The New Testament (Part One)–2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If the drama of redemption were a play, it would have two acts, the Old and New Testaments. The central theme is that of a sacrifice. In Act 1, animals were killed at a temple in Jerusalem. In Act 2, the real sacrifice is revealed, the one that takes away sin forever.

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, in a nutshell, why does God require a sacrifice for sin to be taken away? You know, Dave, while you were talking, I couldn't help but remember when you and I were in Jerusalem together, and we contemplated the fact that, yes, indeed, sacrifices were offered in the temple area. But close by, Jesus was crucified, the ultimate sacrifice. Now, your question is why did God require a sacrifice? Well, we can think of it in justice terms.

If you and I violate the law, someone has to pay. And someone had to pay for our redemption. But the remarkable thing, and I never get over this, is that in Christianity, God demanded a sacrifice, and God himself supplied the sacrifice. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. I never get over the fact that God is our sacrifice. What a wonderful redeemer we have. Let me ask you this question. Are you willing to help us as one of our listeners?

Are you willing to become an endurance partner? At the end of this broadcast, I'll explain what that means, but meanwhile, let us always rejoice in the fact that we have a sacrifice that God accepts, and if we accept him, we are saved on his behalf. And he says, destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up. And the Jews said, this temple has been 46 years in building, and you're going to raise it up in three days? And then John adds, but he spoke of the temple of his body. Jesus is the temple. In fact, in John 1.14, the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. It dwelt with us. What was the tabernacle, the temple of the Old Testament?

What was it all about? It was the meeting place between God and man, because God always wants to meet with his people, and God says, I want to take you through this ritual so that you understand the seriousness of sin, and you will have a high priest who will represent you to me. He has to make sacrifice for his own sins first, but he'll represent you to me, and I'll represent what I have to say through him to you. Jesus abolished all that, because Jesus is high priest. Now, the high priest in the Old Testament, he offered bulls and goats on the altar. Jesus turns out to be not just the priest, but also the offering.

He offers himself. He is the lamb, and he is the priest, and so he did away with the temple. We here at Moody Church do not have an altar. Now, maybe you were brought up in a church that had an altar. They talked about the altar. Well, usually up front here, we have a communion table. We have stairs that lead to the lower platform, but you'll never hear me say, come to the altar.

Why? We don't have one. Jesus did away with the need for an altar. We do no longer offer sacrifices. His sacrifice, the Bible says, sanctifies us eternally. By one offering, he's perfected all those who are sanctified. He is our high priest. Don't you love him?

Don't you love him when you think of what he's done on our behalf? Jesus also is the end of the law. Paul says, Jesus is the end of the law to all those who believe. You know, you read the Old Testament law. That's why I suggested when you read the book of Leviticus and some of these passages in the Old Testament, I gave you permission to speed read them.

And I've received some feedback from that, but it's all been good. People say, you know, this time I'm going to get beyond Leviticus when I read through the Bible. We don't understand all those laws. Now they're rich in meaning if we stop and study them, but you'll never get through your Bible.

If you're going to stop and study everywhere, what you should do is designate and say, I want to investigate this. And then you study those more carefully in a different time. But all these rituals, all these laws, there was the moral law. There was the ceremonial law. There was the civil law.

Jesus is the end. He fulfills it all and says, I release you from the obligation of fulfilling the law. Now, the reason is because the law could never be fulfilled by the people. They would stand and they'd say, all that the Lord has said we will do. And then moments later they were rebelling against God and breaking their covenant. They couldn't keep it and you can't keep it. The law though was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.

It showed us the great need that we have. And Jesus said, now you're no longer going to be under that law. Now there is the law of Christ. We're not lawless. If you go from America to Canada, let's shall we say to choose a country arbitrarily. If you go from America to Canada, you'll be under Canadian law. Now, many of these laws will be the same. Laws against murder, laws against theft. But you are under a new dispensation, a new set of laws. And we as Christians are.

Why? Because there was no way that we could keep the law. And God says, if I'm going to save you, if I'm going to save you, I have to take the law and set it aside because you can't keep it.

I'm going to keep it for you. And the Bible says, cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree because the law had curses. Jesus said, I will become a curse for you so that you can be free and you no longer are under obligation to be saved by works, which could never save you anyway. Christ is the end of the law by faith in Christ, Paul says in Romans chapter 10. Now, how do the gospels end?

Well, they end by Jesus saying, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. And that's why we have missionaries in Haiti and missionaries in India and missionaries around the world. And when we get to the book of Acts, when we get to Acts, what we discover is that the apostle Paul is dramatically converted. And the book of Acts is basically the story of how the gospel gets from Jerusalem to what we call Asia Minor.

It is called Turkey today and then beyond to Greece and eventually to Rome. And that's the story of the book of Acts. And this man, Paul, who was especially designated by God and called by God, wrote letters. And he wrote letters to different churches. He wrote a total of 13 of the books of the New Testament.

And most of them were two churches. But then there were some letters also to individuals and such as Timothy, Titus and Philemon. He wrote these letters as well. Now, we don't know who wrote the book of Hebrews, but what we do know is that it belongs in the canon.

Interesting story that we have to omit. But the book of Hebrews is just a fulfillment and an explanation of the book of Leviticus in light of all that Jesus has done. And then you have some other writers such as James and Peter and John writes three letters. And then John has that marvelous, marvelous revelation from God that is a mystery to people.

And much of it is a mystery to all of us. But there's a special blessing to those who read it. And what I want to do when we do the next session is to open the book up for you in such a way that you say, I'm going to read it and read it and read it because it says, blessed are those who hear it and who obey the words of this prophecy. And what a prophecy it is. Well, that's the 26 books of the New Testament.

Don't you think I did pretty well in about 20 minutes? The question is, where does this leave us and what is the bottom line? What is the bottom line? First of all, I want us to think about the integrity of God, the question of whether or not God keeps his promises. God's integrity was seen by the coming of the New Testament and the events of the New Testament. But I can imagine because the coming of Jesus and the life of Abraham about 1800 years before that, I can imagine during those 400 silent years, in addition to all the other centuries that I've talked about, that people began to wonder, you know, where is his promise? I mean, he promises a Messiah, he promises a seed, nothing going on year after year, generation after generation, century after century. Where is God? And the people were asking that question. But then suddenly an answer came.

Cry of a newborn baby in Bethlehem. God kept his promise. Let us not be confused because God takes so long sometimes in keeping his promise. You know, there are two different kinds of trees, many different kinds of trees. I'm told that almonds, the almond tree buds very quickly and bears its fruit.

But the mulberry, the mulberry bushes and the mulberry trees sometimes bear fruit over a period of 75 to 100 years. And some of God's promises are instant. God says, I'm going to do something and he does it right away. And then there are promises of God that linger on and we wonder whether we can believe him. That's why Abraham, the Bible says, die to not having seen the promises. We die with unfulfilled promises, no doubt about it. But we die in hope and we die in faith and someday Abraham will still see those promises fulfilled in ways that he could never have dreamed.

Now the same kind of skepticism that existed back then no doubt exists today. And that's why in the book of 2 Peter, we have these words of Peter writing to a skeptical audience and this is what he says. You should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.

Now catch this. Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires and they will say, where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning. And so today you have scoffers who say, you know, you talk about the return of Jesus. Jesus is coming back to earth, but where is he?

Year after year, month after month. When I was growing up we used to have prophecy conferences and you felt for sure that before the meeting was over, Jesus was going to come. And he still isn't here. I don't think it's going to be hundreds of years. I think it's going to be a lot less than that, but we don't really know when Jesus is coming.

The events of the world are coming together in such a way that it's startling, but at the same time, let's not think we know. But there will be scoffers who will say, well, where is the promise of his coming? He promised to come, but where is he? And then someday the heavens open and Jesus shows up according to God's timetable and not ours. Clouds are a promise. Rain is the fulfillment.

Old Testament clouds. God says, I'm going to do this. I'm going to send a Redeemer. I'm going to send a King.

I'm going to crush the head of the serpent. New Testament. The rain comes and Jesus comes to this earth and fulfills the promises, but not even he fulfilled all of them yet, but they will be fulfilled. You're going through a trial today. I want you to think of the promises of God like stars.

The darker the night, the more clearly they can be seen. Hang on to the promises because they are yes and yes in Jesus. We serve and we worship a God who has integrity.

Second, it is not just the integrity of God. It is the redemption of God. If you get lost in the Old Testament, if you get lost in Leviticus and Numbers and some of the rituals of the Old Testament that we don't understand very well, always remember what the dilemma was.

As I explained in the first message in this series in the Old Testament, the issue is this. God is devising a way by which he can have fellowship with us without contaminating himself by sin and without compromising his holiness and the rituals were to remind people of their sinfulness, God's holiness and the way that he is devising. Today, of course, we don't have those rituals. As I explained, they are fulfilled in Jesus Christ and how wondrously Old Testament. You could be ceremonially clean.

You know, you could wash your hands. You could go through the rituals at the labor, but it didn't change your heart necessarily. New Covenant, God says, I will write my law into their hearts and the law of God is written into the hearts of all those who believe in Jesus and trust him. And that's why when we get saved, as we use the terminology, which is very biblical, God actually changes our desires so that we begin to love him. We begin to have different priorities because under the New Covenant, we receive a new heart. Those who are in Christ, old things are passed away.

Behold, all things have become new. And the story of the Bible, the storyline, the drama of redemption is God answering this simple question as I posed it. And then Jesus comes on the cross and dies on the cross and he meets all of God's requirements. His holy life meets all the requirements of the law.

He lives it perfectly. And he says to you and to me now on the basis of my righteousness, my gift to you, if you receive it, you are acquitted by God and you can have fellowship with him. And he remains entirely holy and justice is fully satisfied. That is the good news of the gospel. Why would anyone, why would anyone think about rejecting Jesus?

It is unthinkable. Finally, we have not only the integrity of God and the redemption of God, but the condescension, the condescension of God. That is, I mean, and I'll even use the word humiliation of God.

A church historian said that Christianity is the only religion to have as its central event the humiliation of God. Islam cannot accept this. To them Allah always has to be victorious. Allah cannot humble himself.

Allah cannot become a man. And Allah cannot allow himself to be crucified. Jesus comes in against all reason because you and I would not have done it this way. Against all reason is able to come out of heaven to leave his glories, to become a baby, to grow up a man as the son of God, as the second member of the Trinity, humble himself, take all the curses and the accusations that were heaped upon him, to have him humiliated in the eyes of others, to die on a cross naked along with two other criminals. Only Christianity can say that God did that. If that isn't mercy, if that isn't grace, if that isn't the unbelievable gift that God offers you today, you may be watching this by way of our internet ministry. You may be hearing this on the radio and of course the large crowd that is here today at the Moody Church. When you receive Christ, you receive the victor, you receive a king, you receive a savior, you receive a priest and you receive a liberator, liberates you from the law.

Why would you reject him? You may be seated in the balcony today but you know that you need a savior. I ask you to reach out and say by faith I receive him as mine.

And you see that's why we sing, lifted up was he to die, it is finished was his cry, now in heaven exalted high, hallelujah, what a savior, what a savior. And if you will, let us pray. Father, we stand amazed in the presence of Jesus. We thank you that the promises that you have given were fulfilled with integrity and those still unfulfilled will be. We ask today that you will help us to cleave to the promises because we live by promises not explanations. We ask in the darkness of the night that the stars might shine very brightly as we look at him and remember what he did on our behalf. May we love your word, may we love you, may you work in us to bring about the transformation we need and for those who have never trusted Christ as savior, may they do that even where they are seated right now and say Jesus be mine. I pray in his name, amen. And if you my friend have never trusted Jesus Christ as your savior in repentance and faith, do it now. If the Holy Spirit of God has talked to you, don't turn away from that voice.

Let me ask you a question. Are you blessed as a result of the ministry of running to win? Did you know that if you are blessed, it's because people just like you have helped us and we are deeply grateful. Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? Now, an endurance partner is someone who commits to giving monthly. Of course, the amount that you give is entirely your decision. But here's what you can do to receive more information.

I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy so that you can write this down. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Because of people just like you, running to win is in 50 different countries, it is also available, of course, online. We are getting the gospel of Jesus Christ around the world. Would you help us?

Go to rtwoffer.com, click on the endurance partner button, or pick up the phone right now and call 1-888-218-9337. It's time once again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Today's question, Pastor, comes to us from an anonymous lady in Ohio.

It's short and sweet. If God planned it all, why should we worry? Well, that's an excellent question. And we've all been troubled by that, haven't we? Because if it is all on God's shoulders, why should any of it be on ours? Now, in an ideal world, it would be true that all of our burdens would be given to God, we would be totally carefree, and we'd never have to bear any kind of anxieties.

But it's not that way, is it? And that's because we're human. We have human emotions.

When we experience grief, we cry, whether God planned it all or not. But here's what I'd like to leave with you today, that the better we know God, the more able we are able to commit to him everything that concerns us. And then we discover that the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keeps our minds and hearts, as the Apostle Paul said. Think about this. When Potiphar committed the affairs of his household, all of the matters that pertain to running his huge palace, when he committed that to Joseph, the Bible says that he concerned himself with nothing that was going on in the house. What a wonderful example of commitment. And when we give ourselves to God and our children to God and our anxieties to God, we should concern ourselves with nothing, because it has been removed from our shoulders to his. Yeah, good question.

If God is in charge, why should we worry? Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to RTWOffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or you can 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. Written in apocalyptic language, the Book of Revelation portrays the future yet to be, the glorious return of Jesus, the resurrections, the judgments, the millennial reign, and then the eternity which follows. Next time, fasten your seatbelts as we begin our flight through the entire Book of Revelation. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.