The Future Is Here Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Years ago, people could see a big difference between the world and the church. Now, many of us attend the same movies, listen to the same music, and pursue the good life like everybody else.

It's high time for some straight talk about what can be done. 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 beginning a new series today on Running to Win.

What's it all about? Dave, you might be aware that one of the most popular verses of Scripture comes from the lips of Jesus when he says, Judge not lest you be judged. Well, the question is, should we stop making judgments?

I think not. That's one of the first issues I deal with in this series of messages and then we go on to other kinds of issues such as judging doctrine, judging false prophets, judging miracles, judging entertainment, and other kinds of judgments that we must make. I think that this series of messages is going to give a lot of clarity to people who wonder what to do in the midst of our very confused world. The sermon series is entitled, Who Are You to Judge?

Learning to Distinguish Between Truths, Have Truths, and Lies. Let's listen carefully. Jesus taught that the church was to be in the world, like a ship is in the ocean. But when the ocean begins to get into the ship, we're in trouble. I'd like to suggest that the evangelical ship, the church, if you please, is taking on water. And during the next series of messages, of which this is the first, this series of messages, I hope to preach in such a way that we'll begin to bail some of the water out of the ship. Or we could put it differently and say that it is time to redraw the blurred line between the church and the world.

In fact, we have to ask ourselves this question, is it even possible for us to rescue the world, which is why we are here, one of the reasons why we're here, is it possible to do that while we ourselves are going under? So we're going to be talking about biblical discernment. We're going to be speaking about discerning proper doctrine and lifestyles and entertainment and identifying false prophets and the like. But in order to set the basis for it, I'd like to spend a little bit of time today before we go to the scriptures about talking about popular culture today. Truth has disappeared and nobody seems to have noticed, or at least few have noticed. Today we live in an age that is called the postmodern age.

What does that mean? Well, you can't understand what that means unless you know what modernism was. Modernism, which was no friend of Christianity at all. Modernism believed that reason, however, had the ability to find overarching transcendent truths that in some sense would be applicable to all cultures. Modernism believed in science and history, believing that if these were studied carefully, we'd be able to not only find some kind of truth, but that we'd be able to take its lessons and apply it. That was modernism. Modernism attacked religion as a bunch of superstition, but at least we knew what we were up against when we were up against modernism. What is postmodernism? Postmodernism says that reason has failed to find any overarching truths. Therefore, all that we can do is to look within ourselves and most of education should be psychology because there is really nothing out there to be discovered that is going to be universally true. Postmodernism says that whereas modernism attacked religion as being filled with superstitions, postmodernism embraces superstitions from every religion.

All that has to happen is that Oprah Winfrey has to tell people that the minute you die, you become an angel and millions of people believe it. Postmodernism, you see, says that we can accept all the religions of the world just as long as none makes any truth claims that are applicable to other cultures and to other people, but you can believe whatever you like and so we're in an age of spirituality. Postmodernism has no confidence in history or science as we shall see in a moment. These are reduced to really studies in psychology.

The impact upon culture is enormous. For example, what now substitutes for truth? You know, it used to be that we of course had debates as to where the truth lay, but most people believed that there was truth in the absence of that. First of all, you have fairness.

That's the big issue. You know, I learned to preach at street meetings. Believe it or not, we used to always after church Sunday evening take the car during the summers.

A man had a car and we put on a PA system and we'd go to a corner there and we'd preach to all the people. Well, sometimes people walked by and they heckled us and they made fun of us and so forth, but at least they were interested in truth and they claimed we didn't have it. They thought they did. Well, that's modernism and at least you can handle it, but postmodernism says the issue is not whether or not you're true or false. That's not the issue because there is really no such thing. The real issue is, is it fair? And the gospel isn't fair if you believe that there's only one way to God. That's not fair.

And then there's a new twist. Not only is it not fair, but furthermore, you really have no right to preach your point of view because it is so unfair. So everything you see is reduced to a psychological thing. If you believe in the sanctity of one man, one woman marriages, why, indeed, that's just your deeply held prejudice. You see, that's your particular form of bigotry so that the issue isn't really whether it can be debated as truth.

It's all reduced, you see, to individual perceptions and ideas. So you have the privatization of convictions and this great idea that nobody should ever have to see or hear anything that offends them. I mean, I was almost amused to discover that there are businesses that will not allow you to keep a small American flag on your desk because it might be offensive to somebody else.

I mean, shouldn't we just all laugh at that point? So what if it is, quote, offensive to somebody else? But you see, we live in such an age that to offend somebody, if you have these deeply held prejudices, the thing that you should do if you're a good citizen, postmodernism would say, is at least keep them to yourselves. So take religion. If you have these ancient ideas about religion, you keep those to yourselves.

If you're a patriot, you can keep that to yourself too, because everything has to be privatized because a new right has been found in the Constitution and that is the right to never hear anything that offends you. Now, I do need to say that sometimes we have been needlessly offensive. I'm not arguing for the benefits of being offensive, but I do need to tell you this, that nobody can be saved unless he is offended by the cross. That's true.

Another thing that substitutes is hedonism. Now you can understand this. Okay, I am now my God. That's the official teaching. We are all gods, right? There's no god, there's no transcendent god, particularly one who's revealed himself. So now I make all of my choices and I make up my own truth. You see, there is truth, but it's my truth and it's your truth and it doesn't matter whether or not it conflicts because there's no overarching truth. And so an idea becomes right simply because I think that idea. I create the idea in my mind and that's truth, therefore. Truth is not to be discovered as something objective. It is something I make up in accordance with my desires and beliefs. So you can understand now that the two things that God considers to be very sacred, namely human life and marriage, are being attacked viciously, viciously in the media and in other ways.

First of all, through violence. So you get all of these television programs with violence and people become addicted to this violent culture that's going to destroy and break and kill. And then the second thing is an attack against marriage, sexuality, pornography, the whole idea that somehow there's nothing sacred about this relationship, the destruction of all decency in terms of how we treat people. Then, of course, we also have not only rampant hedonism, but mysticism. You see, I mentioned a moment ago that what happens is, you see, now everybody's free to make up his own, quote, spiritual belief. So we're into an age of spirituality where everybody's spiritual, but they have no doctrines. As a matter of fact, to go back to some doctrine would be to go back to modernism or a modernist conception of truth. But everybody makes it up. You see, somebody has said, you know, we have sheep for wool, we have cows for milk, and we have God to come along and to confirm our every craving. He becomes, if he is a he, God becomes whatever you want him to be and we can just make it all up in accordance with our own wishes and our desires. The impact upon this in culture is absolutely enormous.

I could have taken the entire time to go through this, but I decided not to. Healthcare. People have today very offbeat ideas, fringe medicine, which is into some mystical form of spirituality. Of course, we're spiritual creatures.

Of course, the spiritual impacts the physical. We're not denying that, but now healthcare oftentimes is taken out of the realm of the scientific, and rather it is in this mystical spiritual idea. And then you find in the newspapers that if you pray and you have special people praying, you get well faster. And Christians sent me articles when it was in the newspaper and said, isn't this wonderful that they have finally discovered that prayer works?

What do you mean wonderful? I found nothing wonderful about it at all because I discovered that they say it doesn't matter who you pray to or who does the praying. It's just this mystical idea of prayer somehow that gets results. And so you have leaders of a movement like that, like Deepak Chopra. I think I mispronounced that actually.

Chopra, is that better? He says, at core, we are truth and love and compassion, essentially spirit. And so you get all these energy fields. You see, that's really the answer to man's physical problem.

Fields which sometimes have not been discovered by any scientific basis. You get literature. You know, it used to be that literature, when you studied literature, the intention was to find out what the author was saying and what he meant. Often that's not true today.

People say the important thing is what you bring to the occasion. It is the meaning that you impose. Remember when a political candidate several months ago whose name I will not mention said that the Constitution of the United States is a living document. Many people read that and they had no idea what he meant. What he meant was this. You don't have to go with what the original authors and the framers meant. What you do is you bring your own meaning to it in accordance with your culture and your own ideas. You impose upon it your own psychological bent. And so the idea is not to find out what the original authors meant but rather to find the meaning that it is to you.

And there may be a multiple number of different meanings depending on who you are and what you bring to the table. Look at history. Ho, ho, ho, western civ has to go. Chants that have been shouted at some of America's universities where European civilization is seen to be the great evil and therefore instead of finding out what our roots are and what our history is in some instances history has been reduced to therapy where minorities are able to build their self-esteem.

It's a therapy session. The bottom line is this folks. We live in a day when there is no overarching truth in the minds of many people.

There is in ours but not in theirs. Secondly as Rava Zacharias says we are living at a time when people hear with their eyes and think with their feelings. What a challenge we have to this generation. Do you think that this has affected the church? Oh yes it has affected the church.

We have accepted the world's lifestyles in terms of movies that Christians see apparently according to the statistics and the surveys they are essentially the same ones that the world sees. We have come to the conclusion that it is possible to be a follower of Jesus Christ and not have to turn your back on the world even though the world is at enmity with God. We find that people don't want to be under authority.

Absolutely not. This rampant sense of individualism that says I can make my own choices about how I give, how I live, what I do, where I go and who I am and who's going to tell me any different. So we have a great sense of individualism. Let me give you a second way that this has impacted the church. Most Christians and according to Barna I heard this on the radio and I think I remember it correctly. About 80% of Christians do not see any reason to share their faith.

Isn't that amazing? So you see we come to church on Sunday and we say well you know Jesus is Lord he's the only way. Those are our beliefs but they've not yet translated into convictions so that we talk to others lovingly about Jesus and to do so in a winsome way that attracts them to our savior. Most Christians see no reason to.

Why? Because we live in a day and age when nobody's supposed to judge anything. An age in which every view is just as right as any other view regarding religion. Who are we to judge?

Who are we to say that Christ is the only way? We've been paralyzed in our postmodern culture to privatize our convictions and to say nothing. Amazing statistic. 80% see no reason why they should share their faith.

Wow. Third, we have failed to judge. The word discernment has become a bad word. The word judge, the most quoted verse in America is not John 3 16. It is well who are you to judge? Judge not lest ye be judged. Now I'm concerned when I speak this way because sometimes what you find is there are people in the congregation who are just there sharpening their knives and saying at last I've been wanting to judge for a long time.

You're the wrong person to do the judging. We as evangelicals sometimes judge from a position of pride, self-righteousness. Listen, we should be the most humble people in all the world.

We of all people know that we are miserable sinners who have been redeemed by a savior. And therefore we should be broken and humble in our attitude and in our witness. We should not come across as self-righteous people and then you have all those people who want to be quick to judge but they want to judge the wrong things. They have these special traditions that they want to judge and they're not judging the important thing.

They're just judging all kinds of superficial issues that they can hardly wait to jump on. That's why the second message in this series is devoted entirely to the words of Jesus, judge not lest ye be judged because we have to understand both what it meant and what it did not mean. We need to be both encouraged to judge and exercise discernment in our judgments because if not indeed judgment may fall on our own head. Now what does this mean in terms of the church? I want you to take your Bibles today and turn to the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John, John 17. This is Jesus Christ's vision for his people. No matter how often I have read this chapter, no matter how often I have studied it, when I was in Bible school I memorized it and quoted it every Sunday. It is one of the most glorious passages in all the scripture and here we see Jesus Christ's vision for us in the world but not of it and he prays for us.

He prays for his followers but first of all I want you to know who those people are that he's praying for. In verse 6 it's very clear that he's talking to those to whom he revealed the father, verse 6. I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.

They were yours, you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. That's who he's talking about. People who had this revelation, this understanding of who he was, verse 7, now they obeyed your word they know that everything that you have given me comes from you for I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them.

Wow, that's a unique class of people. He's talking about people who understand completely the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the fact that there is none other like him. He's talking about those who accept the fact that he is king of kings and lord of lords that he is the one who reveals the father to people and beside him there is none other. That's the group of people for whom he prays and how does he pray? First of all he prays for their protection. Notice in verse 11, I will remain in the world no longer but they are still in the world and I'm coming to you. Holy father protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me so that they may be one even as we are one.

Various dark forces are going to try to take that little band of Jesus Christ's followers and tear them apart. Nothing less than the father's name and the strength of the father is going to keep them unified praying for one another representing Jesus Christ to the world and keeping them steadfast and true to the faith and lest anyone think that Jesus Christ does not have the power to keep people pointing their fingers at Judas, he does say when I was in the world he says verse 12 I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me none has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that the scripture might be fulfilled. Judas never was one of these people who was a gift of God the father to the son. Earlier in the chapter Jesus said that these are those father whom you have given me and Judas never was a part of that company.

Jesus may pray for the world but right now he's praying for his own and he does not pray here for Judas. My friend we're living in a day when Christians need to hear some very hard truth. There's a lot of decisions that we have to make. We need to be able to judge truth from error. That's one of the reasons why I'm preaching this series of messages but in addition to that I've written a book entitled who are you to judge learning to distinguish between truths have truths and lies. For example how do we identify false prophets? How do we identify false doctrine? How do we judge miracles? These are the kinds of topics that are discussed in this book which I believe is critical especially in a world in which there is so much unclarity even about the issues of the gospel. For a gift of any amount this book can be yours simply go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'm going to be giving you that contact info again but meanwhile I want to thank the many of you who support this ministry. If you've been blessed as a result of the ministry of running to win it's because people just like you have invested in such a way that this ministry continues to grow.

From the bottom of my heart thank you. Ask for the book who are you to judge learning to distinguish between truths have truths and lies. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. What we must do is go back to the biblical view of making right choices right judgments in the midst of a very confusing world. For example one of the chapters in the book is entitled when you judge entertainment. That's critical.

Once again for a gift of any amount go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Ask for the book who are you to judge learning to distinguish between truths have truths and lies. You can write to us at running to win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614. Running to win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. We're called to run life's race not in well-worn ruts but on the high ground of God's word.

We must discern right from wrong and truth from error. Next time more from John chapter 17 and Erwin Lutzer's wake-up call the future is here. We'll listen as Jesus prays for his followers. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer this is Dave McAllister. Running to win is sponsored by the Moody Church.