We Have No Map For This Territory Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The days ahead may well be days of less money, fewer options, higher prices, and more uncertainty. How do we handle deprivation when all we've known is abundance? Today, we begin a series to prepare us for such a time as this.

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 of us, life is getting harder all the time. As you speak on famines, deserts, and other hard places, will this series help us face life as it gets more difficult? Dave, I believe it certainly is going to help us face life as it gets more difficult. And by the way, I think life is going to get more difficult.

Just look at the evening news, or for that matter, the morning news. We have so many different pressures that are being put upon us. You know, if I might just give a little insight, I was planning to preach a series of messages on some other topic.

I forget what that topic was. But I was discussing it with my wife, Rebecca, and she said, no. She said, life is hard. And she mentioned a couple of situations that we knew about. She said, you ought to preach a message on the hardness of life and faith in the midst of it. So that's how this series of messages came about, famines, deserts, and other hard places.

And I have to say that this series was of tremendous help and blessing, because we all know that life is indeed hard, and we need to face it as believers, recognizing that in the end, we do win. But in the meantime, it's very difficult. So I want you to listen to this series of messages carefully, because it'll paint a picture of where we are, but also how to manage whatever happens to us.

Well, today I begin a series of messages entitled, Famines, Deserts, and Other Hard Places. So let me begin by asking, what if God wanted to take us where we have never been before? A whole new level of devastation and suffering that most of us have never experienced. Some of you are already there individually, but I mean what if, what if this was true of all of us? What then? What if the promises of God are still true, and we believe that they are?

Thankfully, indeed, they are. But let us suppose that we have to apply those promises in ways that we've never had to apply them before. What if we as a nation end up with the same kind of poverty that we see on television in other parts of the world, and join the world in its poverty and devastation and even natural disasters? What then? What if God in heaven simply says, enough already? I've been judging you, I've been sending you remedial judgments, and those remedial judgments were intended to warn you to repent, and you didn't, so enough already. You're going to now experience the kind of judgments that were found even in the Old Testament.

What then? Michael Craven, who is the president of the Center for Christ and Culture, wrote, I do not think it is true strong or sensational to say that we are witnessing the collapse of Western civilization. Across the Western world, the fruits of apostasy and secularism are manifesting themselves in overwhelmingly destructive ways. In my lifetime I've seen the rapid demise of the family. For the first time in American history, some married households now outnumbered married households, 52% versus 48. Only one-fifth of American households represent traditional families.

These statistics are from the New York Times. Out of wedlock, birth rates in the U.S. have reached 40% following a similar trend throughout Western Europe countries, some of which are as high as 66%. And then he says, while out of wedlock births continue to rise, more and more people are simply not having children at all, leading to a depopulation of the West on an unprecedented scale. Add to this the radical redefinition of marriage and family to include same-sex couples, and the future of the natural family, an institution essential to healthy society, only promises to worsen. Then very quickly, our academic institutions have shifted from teaching virtues and the pursuit of truth to intolerant platforms for secularized political values and godless indoctrination.

Revenue from the consumption of pornography, catch this, exceeds that generated by all professional sports combined. And then the media, of course, contributes to this. Our political leaders have abandoned statesmanship and true public service for personal power gains and government-driven social and economic engineering. Recently, Europeans and some Americans have descended into barbarism and anarchy as the state proves incapable of serving as savior and provider. In the wake of supplanting God with the state, personal responsibility has been replaced by selfishness, dependency, and entitlement. Finally, the Church, which once was the moral authority in the West, has rendered herself irrelevant, marginalized in the public square. As for the Church, and now this is most important, we alone bear the responsibility for our own demise. The culture did not render us irrelevant.

We did. We've been entrusted with the truth, the message of hope, and we have neglected this responsibility in exchange for security and comfort. We've tried unsuccessfully to build our lives in a way that seeks to comfortably balance the demands of following Christ with our own quest for personal peace and affluence.

But it doesn't work. You either love Christ or you love your own life, and the article goes on. In addition to what he mentions there, and I didn't read it all, I'd like to add today to show our weakness our submission to Islam. There are Catholic hospitals that are taking down crucifixes, and there are Protestant churches that are taking down their crosses so as not to offend our Muslim friends. Just in Canada, where we came from last week, we were told about a classroom where there was a substitute teacher who brought her prayer mat and then in the middle of the class asked the class to be quiet as she went through her prayers. Could you even imagine what would happen if a Christian were to do that? Perhaps I've told you that in some schools, the Muslim students, because of their courage and commitment, they put their prayer mats in the halls, and students have to step around them.

Christian students have to be off somewhere where nobody sees them having their Bible studies or their witness. I have a friend who works in national security. He says that there are members of the Brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood, that have infiltrated our security forces, and he says that we are generally regarded as weak, quick to compromise, and easily led.

And I think that that assessment is right. So my question to you today is what happens when the sock comes unraveled? What happens when the difficulties really come and when the fruits of secularism begin to have their full impact? What then? I can imagine somebody saying, Pastor Luther, you shouldn't preach about this because people are going to panic and fear. Well, just to be clear, my purpose is actually the direct opposite. I do not want us to fear. I do not want us to panic.

When other people do, we shouldn't. I can hardly wait because one of the messages I'm going to preach comes from Jeremiah, where Jeremiah says, blessed is the man who's planted his tree near a stream because he will not fear when drought comes. That's the whole point of these messages. It's to be realistic about what might happen, but it's also to engender hope and fear and commitment to God and to one another as we shall see. That's the purpose. In fact, in the final message on the series, we all are going to pray a prayer. It's going to be a prayer that all of you will be invited to pray to lift any spirit of fear or panic from us, regardless of what the future holds, because our roots will be that strong. You see, it's my intention. I don't think that we can change society, by the way, and I'll tell you why, at least not a great deal.

I think we're too far down the river. But it's my intention that when this series is over, we will have changed because whom we trust will have changed. That's really the goal. Wayne Gretzky, that great hockey player in Canada, said that the reason that he was so good on the ice, he said he never would go where the puck was, he said, I always went where I knew the puck would be.

And that's what we want to do in these messages, not just talk about what is, but what could be. I love the sayings of Woody Allen. He really was gifted in saying wonderful things. And one of them is this, he says, you know, history has to repeat itself because nobody was listening the first time around. And history does repeat itself, and it's repeating itself right now, and nobody is listening no matter how many times around it goes. Come with me to the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet who lived during a time of Israel's history that was much like our own. Jeremiah wrote and taught and preached during a time of decline. There had been a revival under a man by the name of Josiah, but the revival didn't last because the repentance wasn't deep enough.

The nation's tears were not hot enough. And so in the book, God is pronouncing judgment on Jerusalem and Judah and predicting what we call the Babylonian captivity. So throughout all the book, you find that the nation is coming down from the north.

That's the Babylonians. And they're going to destroy Jerusalem and destroy all the cities, and that's the message Jeremiah has. You'll notice in verse 5 of chapter 1, and by the way, it's on page 627, if you just happen to forget your own Bible at home.

627 on the Bible that is there in the seat ahead of you. Verse 4 and 5, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. And of course, Jeremiah says, who am I?

I don't have the strength, et cetera. God says, I'm going to put words in your mouth. Verse 8, do not be afraid of them because I am with you to deliver. And then you'll notice continuing in chapter 1, God says that these people, the Babylonians, are going to come against the gates of Jerusalem. And then verse 16, and I will declare my judgments against them, that is the people of Judah and Jerusalem, for they're evil in forsaking me.

They've made offerings to other gods, worshiped the works of their own hands, but you dress yourself for work. And this applies to us now. Arise, say to them, everything I commanded you, do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them. And behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, bronze walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests, and the people of the land.

They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you because I am with you, there is the Lord. I know that this applies specifically to Jeremiah, but it also applies to us. You and I are living at this moment of history. The confluence of genes that God brought together to create you was intended for this moment.

There was a reason why you weren't born 30 years ago. You are called to this moment to prove God's faithfulness in the midst of a nation that is under judgment and more judgment is coming. And like Jeremiah, God is going to protect us.

He's going to care for us. And not only that, he says, I will fight on your behalf, but you'd better be faithful. You are called to this family, this family of believers, this moment in history, you are called by God and you and I are together. Now what I'd like to do is to look at that phrase that I read in verse 16, all the judgments that I'm going to bring upon you. And I'm going to answer the question, what were the judgments that God brought to the people? What was God so upset about? What was it that made him so angry that he would talk about these judgments?

Three different kinds. First of all, you have what we would call moral judgments. All the way through Jeremiah, you always have this reference to idols. You know, the people went to the hills and they made idols of wood and stone and silver. For example, Jeremiah says in chapter 2 verse 27, you who say to a tree, you are my father and a stone, you gave me birth. And then God says they have turned their back to me and not their face. In other words, they didn't face God, they turned their back on God.

What's going on? I used to read the Old Testament and think, what in the world were the people doing? You know, this idea of making an idol?

I mean, give me a break. Who would pray to something that you made? And then I heard a lecture by an Old Testament scholar on idolatry in the Old Testament. And then I understood the reason that people preferred these kinds of gods is because these gods were very tolerant and accepting of sexual orgies.

That was the whole point. You know, the God of Israel, he opposed homosexuality, adultery, fornication. We don't want that. We want a God who is compatible with anything and everything that we delight and want to do. That's the God we want.

So if I make one of wood, he'll agree with me about everything. So all the way through Jeremiah, you have these references that, you know, you fornicate under the trees and you do all this stuff because God says, I'm going to judge you for it. And he says that all the wells are going to dry up.

You know, in chapter 2, it says in verse 13, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, hewed them out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. You know, you don't understand this unless you realize in Israel, the cisterns were really just caves in mountains and they would plaster them in a very primitive way. And pretty soon that water would be brackish and it would be very, very bitter and people couldn't even drink it.

It was so bad. And in that context, the Lord says, you know, you've forsaken me, the living water, the streams that flow, and you've hewn yourself out cisterns, broken ones that can't hold water and they will dry up. Isn't that true of illicit sexual relations? I remember a man here 25 years ago, not with us anymore, but we were trying to convince him to go back to his wife rather than commit adultery. And I remember his words to me. He says, I have found an oasis in the desert and now you want me to go back to the dry desert. Ten years later he writes this 10-page letter indicating all the bitterness that came to him. The oasis turned out to be a broken cistern that could hold no water.

The desert would have been better. Wow. So God says, I'm going to judge you for this. Is there anyone who doesn't believe that we are under judgment because of rampant, unrestrained sexuality, which we call progress?

Is there anyone who doesn't believe that? The very fact that 20 million children will go home tonight with only one parent, primarily the mother, is proof that we have broken God's laws, adultery, pornography, and the home is being decimated. By the way, speaking of single mothers, we here at the church believe that you are our heroes. We know that you need help. And that's why we have family ministries.

We're here to help you parent your children. That's why Pastor Bob is on staff, he and his wife, because we are committed to speaking to and ministering to the brokenness that exists in our society. But take, for example, sexual addiction.

What is addiction? It's simply the intensification of the consequences of sin. God says, you want to sin this way? I'll give you lots of it. Now, even in those situations, we are here to help, to encourage you men particularly.

That's why you should be going to our men's fraternity ministries, where you can find other brothers who are struggling so that you can struggle together and be victorious together for the glory of God. But God says, I'm judging you because of your immorality. And by the way, it says in Ezekiel, they make up idols in their own mind. So people today have a God who's so tolerant, he agrees with them about everything.

He might as well be made of stone. There's a second kind of judgment, and it follows inevitably, and that is, of course, economic judgment. There are so many passages, but for example, in chapter 2, verse 15, God says that when the Babylonians come, the land is going to be a waste. It says in chapter 2, verse 17, let's see if I can find it here quickly. Had you not brought this upon yourself by the way the Lord says?

And then he goes on to say that you are under every green tree. And in chapter 3, verse 2, lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see, where have you not been ravished? By the waysides, you have been awaiting lovers, like an Arab in a wilderness.

An Arab might be waiting for an animal that he can kill or whatever, and that's the way you've been. And what I'm going to do is to send you judgment with your vile whoredom, the Bible says you've polluted the land. But notice, this is what I wanted, verse 3, therefore the showers have been withheld. And there are verses that say that the blessing of God in terms of the productivity is going to be taken away from you. The land is going to be made barren. And remember, in those days, the land was the economy. It is going to be barren. So you have economic judgments that are going to take place. And it says in the book of Deuteronomy, God said to the people, if you follow me, you will lend to many nations and you will not borrow.

Now, what do I need to say about the United States of America? As we begin to spend our way into oblivion, and we realize, by the way, that it is the children who are going to suffer. That's exactly what Jeremiah says. He says it is the children. He says the Babylonians are going to come and they are going to destroy your children. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. That certainly is sobering, isn't it?

But as we look at our nation today, we can see that much that happened in ancient times is happening before our eyes. But at the same time, God wants us to walk in personal victory. You know, I've written a book entitled How to Break a Stubborn Habit.

And it has not just to do with stubborn habits, but rather, how do we move forward in a life of holiness and commitment to Jesus Christ? I believe that this book will be a tremendous blessing to you and to your friends. It's entitled How to Break a Stubborn Habit.

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, in light of the message that you have just heard, I want to remind you that God expects us to do well spiritually, even if everything around us seems to be falling apart. And I believe that you will find this book a great encouragement. It'll help you in your walk with God at a time when walking with God is more difficult than ever.

The book is entitled How to Break a Stubborn Habit. And as I just mentioned, for a gift of any amount, it can be yours. And thanks, by the way, for helping us as we continue to share the Word of God with thousands upon thousands of people.

It's because of people like you that we can do that. Here's what you do to connect with us. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Ask for the book How to Break a Stubborn Habit. You've heard me say this before, but we here at Running to Win exist to help all of us to make it all the way to the finish line and to end successfully that we might hear from Jesus' well-done, good and faithful servant. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. When God chooses to judge a nation, He has several methods at His disposal.

One of them is economic collapse, when the house of cards called debt comes crashing down. Next time, more on how God can exact judgment on nations. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.