Lies We Love, Lies That Hurt Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If it's beautiful, it must be right.

And after all, I'm entitled to my happiness. Those are lies by which we rationalize our disobedience to God's commands about sex. Today, more ways we twist the truth to justify doing what our hormones demand.

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, we're talking about lies we love, lies that hurt. Where did our lies have their beginning? Well Dave, of course the lies had their beginning in the Garden of Eden. It's when Eve decided that she would believe the serpent, and of course her husband was standing right there with her, when they believed the serpent and they believed that the words of the serpent were more reliable, and certainly more in keeping with their desires, than the word of God.

And the whole history of humanity has been one of brokenness ever since. You know, my wife and I have written a book entitled Life-Changing Bible Verses You Should Know. At the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be giving you more info as to how this book can be yours. I think it'll be very helpful in your Christian walk. But for now, let's go to the pulpit of Moody Church, where we continue to look into our hearts and see God's answer for our self-deception.

Let me give you a fourth rationalization that's used. The fourth one is simply this, because God understands me, he overlooks my indiscretions and my sins. I mean, after all, God knows that we are weak. The scripture says he knows that we are dust. He knows that he created me that way. He knows I've tried to change. He knows I'm entitled to happiness.

He really knows me well, and he knows how weak I am. I want you to notice the words of the Apostle Paul very carefully, because Paul repeatedly talks about self-deception. And every time that I can think of that he does it, he's talking about this realm of sexuality. This is Ephesians chapter 5, verse 3. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or any kind of impurity or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather giving thanks. For this you can be sure.

Have you ever wondered and say, you know, life is so unsure. Give us something sure. All right, here's something sure. That no immoral, impure, or greedy person, such man is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things, God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient, therefore do not be partakers with them. Television is filled with empty words and deceptions, filled with empty words about fulfillment, filled with empty words about thinking that you can control the consequences of your disobedience. The man responsible for MTV said that when it comes to young people, we don't talk logic, we don't talk reason. All that we try to do is disturb their desires.

And then everything flows from there filled with empty, deceitful words. So people say, well, you know, because God understands me and you know, he's gracious. He overlooks my indiscretions. Well, did you hear the passage of scripture I just read? Of course, God forgives us.

We'll be talking about that in a few moments, but the simple fact is God's not in heaven saying, well, you know, I understand you, therefore it's okay. Let me give you a fifth lie that we like to believe. The fifth lie is that we're locked into our lifestyle.

We're locked into it. After all, I was born that way. After all, someone seduced me. And therefore, you know that everybody who is seduced and everyone who goes into sexuality ends up being immoral parenthetically. The next message in this series is certainly one of the most important in the entire series because I'm going to talk about soul ties. Soul ties, what that means to be tied to a person, what the implications are and how to break those soul ties because some of you are in relationships you know right well are wrong, but you can't get out.

That person seems to have power over you and we're going to be talking about that in the next message. But there are some people who say to themselves, you know, there's no way out of my lifestyle. First Corinthians chapter six, the apostle Paul says that homosexuals and idolaters and drunkards and these people, he says again, will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And then he says, but such were some of you, but you're washed, you're sanctified, you're justified. There is a way out. There is a way out. The Bible says in first Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13, there is no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man and God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.

I like the NIV at this point. The quotation I gave is from the King James, which I memorized many years ago, but the NIV, which I read last night says there is no temptation that has seized you. We all think that when it comes to sexuality, that there's a kind of inevitability about it. And the answer to that is no, there's no temptation that has seized you, but that it is common to man. There are other people who endured it and said no successfully.

You have a boyfriend who is trying to pressure you to go to bed with him. First of all, take that fish, would you please? And throw them back into the lake.

That would be a good thing to do. But God is saying that that's a temptation that other people have faced successfully. You can say no, you can run from him.

You can enlist the help of friends to make sure that he stays away. There is an answer. You say to yourself, oh, I'm growing up as a teenager and suddenly I have these desires toward the same sex. I must be weird.

Nobody has ever endured this before. I'm different. The Bible says there is no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man. There are people who have had those feelings, who have overcome those feelings because they've chosen to go in a different direction and your experience is common to humanity. And if you say I'm locked into my lifestyle, there's no way for me to get out. If that's what you're saying, the scripture would say here that you are calling into question the very faithfulness of God because God says he is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able but will with the temptation make a way of escape. Most people who think that they are locked into a certain lifestyle, whatever that lifestyle may be, have such an experience. First of all, because of incomplete repentance, they do not, they leave bridges to their past life. They aren't willing to take care of the whole thing.

And as a result of that, they are locked. You've heard me say before that if you're going to jump across a chasm, it is much better to do it in one long jump than in two short ones. And when it comes to sin, it is much better to do it upright, you know, to really take care of it. So oftentimes it's incomplete repentance. The other thing is it is trying to deal with your sin alone. When God says that the body of Jesus Christ has to be enlisted to help you.

We talked about that last time. There is such a thing as healing in the presence of God, but there's also healing in relationship to one another that must be taken care of. And that is taken care of through honest confession and openness.

That's why the message on shame was so important. But it's a lie to say we're locked into this and things can't be different. You can stop living with your boyfriend. You can stop thinking to yourself that your lifestyle has this inevitability connected with it. There is a God in heaven who can help you. Now let me say this, that in the Christian life there's plenty of room for failure, plenty of room for failure, but there is no room for this notion that failure has to be the pattern of my whole life. We all fail, but we can be forgiven and we can be restored. Now what do we say about these five lies that we have so hurriedly listed?

What do we say about them? First of all, let me say that truth sets us free. Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. But truth is costly. Even as I've been speaking today, there's some of you who are saying, okay, I hear what he's saying, but there's no way that my life can become truthful because if it became truthful, why then indeed the cost would be too high.

The cost of shame, the cost of a relationship, it must remain hidden. About a month and a half ago, I was speaking at Promise Keepers up in Minneapolis and here you have about 12,000 men in a colosseum there. What an opportunity for us who have the privilege of speaking. The next morning during the worship time, the song leader began to talk about men who are committing adultery and in effect invited men to come forward who were doing that. First of all, one man came forward, two men came forward, and then you end up with 250 to 300 men all standing there weeping.

Wow. You know, as we think about that, we think, well, you know, that's exactly like men, isn't it? They are so immoral. Well, I began to think about that 250 to 300 men committing adultery and of course there may be others in the stands who didn't go forward, but I began to think to myself, well, you know what that also means?

250 to 300 women who are immoral too. This cuts both ways, doesn't it? But then I began to think to myself, what about these men?

What do they do? Do they go home that evening and say to their wives, guess what? That may not always be the best first step. It would be much better for them to go and to confess to their pastor who could then become an agent of reconciliation in this process because many marriages are not able to withstand the strain if you're trying to work these things out alone. But yes, the answer is yes, eventually there has to be a clearing of the conscience.

You just can't live in total freedom as long as there's something in your relationship that is just there and it's there. Moment by moment you've confessed it to God, but you know that you have wronged someone else and so it's there in your mind and it works on your mind and your conscience and you want to worship God. You want to go to church and really sing those hymns, but even as you sing, it's there.

Wow. So there are some people to whom I'm speaking who say, you know, the truth is going to be very costly. Yes, it is costly, but I want you to know today that it is the truth that sets us free.

So that's the next thing that I want to say. The truth is costly, but secondly, the truth heals, heals, it heals because there's some of you to whom I speak in whom there is darkness. It's darkness that has been shielded. Maybe even you think you're shielding it from God, but it certainly has been shielded from others and you think to yourself, well, I just can't, I can't bear it.

I can't go through it. I, I can't, I can't even think about leaving what I'm doing, but it is the truth that does set people free and the title of this series of messages is of course restoring the soul and what we want is restoration. We want the defilement to be gone.

We want people who are restored. I speak to some of you who are living together unmarried. You've rationalized it. You've explained it away.

You think this is a beautiful relationship. Well, explain all that to God, would you? And then there are those of you who may be in adulterous relationships.

It would be surprising indeed if there were not many even who are listening today who are involved in that. There may be some of you who are into pornography and you say to yourself, there's no way out of this pit and it is a pit. What a pit that digs itself deeper. The only way out is truth. Truth before God, yes, but also truth to those whom you trust to finally come out of hiding.

The basement with all of its bugs and cobwebs and dank smell will never be cleaned until the sunlight is allowed to go in. And of course there are some people who do not change when they see the light. There are some people who will only change when they feel the heat and that's what we pray for, that the blessed Holy Spirit of God will turn up the burner so that we might be willing to do whatever God asks us to do to be fully right with God and with others. This past summer, a couple whom Rebecca and I have known for many years and who live in another state asked to have breakfast with us. Over breakfast they shared, they shared betrayal. The man was involved with someone else and this came to the attention of the wife who suspected it but did not want to believe it. You know, there are women who live with that.

They say, I suspect it, but even if it's happening, they don't really want to know it because they say to themselves, I can't deal with all of the implications. So let's pretend that everything is fine. That's the way things were in this marriage. Fine marriage otherwise with some lovely children who are serving the Lord with fervency. And so the man began to share and the wife began to share and they began to weep and they began to tell us the story, the story of forgiveness, the story of reconciliation. And may I say in the process, a story of healing because we are interested in the restoration of the soul and it costs to be restored. It costs Christ.

It costs us. A couple of weeks later, we received a lovely note from them. It was an unexpected note and they talked about how providential it was that they had the opportunity to speak with us and how just sharing their experience and we praying for them took them one more step further along the path of restoration.

The lies had to go stripped away so that restoring would begin. Would you join me as we pray? Father, we ask in the name of Jesus that you'll overcome all the resistance that there may be to this message. All the people who came here today thinking that this would just be another nice Sunday of worship and they could go back home and now suddenly find themselves confronted with truth that has been made real to them by the blessed Holy Spirit of God and now wondering, now what do I do? Father, grant your people, O God, to do the right thing. Overcome the lies that have been so carefully crafted, the lies that have been believed and trusted and reaffirmed. Show us, Lord, our great need. We all, Father, recognize our sins, but we also recognize your forgiveness and your healing.

So I'm going to ask you now, what is there in your life that you need to deal with? You just talk to God for a minute, would you, in silence? You talk to him. Tell him.

Tell him what you need to do. Father, by your blessed Holy Spirit, grant grace upon grace. Help us to remember that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. Pour grace into the lives of all who have heard this message, we pray, and bring a resolution and forgiveness and commitment and restoration.

O God, we are so needy. Do that, Father, we pray. And I pray for those who have never trusted Christ as Savior, help them to understand that Jesus died for sinners. And may they accept Christ as their sin bearer, we pray, that they might be connected with you, reconciled to you, and then, Lord, reconciled to others. Now grant, O God, thy blessing and thy divine intervention and help in Jesus' name.

Amen. Become well aware that a message like this has touched many, many hearts. In our world of brokenness, broken promises, broken marriages, lies, the Holy Spirit of God has to speak to us directly so that we might deeply repent and get back on track. I pray that that will be true of you. But then I have to ask the question, how do you grow in the Christian life? My wife Rebecca and I have written a book entitled Life Changing Bible Verses You Should Know. Actually, it's not so much just about Bible verses as it is topics, perhaps about 30 or 35 topics that have to do with doctrine and Christian living. I think it'll be a great blessing and it'll be a great help to others.

Here's what you can do for a gift of any amount. You can go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Or if you prefer, you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now if you're like me, sometimes you want to write something down and you're not quite ready, hope that you have a pencil by now. Let me give you that info again.

rtwoffer.com. Ask for the book Life Changing Bible Verses You Should Know or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time once again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. In what order did things happen in the Bible? Keeping it all straight takes some understanding and study.

Craig listens to Running to Win and has these questions. In the Genesis account, when was Satan's fall from heaven? I was taught that it took place in chapter 1 between verses 1 and 2. But then, why would God have called everything very good on the sixth day if Satan's fall had already occurred? Craig, thank you so much for your question and I need to tell you that I always believed that Satan fell long before the earth was created.

Now I believe that because I thought that it took place in the eons of the past, and I might say perhaps it did. Recently, however, I was listening to a Bible teacher who was absolutely insistent that Satan didn't fall until Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve were in the garden. He fell because he saw the goodness that God gave to man and he became jealous and then he fell and of course he tempted Eve and you know the rest of the story. And one of the arguments for that position is what you raised, namely that how could God say that all that he created was good when in point of fact if Satan already existed as Satan, that statement would be in doubt. Now, I'm going to simply give you my reflection on this and I'm not saying that I shouldn't be doing more study about it, but I need to just simply comment and say number one, we probably don't know the answer to this question definitively, all right?

So we have to be tolerant of different positions. Secondly, I don't think it would be wrong for God to say God created the world and he saw that it was good even if Satan already existed because that phrase where it says and God saw that it was good refers to the creation of the world and not the creation of Satan. So I think that Satan could have already have fallen when we have the Genesis chapter 1 account of creation. So that's my opinion, but I certainly am open to further light on the subject. Keep thinking about these things because they are important for us to understand God and his relationship to the world. Thank you, Craig, for that perceptive question. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer, for your answer. If you'd like to hear one of your questions answered, you can. Just 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, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Sex with the wrong person is more than a one-night stand. It imprints the partners with an indelible soul tie that can follow them to the grave. And multiple partners means multiple soul ties, making real commitment almost impossible. Next time on Running to Win, how to break those bonds. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.