Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. 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.
Stay with us. 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, at election time, people go crazy attacking each other because of their differences. As we've seen, those battles are not over when elections are decided. Dave, I love the way in which you have set this up, because that's exactly why we as a church oftentimes are confused as to what the relationship should be between the church and politics.
Politics is based on adversarial relationships, the criticism of one party, one candidate to another, all the wrangling. Christianity seeks reconciliation. And yet we as a church should be involved in politics, but how?
That's why I've written a book entitled Christians, Politics and the Cross. I've tried to think through what our response should be, especially in the midst of this political year. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
Now if you missed this contact info, I'll be giving it to you again at the end of this broadcast. For now, let us listen once again as we exalt the cross. I think that all of us would agree that we are living in a fragmented culture, a culture that seems to be breaking apart. You know, the founding fathers believed that it would be possible to have a culture that would be held together by the Constitution, one nation under God. John Quincy Adams says that the immigrants must cast off their European skin never to resume it.
They must look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors. The whole idea was that America was supposed to become a melting pot. But recent years seem to show that America is un-meltable. It's very difficult to make it into a melting pot. So today we have what is known as the cult of ethnicity. We have African-Americans, we have Asian-Americans, we have Hispanic-Americans, Anglo-Americans.
And I think that we can see some of the racism in our culture, its prejudices within the human heart die very hard. We're divided racially. We're also divided economically. We have rich and poor, we have masters and servants, we have ghettos and we have suburbs and we have the Gold Coast. We're divided economically. We're divided domestically. By that I mean our families are falling apart because of the high divorce rate and because of the abuse that is taking place and the infiltration into our culture of pornography and drugs and all the other things that divides and scatters. As a result of that, a whole generation of people is being reared that struggle with connectedness because they seem so disconnected from their families and from one another. Fueling all of this of course is radical individualism. I'm not entirely sure about this story but I do think I heard it this week that a man was driving along and stopped to read one of those signs that you see as you approach an airport giving the various terminals and the different carriers and someone hit him from behind and the person who stopped is now being sued by the person who hit him and now he is suing the airline company for putting up those signs.
The airline companies no doubt are going to be suing the airport and the airport is going to find the guy who did the painting and he's going to get it and where in the world is all this going to end anyway? What is the church to be doing in the midst of this difficulty and the fragmentation of America? What's the church supposed to be doing? We're supposed to be representing the fact that it is possible for people with different backgrounds ethnically, different backgrounds from the standpoint of religious experiences and cultural and economic backgrounds, it's possible to develop deep and abiding friendships and loyalties on the basis of unity in Jesus Christ, despite all the fragmentation. That's what Jesus Christ prayed for, that they may be one and that the world may see therefore and believe. Unity, not just union. You can have union, you can be together and then immediately fragment when things get tough.
Union is one thing, you can take two cats, tie their tails around each other, throw them over a clothesline and you have union but you do not have unity. Christ was praying for something that was deep, that was really within the human heart. He was praying that we might be knee deep in love. You see sin always scatters. Adam and Eve committed of course the first sin and what do you have in their family?
You have family troubles, that's where it got started. They were divided from one another and from God and their children end up being divided from one another and Cain ends up killing Abel. You see as we look into the human heart we can see all this division, all the walls that are built up within us to keep other people at arms length. For example the Bible says all that is in the world the lust of the flesh. The lust of the flesh means that I'm going to run by my desires and whether or not you do something for me and whether you feel, make me feel good and whether I have good will toward you, then I'll accept you as a friend.
But if you begin to become a bore, if you become difficult to be with, I will withdraw because I don't want to expend energy in a relationship. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, greed. You see the greed of that serpent that lies coiled in the bottom of our hearts. That greed says I have money because I have ability and I have worked hard and you are poor because you are lazy and you are mentally challenged and it's all your fault.
The pride of life, pride says I'm better than you are and not only am I better than you are but I have myself to thank for it. Now you see it's possible in America to give the illusion that we are united because America is such a big country. We can scatter, we can we can all be together. People say well aren't we united? We just sang all the same hymns and right now we are all listening to the same sermon but when it's all over we go back to our homes and we're back to our individualism. When we visited Russia a number of years ago in that country because of a housing shortage, sometimes two and even three families would live together in one apartment.
I thought about that a little bit. How would you like to share a kitchen with another family and a living room and closets? Don't you think that all of the of the selfishness and the greed and the mistrust and all of that scum would come to the surface if we in this country had to live so closely with those with whom we perhaps disagreed and people we don't like? Oh it all lies there dormant in the human heart waiting to spring up whenever the opportunity presents itself. How are we supposed to live in the midst of that?
To ask the question differently. How is it that we are to learn to love people whom we naturally distrust, dislike, and maybe even hate? Now that story is found for us in the New Testament, a beautiful model of how Jesus did it. You can take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2, a perfect example of animosity and hatred are the Jews and the Gentiles. You have to understand that the Jews and the Gentiles were different in so many different ways and they had huge walls built between them.
For example, there was the difference religiously. The Jews were the chosen ones, but they made a tremendous error. They thought that God chose them because they were better than others.
That was a mistake. God never chose them because they were better. In fact, he says in Deuteronomy, you are stiff-necked and you're hard to get along with and you are just plain stubborn.
But I chose you anyway to put my love upon you. This should have humbled them, but it made them proud. They thought chosen meant better. And so they despised all the foreigners, all the Gentiles, and they didn't like them at all. There was the barrier of religion. There was also the barrier of race. Race. You know, we don't understand Jesus sitting on the well talking to a Samaritan woman.
No big deal to us. But remember that she was a half-breed. She was part Assyrian.
And as a result of the theory of blood that says if you are of a mixed race, you have lost your purity. The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, much less would they have a dealing with a woman. And so you see this great hatred and animosity and the way in which the Gentiles, those half-castes, were despised by the Jews because they were racially impure. In fact, in the temple area, there was a sign that said no foreigner may go beyond here. There was the court of the Gentiles and then beyond the court of the Gentiles, that's where the Jewish people could go because foreigners needed to know their limits and their bounds. They were also divided culturally. Here are the Jews with a great heritage of being God's people and they had artistic work that was done and they had various cultural abilities that God gave them. And then over there, there were the pagans with all of their artwork and all of their sculptures which were pagan oftentimes and sensual and the Jews despised those foreigners. There was also another division even within the Jewish race and that was of course the gender division. You know that women were not allowed either in the inner sanctum of the temple and Jewish men used to pray shame on them, but they used to pray I thank the God that I am not a woman.
You talk about the oppression of women and inequality and the whole idea that the woman exists simply to serve the man. That has a long history, as long as the history of the human race with its sin. Here's the way Paul described the Gentiles. I'll pick it up in verse 12 of Ephesians 2. Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Sad state of affairs. Do you sense the heartache?
Do you sense the rejection? And yet but now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. The cross that you and I take into the world is a cross that unifies, it brings together, it breaks down barriers, and it makes people one. Now with your Bibles open, I want you to notice that Paul uses that word one four times and if you're in the habit of underlining your Bible you could at this point underline that word. Verse 14, he himself is our peace who made both groups into one, broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. Middle of verse 15, in him he might make the two into one. There it is again, new man thus establishing peace. Verse 16, and might reconcile them both in one, underline the word one body to God through the cross.
18, for through him we both have access in one spirit to the father. Now Jesus did not artificially create this unity. It was a unity that actually broke down the walls of mistrust and hostility.
What did he do? We already read the text where he says in verse 14, he broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances that in himself he might make into one new man, the both of them in one. He broke down the wall and the wall that he broke was first of all the law which divided Jews and Gentiles.
All of those regulations. I am so glad I don't live in the Old Testament era. I did not live back there.
I'd rather live today. All of the things that they could eat and couldn't eat and God was saying you're a special people and you're going to be separate and now with the coming of Jesus Christ he says that that wall has been broken down because the law is taken away in that Jesus Christ on the cross met its demands. It is no longer the barrier that it was but not only that you know that that wall that I told you about before that said no foreigner shall enter into the temple area.
Perhaps that's what Paul had in mind as well. That was broken down and then if that wasn't enough the veil of the temple when Jesus Christ died was split in two from top to bottom and Jesus was now saying that people of every race and color and creed can come to God through the blood of Jesus Christ and be received. He made God accessible for all of us. He made peace the scripture says.
He established it and as I've already mentioned this was not simply a peace treaty. It was not simply a matter of Jesus asking us to sign on. It was actually a peace that was born from within the human heart because the hostility was taken away and the scripture says that in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek slave or free male or female. That's the kind of cross that we take into the world. Now in order to illustrate what Jesus actually did you see he not only broke down the wall he decided also to build something brand new that no one had ever thought of before. You see the hostility between Jew and Gentile you have to understand was about like the Jews and the Arabs today.
Oh it's more volatile today in some sense because we have the news media and we have new forms of weapons and what have you but that's the kind of hostility and if you've ever been in the Middle East you know that there's no way you can somehow bring a rational dialogue to the table and people can sign a peace treaty for the good of their countries and still viscerally hate each other. It's not the kind of peace that Jesus brought. He brought peace to the heart and he took the hostility and put it away. Now to illustrate what Jesus really did the Apostle Paul gives us three figures of speech.
Three figures of speech. Notice first of all verse 16 that he might reconcile them both in one body. One body. And you know that in 1 Corinthians Paul gives an entire chapter illustrating what it means to have one body in Jesus Christ.
And he's saying that first of all there is diversity. There are hands and ears and there's a nose and there's eyes and one head. There's diversity and the ear cannot say to the hand I have no need of you. I walk across this platform it is my eyes that guide my feet but when I arrive I put out my hand and I shake your hand and it's all done in a very coordinated way. And Jesus said that's the way we should be when the world looks at us.
Coordinated one. So there is diversity but there is also interdependence. I can't get along without the different parts of my body. Even the parts of the body that you never see the scripture says are very very necessary. Sometimes most necessary and as we've already emphasized today when we have ministry here at the church it is oftentimes the people whom you don't see that make it happen. It is the greeters, it is the parking attenders, it is the people who are working behind the scenes to bake the cookies that Lee said we should all get in on at that concert time.
It is all of these people doing things oftentimes unrecognized even in secret and it is that that makes it happen. Paul says this that if you belong to Christ you are a member of that body. You are a cell within the body and you share the very same life.
How did he do it? It says he made one new man and you'll notice it says through the Holy Spirit of God. Verse 16 he might reconcile them both in one body to God. Verse 17 he came and preached peace to you who were far away and to them that are near for through him we both have access by the Spirit to the Father. There is not one Holy Spirit for African Americans and another Holy Spirit for Asian Americans and then another one for Anglo Americans.
None of that, none of that. Same spirit, same life, same cells, and same head in heaven and Jesus said that if you love me and serve me you will be coordinated that the world may marvel at your unity. Second figure of speech you are a new nation. He goes on to say verse 19 so then you are no longer strangers and aliens. You actually have a passport.
You know none of this business of trying to just hang on to a green card. You are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints and with a household of God and what he's saying is is that in the Old Testament if you asked the identity of a person he would always go back to his roots. There were three sons of Noah. There was Shem and there was Ham and there was Japheth and from those three sons the entire human race has come and and those divisions were important and that that was your identity. But we get to the book of Acts and what do we discover? First of all there is a man who is a Shemite and he's converted.
His name is the Apostle Paul. Paul is Jewish and Paul is converted and then you have a descendant of Ham the Ethiopian treasurer who's on his way to Ethiopia and he you recall is converted and then of course there are those who come to us from Japheth that represents in the New Testament Cornelius and those of us who are of European descent and and now our identity no longer is racial. Our identity is he says that we are of the household of God.
That means that we have the very same father. We have the same brother namely Christ and the same companion namely the Holy Spirit and that's what the new nation is all about. We can admire ethnicity but the minute you walk into the doors of a church where Christ is preached and where believers have come to saving faith in Christ you have lost your ethnicity as being your identifying mark and you are now a member of the household of God. Isn't it wonderful to know that the cross of Jesus Christ reconciles us?
Today we know that there is a lot of racial tension a lot of accusations one way or another. In the midst of this the church must have a voice and its voice must be one of reconciliation a voice of unity. Well in the midst of this political year I've written a book that I think will be of help as we try to sort through our relationship between God and government.
The title of the book Christians Politics and the Cross. For a gift of any amount we're making it available for you. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you this contact info and I hope that you act on it because I think this book will be of help. Here's what you do go to rtwoffer.com that's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
Let me give you that contact info again rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. Thanks in advance for helping us get the gospel of Jesus Christ and the cross to the ends of the earth. You can write to us at running to win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614. Running to win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Many who seek justice call for a level playing field of opportunity. There is one place where the field is level and that's at the foot of the cross of Christ. The only basis for reconciling people of different backgrounds. Next time on running to win we'll learn why. Running to win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
