I believe have not come to pass. All kinds of Jesus's, cosmic Jesus's. Well, you know that Satan comes in whatever appearance he is expected to take. If you want a visitation from Jesus, Satan might give it to you. But the question is, is it Jesus of Nazareth?

That's the question. Many of you know that even though I strongly disagree with Martin Luther on a number of points, I do greatly admire him, his courage, his ability, even as a theologian and as an author. One of the things about Luther is that he often struggled with the question of whether he was hearing God correctly because he came from an era in which there was lots of mythology, lots of appearances of Christ.

I always wanted to make sure that he was hearing God correctly and that's why he kept going back to the book, to the Bible. The reason that Martin Luther was named Martin is because he was born on Saint Martin's day. Martin was his patron saint and there was a legend about Saint Martin which I'm sure Luther frequently contemplated. The legend or perhaps it wasn't a legend, it may be a true story, I do not know, but the story was that one day Jesus appeared to Saint Martin and they were having a conversation together and then suddenly it flashed into Saint Martin's mind that maybe this was not Jesus and maybe it was an apparition of the devil. To verify that it was Jesus, Saint Martin glanced down at his hands to see if he had nail prints and just as he glanced at his hands, the apparition disappeared and Saint Martin did not get a chance to see his hands. And so there were times when Luther would wonder, had he heard God correctly? He wanted to be sure and he realized the only way to be sure is to go back to the Bible because if not, you might end up accepting a Jesus without nail prints.

I have the mind to believe that if Arthur Guthrie and the televangelist and the man who says that Jesus comes to him while he is shaving looked carefully, there would be no nail prints. And so I say to you today, if you're out looking for a savior, you say, well, you know, we're savior shopping and today we came to Moody Church to see what they had to offer. You're savior shopping. Well, first of all, just be clear, Christianity is the only religion that has a savior. All the others have gurus and prophets and teachers, but no savior. So if you're savior shopping, that narrows it down to Jesus. But having said that, there are plenty of Jesuses like the cosmic Jesuses who seem to be appearing everywhere.

I suggest that before you believe in him, you look for nail prints. No other Christ can save. And a false Christ leads to a false salvation. And only Christ can save. We used to sing a song, which I notice is not in our hymnal.

I looked for it and couldn't find it, but the chorus used to go like this. I shall know him. I shall know him. When redeemed by his side, I shall stand. I shall know him. I shall know him.

By the prints of the nails in his hands. When you're looking for a savior, look for nail prints and let us pray. Our Father, today we do want to thank you for the faithfulness of your word. We thank you that there is nobody here who has fallen so far, but that you cannot give them the gift of eternal life. We thank you that salvation had nothing to do with us. Thank you that you did it all.

And now you offer it to us as a free gift. We pray for those who have believed in many different things, believed in their own goodness, believed in going to church and believed in all kinds of things that they thought would change their relationship with you and it hasn't. At this moment, strip all that away and may they believe in the Christ with nail prints. And before I close this prayer, what is it that you need to say to God today? Would you at this moment say, Lord Jesus, I receive you as mine. I receive the free gift that was worked out on Calvary. At this moment, I transfer my trust to you.

Why don't you tell them that at this moment. Lord, we thank you for your work in our hearts in Christ's name. Amen. My friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. As you listen to this message, you learn once again the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.

There is nobody out there like him. And thank you in advance for helping us proclaim this message because people are coming to know Jesus Christ as Savior. The church is being built up as a result of this ministry, but it's all happening because of people like you. Thanks in advance for standing with us with your prayers and your gifts. Now, some of you might like to become what we call endurance partners. These are people who stand with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts.

And you've heard me say this before, but I look at it as people who become part of the running to win family. Of course, you want more information. Here's what you can do. Go to RTWOffer.com. RTWOffer is of course all one word. RTWOffer.com and click on the endurance partner button. And there you'll receive information how you can become a specific part of this ministry. Or if you prefer, you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'm going to be giving you that contact info again, but let me thank you in advance for being a part of this ministry, for being a part of the running to win family. Go to RTWOffer.com. Click on the endurance partner button, or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337. Let us work together to get the uniqueness of Jesus, his Godhood, his salvation, and his triumph to as many people as we possibly can.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635, North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. No one the Romans killed ever lived again until Jesus made the comeback of all time. When God raised him from the dead, that resurrection guaranteed that those who believe in him will one day rise as well. Next time on Running to Win, the extraordinary resurrection of Jesus, the only religious founder not still in a tomb. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.