Miles Apart In The Same House Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Endangered species, some activists get very concerned about the fate of the spotted owl, but the real endangered species is the family. Fractured, broken, distressed, dysfunctional, all these words describe a crisis in the most basic unit of society. If the church does not act to save the family, who will?

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, tell us about the series that begins today, Reclaiming the Family. Dave, I have to say with all sadness that the description that you just gave of today's family is all too accurate. The simple fact is we are living at a time when the family is breaking up for many different reasons. Children, of course, are the casualty, and as all of us know, they take their own baggage into their future marriages. That's why this series of messages is so desperately important, and I would invite all who are listening, pick up the phone, call your friends, tell them that they should listen to this series to give them instruction and hope in the midst of a unit of society, the family, most basic as you mentioned, Dave, that is falling apart. This series of messages represents my heart for every single listener, for every family, for every child.

Let's listen carefully. Well, what do you think about Jennifer Wilbanks? She's the bride that got cold feet, and she decided to concoct a story about abduction to get out of marrying someone.

She did get part of it right. If you're unsure as to whether or not you should marry a given individual, be sure to not walk down that aisle. Leave the 600 guests in the pews, but don't walk down the aisle. Here at the Moody Church, I ended a wedding on a Wednesday that was to take place on a Saturday. A woman came and began to tell me whom she was going to marry, and here he was abusive, so I called the man who was going to perform the ceremony.

It was none of our staff. It was someone else from the outside, a Christian minister. I told him, I said, you know what? This marriage isn't happening, and he agreed. He said, if that's the case, he said, I didn't counsel them well. He said, okay, it won't. She said, oh, yeah, but she said, I come from a shame culture, and people have already given gifts, and they're already on the way. This is Wednesday, and the wedding is Saturday. I said, that's okay.

Blame me. Tell them that Pastor Lutzer, you know what he did? He's not letting that wedding take place. Months later, she met me in the lobby and gave me a hug, and she said, Pastor, how will I ever thank you enough?

She said, I knew that I should not marry him, but she said, I didn't have the strength to say no. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Marriage is something like flies on a screen door. Those that are in want out, and those that are out want in, you know.

So Jennifer Wilbanks did get part of it right. Don't walk down the aisle. Just throw the fish back in the lake and keep walking. But try to do it in such a way that you will not become a household name. Most women who get married think of three things on their wedding day. The aisle, you know, walking down the aisle.

Then, of course, they think of the altar standing at the altar, and of course, they think of him. But actually, it's I'll alter him. Take this from my heart to yours. You won't. You won't.

Every one of his flaws is going to get worse. His good points aren't going to seem that good after you're married. And just accept the fact that God might change him, the church might change him, his friends might change him, the Spirit might change him, but you won't. You won't. You officially give up all authority to change him when you walk down that aisle.

So if you have doubts, don't. So what is the family going to look like in the future? According to Time magazine, and this is an old article long before we were talking about the possibility of same-sex marriages. According to Time magazine, it will be interracial, bisexual, divided by divorce, multiplied by remarriage. The concept of illegitimate children will vanish because the nuclear family will have vanished. In fact, the nuclear family that was so popular during the 50s will be thought of as having been abnormal. There will be serial monogamy, that is one partner at a time, but several partners during a lifetime. You may get married and write into the contract that you're marrying this person for your college years, and then you have a career, and during that period, you're married to someone else. And then you decide to divorce that individual and retire with someone who is finally compatible.

Yeah, I'm sure. And children will have to divide their affection and their loyalty between stepmothers, birth mothers, biological fathers, step-parents, and ex-step-parents. Schools will have to have 24-hour support structures for children and sanctuary for abused children. Maybe Huxley, you remember, in his brave new world, has said that there will actually be baby hatcheries staffed with nurses who will do the rearing for people, and of course, I might add, and everybody's going to be happy and well-adjusted and life is just going to be wonderful. Talk about a nightmare, a nightmare. Imagine all of the depravity, imagine all of the emotional baggage, imagine all of the pain, even if a part of what I've just read comes true.

If you can, imagine it. Today I begin a series of messages on the family. I know I have a habit of saying that this is the most important series I've ever done, so I'm going to revert to habit and say that this is surely one of the most important series I've ever done. And the key verse for the whole series is actually coming to us from the book of Nehemiah. You need not turn to it, but I shall simply read it, and it says this. Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and for your homes. That's what we're going to do. We're going to fight for your marriage. We're going to fight for your children. We're going to fight for the strengthening of the family. We are going to reclaim the family.

That's what this series of messages is called, reclaiming the family, God's priority and God's homes. Now today we're going to begin with the first family on the topic of communication. Communication has to do with the giving and the receiving of messages. And communication is important not just so that we might understand each other. There are all kinds of stories about people who miscommunicate, like the person who said, I know you think you've understood what I said, but what you have heard is not what I meant. And the little girl who said that my Sunday school teacher said that if I am not more regular in attendance, she's going to be dropping me down the furnace.

The mother was aghast and then discovered that the Sunday school teacher said that if you're not here more often, I'll drop you from the register. Communication is important. But the reason that I'm speaking on it today is because it is important to communicate in order to love. Unless you allow someone else into your life and open your heart to them, unless there is a sense in which somebody knows all about you, both the good and the bad and the ugly, and they accept you nevertheless, unless you're that open with someone in your marriage, the person whom you married, unless there is that openness, there will never be love. It is not possible to love a stranger.

You can have a sexual relationship with a stranger, but you cannot love a stranger. So what people do is they have walls in their life and they take these walls and they put them in firm foundations and they dig them very, very deep. And they live within these walls and the wall may be guarding them from people who would come to know them. And within those walls, they may experience deep depression, anger, a secret addiction, and that's the way they live. So that their outer persona is something entirely different than that which is going on in their inward life. Today we're going to talk about those walls and with God's help, we're going to see them demolished.

I remember a woman saying to me, I am married to the great stone face. Comes home, gets a newspaper, gets buried in it, watches television. There's no communication. There's no mutual understanding. There's no camaraderie. There's no sense of harmony and connection.

Another woman said to me, my husband has put a sign over his heart and the sign says, do not disturb. What we'd like to do is to remove those signs today and we'd like to turn that stone face into a face of flesh. We don't have time today to go into the story in Genesis chapter 3 where it all began, but you know the story all too well, how Adam and Eve sinned.

What we're going to do is to talk about the consequences of sin. It says in Genesis chapter 3 verse 7, then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed the fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called out to the man and said, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? A man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done?

And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. What are the walls that keep us from communicating? Why can two people go down an aisle with the best of intentions?

I perform many weddings. I don't ever remember a couple saying, now we have one great goal and that is to make one another really miserable. Now if they were thinking that in their hearts, they never told us that that was their one big goal. And yet we think of the misery that exists and the lack of communication.

Why? Three walls and then we'll see how God comes to demolish them. First of all, you have shame and guilt, shame and guilt. Who told you that you were naked? Sin brings shame and shame is one of the most powerful emotions that we can ever experience. And what do they do when they are filled with shame? They try to hide from God as best they can among the trees of the garden. But you can't hide from God.

So they begin to hide from one another. And shame is going to now produce a barrier that is going to make communication very difficult even in the best of marriages. There are two kinds of shame.

One is imposed shame. Some of you grew up in homes that were shame-based. A number of years ago I spoke about the shame-based home. And in that home there was abuse and there was alcoholism and there was all kinds of secrets that you had as a family. Or maybe your parents shamed you when you misbehaved.

I'm amazed at how naive and wrong some parents are even when it comes to sexual matters, how they use shame and destroy a child and drive them into secrecy. Maybe it's imposed shame. Also there is actual shame, shame for which you and I are responsible because all of us have done things of which we are ashamed. We know the power of shame. Could you just imagine what would happen if all of our thoughts and all of our actions and all of our desires were public knowledge? We'd never gather together in a group like this.

We would all run for the hills because of shame. That's the first barrier. The second is fear. You'll notice it says that the man said in verse 10, I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Fear of what? Well, fear of rejection, fear of being exposed, fear of knowing that if the people around you knew exactly who you are, they would be shocked and they'd want to befriend someone else. That kind of fear tied in with shame is deep and debilitating. And then, of course, sometimes relationships only increase the fear. Remember receiving a phone call from a man who said, you know, my wife always told me that if I ever committed adultery she would leave me, would be the end of the marriage.

Well, now I have. So how do I go back and make things right? How do I come clean when she's told me that so many times? Now, undoubtedly, she did so with the best of motives thinking, well, if I tell him that, that's going to prevent him from some kind of a sexual relationship, a wrong relationship.

Well, in point of fact, it didn't, but what it did do is it made it very, very difficult for him to come back and to admit what he had done so that their marriage would no longer be built on a lie but would be built on reality. Makes it difficult. So what do rejected people do? First of all, they create circumstances in which they will perpetuate their rejection. You and I have met people like that. They're rejected and they are angry, so they say to themselves, I'm going to make sure that nobody is ever going to accept me and if they ever have a friend, they will suck the life out of that friend until the friend has to reject them because he can't take it anymore. And then they say, see, you're just like everybody else. Nobody loves me.

My parents didn't. Now you're rejecting me too. Or else they go into deep isolation and they live within their walls. And what they're doing is they're saying no one will ever penetrate these walls.

Here I will live and no one will ever hurt me again. So you have rejection. And then there's something else in this text and that is defensiveness, self protection.

This is big. Throughout the years I have become very interested in human behavior because I know something about my own heart. And I'm endlessly fascinated with all of the different ways that we have to self protect ourselves.

As a matter of fact, two days ago, I took a book from someone else's shelf that he willingly gave me. And I read it and I read about five or six different ways that you and I will not reveal who we really are. All of the defense mechanisms. Because nobody is to really understand who we are. The image must always be better than the reality. And one of the ways that people do it is they blame others for what they've done. In fact, if you're an addict, you'll actually get to the point where you will not accept any responsibility for what you do.

It will be automatic. It is your employer's fault. It is your wife's fault. It's the kid's fault. It's the cat's fault. It's somebody else's fault. Because you have made yourself immune from blame. The very same can be said by those who have destroyed their conscience.

Sociopaths take no blame and no responsibility and see the evil that is in their own heart as belonging to someone else. It is not theirs. Well, we can already see this here. God comes to Adam and said, have you eaten of the tree? Where have I commanded you not to eat? Adam should have said, Lord, I did. I'm guilty.

That's not what he said. He said, well, the woman, the woman, Lord, the woman whom you gave me. Watch my hands now. Lord, it's this weak willed woman whom you gave me. She took up the tree and then, well, what's a man supposed to do when his wife misbehaves?

He has to do it with her. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. I certainly hope that you listen to this message next time as it continues and we hear what happened between Adam and his wife and all that transpired as a result of their disobedience. I have to emphasize that when we look at Adam and Eve, we see ourselves.

This morning, I was on a talk show and I was asked about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children. And I pointed out that Adam is actually the father of us all. In him, we see ourselves.

But in Christ, we, of course, are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Recently, I gave an interview to Philip Miller entitled The Past, The Present, and The Future. I did this to bring glory to God. I talked about my past being born on a farm, the simplicity of my parents, their godly living, their godly example. And I gave this interview so that people might understand how God leads his children.

And of course, I talked about the present, what is happening in our culture, as well as the future. For a gift of any amount, this interview can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'm going to be giving you that phone number again, but remember to ask for The Past, The Present, and The Future, emphasizing the fact that all the opportunities that we have in life are undeserved, they come from God, and God leads us step by step even when we don't know that he is doing so. That's my testimony, The Past, The Present, and The Future. You can go to rtwoffer.com.

Thank you in advance for your gift or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. When you read the news, it seems the end times are right around the corner and the Bible tells of a powerful one world leader who will emerge in those times, a man it calls the Antichrist. A listener named Patricia wrote with this intriguing question. Pastor Lutzer, will the Antichrist know he is the Antichrist before he emerges? Well, Patricia, I'm going to give you a very simple and a very short answer.

I think that the answer is no. I don't think that Judas knew that he was going to turn out to be the Judas that we know of in the New Testament. I think that most world leaders, when they take positions on the stage of history, they have no idea exactly knowing where they are going. And I suppose that Antichrist, who I believe will arise in Europe, is going to find a tremendous amount of support from people. He's going to be a peace candidate and he just thinks that he is going to be the ruler of a certain territory. But as time develops and as he gains power, he becomes more evil. And he might not know what the Bible says about the Antichrist. And suddenly he's going to realize that he has tremendous power. He's going to desire worship.

And he will not know, probably, how it will all end. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer, for that answer for Patricia's question. 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. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago. Next time, more on the blame game that began at the very beginning and how to break the cycle and find healing. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.