Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Outside of Jerusalem one day, Jesus the Messiah died.
Then, as now, people passed by, not realizing the eternal consequences of what was happening on that cruel Roman cross. Today, more about the wonder of the supreme sacrifice. 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, today you'll take us again into Isaiah chapter 53, where we see an amazing prophecy of a suffering Messiah. And you know, Dave, the reason I'm doing that is, especially in this political year, we always have to remember that the cross of Christ has to be supreme. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't get involved in politics. I believe definitely that all Christian citizens should vote.
We should become involved. We should also speak to those issues in our culture that are political, if they are biblical. But let us never lose sight of the fact that when Jesus died on the cross, I like to think of that as the hub of all history.
And that's why I speak about it. And I have written a book entitled, Christians Politics and the Cross, and this book actually emphasizes and wants to stress that we should not lose our attention and our love for the cross in the midst of all of our political wrangling. For a gift of any amount, we're making this book available for you.
Very quickly, you can go to RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Once again, the title of the book, Christians Politics and the Cross. But for now, we're going to concentrate on the cross.
And at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you that contact info again. It's the third word, and that is, of course, the word suffering. Clearly, it is a story of suffering. Jesus Christ suffered. He bore our griefs. He was stricken. He was smitten of God, yes, and afflicted. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. Clearly, Christ suffered. Now I want to ask you a question. Did God the Father suffer?
Did he or did he not? You know, throughout the centuries, theologians have debated this, and they have come up with the impassibility of God. Not impossibility, but impassibility. Don't you like it the way theologians, they love big words so that you and I can come along and try to figure out what it is that they mean?
But there's an idea there. The word impassible means that he is unaffected either by pleasure or pain. And they argued that based on the immutability of God, the fact that the Lord does not change, that therefore he cannot be subject to the pushes and pulls of emotions like we as human beings, and therefore God is beyond all of the pleasures and the pains of this world. And actually, that error, and it is an error, has led to the idea that somehow Jesus is compassionate, but the Father isn't.
Well, let me ask you a question today. Is the Father compassionate? Or is the Father passive and detached, unaffected by our humanness and our dilemma? There is a passage, and there are many passages, but let me read simply one to you.
Now listen, this is God the Father, this is Jehovah speaking, and you answer whether or not God is a God of deep pathos and emotion. How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Adama?
How can I treat you like Zebabium? My heart is turned over within me. All my compassions are kindled. I will not execute my fierce anger. I will not destroy Ephraim again, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One who is in your midst, and I will not come in my wrath. Does God have emotion? He is a being with deep emotion.
Far from being untouched by the human dilemma, he is one who not only knows what we are going through, but he is keenly aware of pain, having endured it himself. You say, well, does not this impinge on the sovereignty of God? I mean, is God the victim of emotions, just like we are?
The answer is no. Here's the difference. You see, you and I are subject to emotions because of circumstances that we cannot control. God is not a jilted lover. He's not someone who wishes he wouldn't have to endure pain, but things kind of got out of control, and what is he to do? He has to endure it as best he can. No, God is one who has voluntarily and willingly chosen to suffer.
It was a choice. He did not have to. He had the option of creating a whole bunch of other worlds, worlds in which there was no sin, worlds in which there was no fall, but he chose this particular world because he said, I voluntarily choose suffering, and that's why he remains God. He remains God completely. He remains God because it was the consent of the Godhead to suffer. Let us just simply say boldly that when you see Christ on the cross, you see God on the cross. Jesus said, he that had seen me had seen the Father. Is it true to say that God died for man?
P.T. Forsythe said, God dying for man. I am not afraid of that phrase.
In fact, I cannot do without it. It's unthinkable. The son would suffer on the cross and the father not suffer. Are you all with me today?
I hope so. Parents, think about this. Your son being crucified, your daughter being crucified, you telling me that a child could be crucified and go through that terrible, horrible ordeal. And we simply say, well, you know, the child suffered, but the parent, he didn't suffer. Oh, what kind of a parent would that be if he didn't suffer more than the child who is being crucified? When Jesus said, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? That was the suffering of Christ, but it was also the suffering of God. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. There's an Italian church in which there is a picture of the crucifixion and Jesus is dying there on the cross and there is a nail through his hand, but behind the picture there is this shadow that represents God, the father, and the same nail that goes through the hand of Christ goes through the hand of God.
Let me draw some conclusions from what we have said so far today. First of all, God feels our pain. He really does. He was the chief actor.
He was the chief player. It is because of the mercy of God toward us that his son was given. God cares.
Phil Donahue, that great interpreter of American culture, is giving some reasons why he was disillusioned with Christianity. And here are his words. How could an all-knowing, all-loving God allow his son to be murdered on the cross to redeem my sins? If God the father is so loving, why didn't the father go to Calvary and do it himself? And the answer is, Phil, in Christ, he did.
He did it himself. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. And then the little girl who prayed and said, oh, I love Jesus, but I'm really scared of God, she needs her theology corrected. She needs her theology corrected because it is impossible to separate the heart of Jesus and the heart of God as if to say, oh, God is stern and uncaring and unloving and demanding, and Jesus is sweet and compassionate and loving and kind and has touched with the feelings of our infirmities. That is a false theology, and it is that kind of theology that sometimes makes us think dreadful things about God that we should never think.
He that have seen me have seen the father. You see, God hasn't turned his back on the human race in anger. Someday he will, but not during this era of grace when people can come to him and repent. And God is one who was willingly subjected to the rejection of his creation, and he willed that he would be rejected.
And he chose that path. And as a result of that, we can say today with integrity, God cares and is touched, touched and moved by your pain. There's a second conclusion, and that is that God suffers with us even today.
It's not just limited to the cross. He said already in Isaiah 43 that when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and the floods will not overtake you because I will walk with you through the furnace of affliction. In Deuteronomy 31 verse 8, the Lord says he goes ahead of his people in their suffering.
And then the New Testament. God, of course, is the silent sufferer. When Jesus came out of heaven and said to Paul, why persecutest thou me? It wasn't just that Jesus was feeling the pain of his people who were going through all that terror. And you know today there is more persecution and more heartache and more deaths on account of Jesus Christ than ever before in history as people are dying for their faith. It is not as if this goes unnoticed in heaven by a calloused God who has seen evil for so many centuries that he has gotten used to it, and it doesn't affect him anymore.
Let me tell you something. If you love somebody and they are suffering, you suffer with them, and God loves us, and he suffers with his people. The reason I preach this message is I want to say something to that young man who was a disciple of Christ, who witnessed for Christ, but when his sister was brutally raped and murdered, the boy decided to leave the faith and to say if that's the way God is, I'm not going to have anything to do with him again. If he could be in heaven and if he could see what is happening and not intervene, I will not serve him. And I want to put my arm around him and say, God cares. God cares. A woman in anger said to her pastor, her son had died in a truck accident, where was your God when my son was killed?
Which he replied, he was in the same place where he was when his son was killed. We have a suffering God. Now that doesn't answer all of our questions. It doesn't relieve the mystery.
It's not that we can now look at a circumstance and we can see in it everything that we would want to see. What it means is that there is an explanation and someday God may give it to us. And it also means that since God chose suffering and willed it with all of these different options, there must be some grand worthwhile purpose to which all of it moves. And with that we can have confidence that God is involved and there is a purpose. There is a purpose. There is no place my friend today where your sorrows are more keenly felt than heaven.
People may not feel it on earth. You may think that people have become calloused and you have been neglected in your need, but God knows and he cares and he has felt what you have gone through. There's a third lesson and that is that our calling is to really suffer in the world.
That's our calling. You know we're talking about taking the cross into the world and later on we'll talk about that more specifically as to what it means and the implications of the cross in daily living. But suffering is to be the mark of the Christian. All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. I like the words of Bonhoeffer who said that suffering is not some interruption that is brought into our life. Bonhoeffer said suffering is our calling. We are to fill up the sufferings of Christ the scripture says. We are to share in his suffering and that's what troubles me sometimes when our rights are taken away and when things happen in society where we feel that we are going to lose whatever it is that we consider valuable in this life. We become angry and we become defensive and we become very un-Christ-like.
Very un-Christ-like. You know I wish that all that the world needed was words. We've got plenty of words. We've got words in books. We've got words in churches. We've got words on the radio and words on television. Why don't we just give them words? God ordained it in such a way that most people will not believe the gospel simply because they have heard it.
They need to see it lived out to give it its authenticity. Michael Baumgarten. How in the world would you know that he was German?
Baum in German means tree and Garten means garden so you have a tree garden. Michael Treegarden a Lutheran pastor after being excommunicated from his church for standing what he believed to be right said this. There are times in which lectures and publications will no longer suffice to communicate the necessary truth. At such times the deeds and the sufferings of the saints create a new alphabet in order to reveal the secret truth. The gospel of suffering puts the good news in entirely different light and it communicates it with authenticity. You see maybe the time will come in America when no one will listen until we have students at our universities willing to fail, willing to fail because they will not accept what is quote politically correct.
Perhaps there will be no transformation until nurses are willing to lose their jobs rather than participate in abortions. Maybe our witness will not be authenticated until there are those who are willing to go through hardship at work even when you have politically correct laws in the workplace who nevertheless will witness for Christ and thereby be punished. But to take it with a sense of tranquility and a sense of joy not not with a victim mentality but as the early apostles who rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer for his name. We represent a suffering God. A missionary in Kenya said this about some of the believers there who had been through death and mutilation. He said I am constantly humbled by their patience and lack of bitterness which springs from an acceptance of the cross in their lives. That's what the cross enables us to do. Jesus who when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he uttered no threats but committed himself unto him the judges righteously.
That is our example. That is our model of suffering and what we must be willing to do is to in some way endure at least a part of what he endured. Blessed are ye when men revile you and persecute you and say old manner of evil against you falsely for my name's sake.
Great is your reward in heaven. God suffered. We should suffer and in doing so if we do it correctly we represent God. You say well shouldn't we change everything we can change?
Yes of course I have no better advice than the old adage that says change everything that you can change except what you cannot change and pray to God that you know the difference. Blessed are those who see God in their suffering. You know of course that we talk about seeing God work mightily in America. I told you about England in a previous message in great spiritual need during the 1800s and how God raised up two men and one was Charles Wesley and the other was his brother John and the Wesley brothers preached throughout the length and breadth of England and of course in the 1700s they came here as well and they preached over in New England and God did mighty works.
What they believed is what we need to believe but at the end of the day what America really needs is to see the cross borne lovingly and joyfully by Christians who are called by his name. One of the brothers that is Charles loved to write hymns and he wrote the hymn with which we are going to conclude today. Can you sing it?
Can we sing it authentically? Amazing love and can it be that thou my God should die for me? And if God did that we must be like him in our willingness to suffer. Well you know as I concluded this message I couldn't help but think of a Muslim who said to me your God died on a cross. Well what we must do as believers is to distinguish of course between the members of the Trinity. Of course God the Father did not die. God continued to be God and yet in the midst of this Jesus as a man died.
Lots of mystery but it is through this mystery that we are converted. Well I'm holding in my hands today a book entitled Christians Politics and the Cross and I can't think of a book that is more relevant to our political year and all that we're going through these days than this book. In it I make this statement thanks to our nationalistic instincts it's difficult for us to look at our nation objectively. It's hard for some of us to face the fact that we as a church might be veering off track losing sight of our most important goal. It's difficult to admit that we just might have mistaken the American dream for God's dream.
Well this book is intended to help us sift through some of the relationships between the cross and the flag maintaining the superiority of course of the cross. For a gift of any amount we're making it available. Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone right now and call us at 1-888-218-9337.
That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Today's question is based on prospects for marriage when both partners have a past to contend with. Arlene writes, I'm dating and would like to marry a man whom I've known for many years. We both have a lot of family issues both coming from very dysfunctional families. He is wonderful but his problem is that when he is discouraged and depressed he turns to drink. I've talked to him about this because I used to have an alcohol problem too. Both of us are Christians but what makes this very difficult is that we have been sexually intimate and so I feel an obligation to marry him. I know we've done wrong and he even agrees but I can't just walk away even though I see trouble ahead. Arlene, thank you so much for writing to me and I need to speak to you very plainly because I believe that my advice though tough will be good and I trust it will be helpful. I think you need to walk away from this relationship.
This man ultimately is bad news. He can be nice but if he turns to drink when things get difficult, believe me, if he's drinking before you get married, he most assuredly is going to be drinking after you get married and probably much more so. Furthermore, Arlene, you have to realize that when you are sleeping with a man to whom you are not married, you're in no position to assess whether or not this is going to be a good relationship. I know that you feel an obligation to marry this man because of that intimacy but you need to accept God's forgiveness for your sin and then you need to move on and commit yourself to a life of purity. The fact remains that even though you have been intimate, that does not mean that you are obligated to marry. You need to understand, Arlene, that you have a past and so does he. Until the both of you get it all cleaned up, until you separate, until you develop faith in one another and purity and holiness and counseling, neither of you is ready for marriage. Bottom line, walk away, get your own act together, go to your church, commit yourself to other believers, walk in purity and holiness and let God lead you.
That is more important than marrying and I believe that if you marry that man, you're going to regret it. Thank you Dr. Lutzer. 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, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Many of today's conflicts stem from deep-rooted racial or ethnic strife. It seems there's no human solution, but there is a divine solution. There is a place of common ground for those who can't stand the sight of each other. Next time on Running to Win, our series on Christians, politics and the cross continues. Join us for message number six, why the cross is the basis for reconciliation. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
