When The Answer Is Delayed Part 2

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

God gave Abraham promises that would not come to pass for hundreds of years. Next time you feel like God is a bit slow to answer your prayers, remember, his scale of time is bigger than yours. He has a larger agenda. 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, if answers to prayers never come, some may wonder if praying is worth the effort. Dave, actually, I love the way in which you put it, namely that God always has a larger agenda.

He certainly does. And you know, if I might say, he also has a larger agenda for the United States of America and a larger agenda for all of us. I've done a video entitled What Faithfulness Requires in a Collapsing Culture. It is so important for us to know how to respond to the issues, the controlling realities that we see around us. In this video, I talk about collective demonization. What does that mean?

It was perfected in Russia. The ability to demonize anyone who doesn't agree with the party lines, so to speak, how does that work in America? I also deal with the issue of race. How controversial can we possibly get when we talk about something that is biblically based but causing a lot of controversy today?

And then also issues regarding sexuality. Now for a gift of any amount, this can be yours. Ask for What Faithfulness Requires in a Collapsing Culture. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com.

That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And remember that God is faithful and let us hear about that larger agenda. And so Moses and Abraham and all of the other saints listed in this hall of fame, the 11th Scripture of Hebrews, they believed in the eternal reward over against present suffering, present questions, present hardship. For them, there was this faith that reminded them that this world was not their home.

They were just a passing through as the old song tells us. Now I can imagine that when Abraham was there in the land, there were discussions that took place from time to time. In fact, the Bible tells us about all of the discussions with the Hittites and what have you. And the Scripture is clear that Abraham interacted with the people of this world. And I can imagine they'd say to him, Abraham, what do you own? Well, how is Abraham supposed to answer that? God had told him as soon as he got there, walk the length and breadth of the land, all that you can see I've given you from this river to this sea from there. And God gives him the dimensions and says, this is yours and your seed.

I'm giving it to you as an everlasting possession. But now a Hittite says to Abraham, how much do you own? And Abraham has to say nothing.

I own nothing. As a matter of fact, when Sarah dies, he buys the Caleb McPhela, McPhela, I think is the correct pronunciation depending on where you put the emphasis. He buys this cave for Sarah and he gives the Hittites, I read the story yesterday, it's near Hebron. He gives the Hittites 400 shekels. They say, Abraham, we like it.

The fact you're a good guy, we'll give it to you. Please, Abraham says, no, I'm not going to take a dime from you. And he counts out 400 shekels, the Bible says it was weighed out, 400 shekels of silver. So he buys it. And then later on when he dies, he gets put into the same cave because he bought the cave, he could be buried there too. So that's the way in which Abraham dies.

Well, isn't that interesting? Now notice what the text says, I'm in verse 13. These all died in faith, not having received what was promised. Well, that's interesting, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. They died, verse 16, but that is they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Verse 39, and all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better for us that apart from us, they should not be made perfect.

The idea there is they did not receive the benefits. They did not receive the experience of the promise of the coming Messiah, for example, but they could not be perfected until Messiah came. So they all died in faith, and Abraham dies not seeing the promise. Now I can imagine if he had lived in our day, a word of faith preacher would have come to him and said, Abraham, what's the deal?

What's the deal? Claim the land God has given you. God even gave you the boundaries.

Simply claim it, talk yourself into it if you have to, because the word of faith means that whatever you speak is yours, and most assuredly you can speak over what God has given you, and it'll be yours. But Abraham doesn't do that. He dies, the Bible says, not having received what was promised. Why?

Because he believed in another world. I want to give you three conclusions, three important statements that will help us tie all this together and help us to sort out what's happening and also provoke us in a proper way to pray more. First of all, let me suggest to you that our promised inheritance is yet future. Our promised inheritance is yet future.

Oh, sure, sure, we see glimmers of it here. Like I pointed out last time, we get the flower here, but the flower is proof that the garden is coming. But we do not enter into the fullness of the inheritance. Jesus says that if you're an overcomer, you shall inherit all things, and you shall sit on my throne.

That's in the eternal city. That is in the coming world. And if you believe that, you have to believe in the invisible over against the visible.

You need to believe in the future over against the present. You need to believe in the reward over against the suffering and the heartache that you are going through, but that is biblical. Let me take as an example the sensitive and the most difficult area, namely faith healing. Is healing in the atonement, is it our promise? Absolutely, Jesus died for us body, soul, and spirit. You see, the Bible says that Jesus died to put away all sin. Well, entailed in sin is sickness. And furthermore, there are passages of scripture that say that with his stripes we are healed. And of course, Jesus came and did healings.

Now, here is the fundamental question. Does that mean that we can insist on healing whenever we want it? Can we demand it from God because we say this is part of my inheritance? Listen to a Word of Faith preacher. Words control the body.

Oh, glory be to God. And regardless of what is going on in your physical body, you have got to talk to it. I am telling you, I talk to my major organs. I speak words to it.

The tongue in your mouth will control every inch of your physical body. Do not tolerate sickness and disease as long as you have got a working tongue that can speak the established Word of God. Oh, that is so good, he says. Interestingly, this particular Word of Faith preacher wears glasses. My parents knew a family. God bless them. They were wonderful Christians. But they believed that because healing was in the atonement, because Jesus had provided it, that we could have it all now. And they said that they intended to not die. That they would just moment by moment, as they became sick, they would continually appropriate the work that Jesus did on the cross and resurrection, and it would be theirs, and they intended to live until he returned.

That is what they told my mom and dad. Well, I am here to simply bring you the news. They died about 40 years ago, just like all other faith healers die. Yes, of course it is true that Jesus died body, soul, and spirit for us, and that our resurrection body was included in the work of the cross, but we do not inherit that. We pray for the sick, but we cannot demand it and say, you must heal because of this verse.

As some people say, we should say. You know, there is another Word of Faith preacher who said this. He said, as long as Jesus was talking on the cross, he could not die.

The reason that he died is because he quit talking, because there is so much power in your mouth that if he had just kept talking, he would not have died. You know, sometimes I weep because there are so many of God's dear saints who cannot tell the difference between grass and astroturf. The sheep, the sheep.

And you look at those rallies, and they are filled with poor people. Why? Because they are saying, I want what my guru has. If I have enough faith, I can drive the kind of car he does.

I can live in the kind of homes in which he lives. And on and on it goes, and on and on it goes. And my dear beloved friend, this is just between you and me and nobody else listening.

Things in that department are out of control. Making promises. I remember somebody coming to me absolutely weeping and saying, God has forsaken me. I claimed my healing, and it hasn't come. No, that's no proof that God has forsaken you.

The Bible says very clearly that if you suffer according to the will of God, and sometimes the will of God involves suffering, that that indicates great reward. There's a member of our church here who recently had knee surgery, and he said that that one knee was so painful, these are his words, I'll never have the other knee repaired until I'm in the presence of Jesus. Well, he asked, my dear friend, in the presence of Jesus, you get two brand new good knees. You get some good hips. You get some, you get a good body. You get a good mind.

You get some good feet. You get it all over, and the Bible says that when we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Until that time, there's sickness, there's heartache. It is mean.

It is cruel. For a person to go into a hospital room, as I have seen, telling the person that you are sick because you don't have enough faith, if you had more faith, God would heal you and lay that guilt on. I remember one person telling me that people brought him books with all kinds of things marked about how if he had the faith that he could walk out of this hospital. No, my dear friend, some of the best and the most godly people have suffered physically and died.

My dear friend, this isn't the end. The inheritance, the full inheritance is coming. Abraham saw some things. He saw the fulfillment of the promise regarding Isaac, but he didn't see the land of promise. Abraham is still waiting. Some of us think that the promises that God made to Abraham have still not been fully fulfilled to him and to his seed.

He's still waiting, but he dies in faith, believing in a city built by God. Second, it's very important for us to realize that faith is needed. Faith is needed for endurance, for endurance, not just miracles. Sometimes we just need to endure. Sometimes I've had to say to people regarding circumstances that simply will not change, I have said that what you're doing is right.

All that I can tell you to do is to keep doing what you are doing, to trust and to believe and to be patient and to trust. How else can God develop faith in our hearts except that we look at circumstances that we think God should change and he doesn't and we keep on believing anyway. We say, well, Pastor Luther, this message is throwing a bucket of water on people's faith. Don't you want us to believe God for great things? Yes, I want us to believe God for great things, preferably the things that God wants us to believe him for. Should we pray more?

Yes. Next week, I'm going to present, God willing, one of the most important messages I think I've ever given, certainly the most important I've ever given on prayer, because we're going to take that verse, you know, that he rewards those who diligently seek him out and we're going to find out we're going to have a whole new paradigm for prayer, a whole new way of praying, so you be here. You say, well, we can't be because we're visiting from Atlanta. Well, listen, the same plane that brought you from Atlanta to Chicago this week, the same schedule can bring you back next week, okay, so you be here. You be here. Let death be the only reason why you don't show next Sunday and bring some other people with you and if you die, it'll be proof that all of our inheritance isn't in this life.

There's another world coming. But endurance, this is going to be explained in the second, not next week, but the following week, what endurance means to God. A young man came to a pastor and says, you know, I don't have patience, and the pastor said, let me pray for you. God, I pray that you'll bring trouble and sorrow to this young man.

Excuse me. Good prayer, Romans chapter 5 verse 3. It is suffering, the Bible says, that brings about patience and patience brings about hope and hope brings about faith and in that God is glorified. So my dear friends, there are some of you who are hanging on and you are tempted to give up in your faith. Keep on believing, keep trusting, keep committing and we'll talk about what that means in a future message.

Keep committing in such a way that you draw near to God and he grants you the ability to endure. Yes, we do pray for healing. And here at the Moody Church, we anoint people with oil when they come to us and we've had a couple of instances where people would say, yes, there is definitely a healing that took place.

Many instances where we can't say that, but there's still a purpose in that anyway that will become clearer next week. Finally, it's so important to realize that faith for our future, which is what we were talking about today. Faith for our future is actually based on faith that looks backward. Today we talked about the faith that looks forward, but you need to look to the faith that looks backward. In the writings of the Apostle Paul, faith is seen as something that we look back toward because you're looking at the work of Jesus Christ. You are looking at what he did on the cross for you and the completeness of the redemption. And that's where our faith begins. And then we commit to God for the future and we trust God for whatever lies ahead, knowing that eternity is coming. Let me put it to you this way. There's some of you who are listening to this message who do not yet belong to the city of God.

You belong to the city of man. I don't mean to say by that you don't mean or you don't believe that Jesus is a savior because I think you probably believe that or you wouldn't be listening to this message. What you cannot say though with assurance and notice the Bible talks here about the assurance of faith. It is the assurance of things hoped for. It is the assurance that we have met God all the way through this text. What you cannot say with assurance, you say that Jesus is a savior. What you cannot say with assurance is Jesus is my savior. I have personally trusted him as mine, which you must do to be translated from the city of man to the city of God.

Here's another way in which you know whether or not that translation has taken place. Augustine said in his book, he said this, that when we belong to the city of man, we have in our hearts such a love for this world almost to the contempt or the neglect of God because we're this world absorbed. But once we belong to the city of God, once God does that miracle in our hearts and our desires are transformed and we've been given new hearts, then we love God so much that we have contempt or very little regard for the things of this world because the love of God swallows up all other loves. So the question that I need to ask you today, which I end with is simply this. Have you trusted Christ as savior so that you become a member of the city of God? And once you're a member of the city of God, like Abraham, like Noah, like Moses, you begin to look and live in light of the city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God, the eternal city. And that's your hope and that's your motivation and that's why you can put up with what you put up with in this world. And all the while believing, trusting all the way to the end.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for Abraham because even though he had lapses in his journey spiritually speaking, on the whole he really did believe you. And I don't know how much you showed him, but the fact that he had confidence in a city that was designed by you. I think of all the architects who are listening here today.

They've done some wonderful things, but imagine a city whose architect is God. And we thank you for that eternal hope that has been birthed in our hearts through your word and by your spirit. And we ask, oh Lord, that those of us who are members of the city of God that we may go on our way with joy accepting whatever you give us. And for those who are members of the city of man, turn their heart today toward Jesus. And now before I close this prayer, it is time for you to talk to God if God has talked to you.

You tell him whatever you believe you must. Our father, would you accept the cry of our hearts? Make that cry acceptable through Jesus Christ our Lord through whom we come into your presence. And we ask today that you will grant us the grace to be great men and women of faith, to keep believing even if we don't see all the promises in this life. Grant that, oh God, we ask in Jesus' blessed name. Amen. Amen. This is Pastor Luther and I want to speak directly to your heart now.

How are you doing? How are you managing in a culture that is falling apart? We've just listened to a message that emphasized the need for faithfulness no matter what was happening around us. And you and I need to be able to look at the culture that is around us and say, what does faithfulness require for me? I've given a lecture entitled, What Faithfulness Requires in a Collapsing Culture. I just emphasized in the message the fact that we do live in two worlds. There's the city of man and there's the city of God. How do we manage the city of man? In this lecture, I deal with issues such as collective demonization, which has to do with propaganda, race.

By the way, let me ask you a question. How do we respond when people say that America was stolen? Is that a legitimate criticism of who we are as a country? These are the kinds of issues I deal with in the lecture entitled, What Faithfulness Requires in a Collapsing Culture. In advance, I want to thank you so much for your support of this ministry. It is because of people like you that we can continue. And we are making this resource available to you. And we do so for a gift of any amount. Thank you in advance, as I have already mentioned, for helping us get the word of God to thousands upon thousands of people. Now here's what you do.

And I hope that you have time to write this down. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I believe that this lecture entitled, What Faithfulness Requires in a Collapsing Culture is critical to help you navigate what is happening. Once again, that phone number, 1-888-218-9337.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Prayer is a kind of mystery. We're commanded to ask in faith without doubting.

Sometimes we pray for things we clearly need. No answer. But then, out of left field, another answer comes. Next time on Running to Win, join us to find out what to do when the answer is disguised. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.