Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. While on earth, Jesus chose to contain His glory and limit His options, and that's the key to how we can bring His message to the lost. As we learn why the cross can do what politics can't, today we'll find out how to effectively take the cross into the world. 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 wrap up your teaching on Christians, politics and the cross. What should we look for as our action step going forward? Dave, that's a great question, but I need to emphasize that for everyone who is listening, the answer may be slightly different.
Depends who you are, your circumstances, your abilities. But what is very important is that we make sure that the cross of Jesus Christ is always paramount. Should we be involved politically? Absolutely. It's so important for us to recognize that politics is important, and if I had more time, I would give many reasons why.
But as we've been emphasizing in this series, it is not supremely important. I've written a book entitled Christians, Politics and the Cross, and I want to emphasize that today is the last day that we're making this resource available for you. We make these resources available to help you run the race of life and to do so successfully, to think through not only the gospel, but its implications for culture and for politics.
Christians, politics and the cross. Hope that you have a pen or pencil handy. This is what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
That's 1-888-218-9337. Christians, politics and the cross. Jesus went from victor to victim.
Can you imagine on that day what happened? He is the one, you know, who limits Satan and gives Satan the parameters and tells Satan what he can and can't do. Satan is always subject to God. But on that day, Jesus said, I'm going to let you be in control so far as this is concerned.
Can you imagine Jesus Christ staring in the very face of evil on that day and saying, today you win. Go ahead. Do it. When he is king of kings and Lord of Lords and he lays aside his rights, he lays aside his glory, he lets it all pass. And what he says is, I am willing to do even that.
Get it done. And he's king and he's God and he's Lord. What are some of the clear implications of what it means for us to live out the cross?
I think of two. First of all, of course, this great reversal of values reminds us that God's way up is down. God values humility. He values humility.
Where do you see that today? Where do you see the surrender of our rights? Where do you see that kind of humility that says, yes, I wouldn't have to do it, but for you, I will.
Where does it exist? That gets to the heart of what Nietzsche was talking about, that if we want people to believe in our Redeemer, we're going to have to act redeemed. We're going to have to act like Christ and we find it hard to do it. Guston the great theologian and philosopher said that God has humbled himself and yet man is proud. It's proud. What a commentary. And we have a lot more to be humble about than Jesus did.
He had a perfect human nature. We're sinners. We're sinners. We have very little to be proud about. Actually, more accurately, nothing to be proud about. You did hear about the person who went to see a counselor and said, you know, the older I get, the more humble I'm becoming. And the counselor said, that's good because you have an awful lot to be humble about. Here we're talking about us as sinners.
And we are proud. And God became humble. Why did Paul write this letter? Did he say, well, you know, I think that there are some seminarians who need some topics for dissertations and, you know, they're running out of things to teach over in the seminary. So I'm going to give them a passage that they can chew on for a while.
Let the inflection know. Look at why he gave it to us. He needed an illustration. Every preacher needs an illustration. Verse 3, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was in Jesus Christ.
And that's why he wrote the passage because he said, what I want you to do is to have the same sense of, of giving. I want you to see such a reversal of values that it absolutely flies into the face of what the world is all about. The world is always trying to climb the ladder and you're going to have to take the shoot down. The world is always saying to itself, what I want to do is to advance. I want to control. I want to be master. I don't want to be servant. Christ comes along and says, do you want to be like me? Then be a servant and have the good of others ahead of your own. Do you think that's hard? Hard. I think it's almost impossible apart from the deep work of the cross in our hearts.
It is absolutely impossible. Illustration, promise keepers, 43,000 pastors in Atlanta. We're spending all day worshiping God. We hear a message on the filling of the spirit.
We all pray that God will fill us with the spirit. We're almost ready to burst. We feel as if we could fly. It's evening time now and it's time to go back to the hotel. So we get onto the Metra in Atlanta. We're singing choruses in the subway. The whole place is ringing. Everybody that's walking by is hearing hundreds and hundreds of men crowded together, all sing all hail the power of Jesus name.
Marvelous. We get into a Metra car and we go along and we come to the major station where all of these Metra cars come and it is there where the various hotels have have what do you call it buses or vans rather to pick up people to take them to the hotel. It is cold even in Atlanta at night. Wind is blowing there and some of us thought that that was the south and we were misled.
We thought that it was supposed to be warm. There aren't enough vans. One comes every few minutes. You've got a hundred men all wanting to get on the same van. Now mind you, let's review as to who they are. Pastors who go to heaven every evening and come back in the morning. Pastors who have just been newly filled with the spirit.
Pastors just singing the wonders of Jesus on the subway to make the rafters vibrate and we all scramble for those vans as if our lives depended on it. Your pastor included. My excuse was that I had a cold. I did, didn't I Daryl? And I didn't have a hat and I just hate cold air blowing when I have a cold.
That was my excuse. Daryl was with me. He's one of the most unselfish men I have ever met. How in the world he got on the same van as I did, I don't know. I remember getting on the van and I just felt so smitten in my spirit. I said to everybody, I said, well, whatever the filling of the spirit means, it certainly doesn't mean that we should esteem others better than ourselves. And I thought to myself, you know, those guys who came by to pick up pastors on the vans, they didn't see anything much different than they'd have seen if they'd have been picking up people who just came from some kind of a marketing convention.
Maybe a little different because we laughed at our selfishness, but that was about all. How would you live if you esteemed others better than yourself? The van should have pulled up and nobody should have gone on. We should have just stood there and say, we just can't go first. I can't go first. I can't go first. I can't go first. You know, come 11 o'clock. Well, okay.
Since you're older, we'll put you on. That troubled me, troubled me, troubled me because above all, we who preach on the cross and who believe in the deep work of the spirit, we should have been the first to say, you go and we'll wait. You know, Jesus said that except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but it is through the death of the cross that we bear fruit. It is coming to the end of our own rights.
It is coming to the end of our own resources. Jesus says, whosoever shall lose his life shall find it and whoever finds his life, he says, or lets go of his life shall find it, shall find it. Are you sometimes amazed that the cross which we love has done its work so superficially in our lives and we still have so far to go. Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus.
He was in the glories of heaven and he came to this earth and he was born in a manger. Let's just think of this infinite descent from glory to grime and then live that way. Live that way. God values selflessness. Everything I see in the world, everything I see in the world fights against that kind of a spirit. His way up was down. God values humility. That's the first lesson that I see here in the text and then there's a second lesson and that is the value of suffering.
The value of suffering. How did Jesus change the world and he changed you and me and he certainly changed the world, didn't he? But how did he do it? You say, oh, he did it through his miracles. No, his miracles did not change the world. His miracles benefited a few people, but only temporarily. Lazarus had to re-die again.
Can you imagine when he gets sick and saying, oh, this again. Everybody that Jesus healed got sick and died of something. You know, Jesus did miracles and refused to advertise them.
Today we have people who advertise them, but don't do them. It wasn't through the miracles that Jesus changed the world. He changed the world through his suffering.
And I don't know if there's a shortcut to that. If we're going to be redeemed, there are different kinds of suffering taking the cross into the world. There is of course the suffering of circumstances.
Sometimes that involves the physical sufferings, marital conflicts. There is a kind of suffering that undoubtedly attracts the attention of God because we suffer well. We should suffer well for his glory. There's another kind of suffering though, and that is where we receive suffering because we belong to Christ. Sometimes called persecution. All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But there's a third form of suffering that I think is even more precious to God and that is voluntary suffering, such as what Christ did where we choose to suffer though we would not have to.
We could go back to our safe place, but we take the risk of sacrifice on behalf of somebody else. That is special to God. Bonhoeffer of course, theologian who has attracted the attention really of the world who was willing to stand up to Hitler and who made the statement that when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die and himself died in Flossburg at the age of 39. Bonhoeffer used to ask the people of his day and the church of his day, who is Jesus Christ for you? Christ said, if you go into the jails in as much as you have done it under the least of these my brethren, you've done it to me.
Let's not criticize the innkeeper. We do every day what he did, except we do it knowingly and he does it ignorantly. He didn't know that Mary was bearing the son of God, so let's let him off the hook. The fact is that you and I know that when we visit someone, Jesus expressly says you have visited me, you have clothed me. Christ says that, and therefore we have the opportunity to ask the question today, who is Jesus Christ to us today? In Bonhoeffer's day it was the Jews, but who is it today in America? Certainly it is the unborn child, it is the single parent, it is the child reared in the ghetto, it is the poor, it can also be the cab driver. By the way, as a parenthesis, this week I caught a cab, talked to the man who listens to our radio ministry and he was telling me that Dr. Stoll of Moody Bible Institute was in the cab with him and this man is a believer and the pastor Stoll, I want to say pastor Stoll, Dr. Stoll, took him by the hand and led him in prayer.
And he must have told me that three or four times, he says he actually held my hand. That's who Christ is to us, cab drivers, people at work who are very un-Christ-like, gives us a chance to treat them as Christ would treat them. And as a result of those opportunities, we extend beyond ourselves, there is a death that we need to die inside so that we can see that our circle of sacrifice must be increased if we are to look like the redeemed and meet Nietzsche's challenge.
Because they're out there and what they want to know and what the world wants to know is what Jesus looks like. In Brazil there was a festival and at these festivals, you know, they always sell trinkets and there was a sign up that said cheap crosses for sale. I wonder if that's the way our cross is. It's nothing that's this dramatic, we say to ourselves. None of this business of humility. My cross means ascend the ladder. Do this but whatever you do, do not become a servant and do not accept the humble place.
Let somebody else do that. Yet it is to the brokenness of the cross that is that cross of humility and sacrifice to which God calls us. There is a legend of a man who was walking along carrying his cross and it got rather heavy, especially the older he got.
Maybe that's the way you feel today. You say when I was younger I used to be able to bear the cross more easily but my cross seems to be getting a little heavy. And so the story goes that he was walking along and he met a woodsman who happened to be chopping some trees and the man said, you know, he said I have this cross but the cross is too heavy.
I wonder if you'd let me use your axe so that I could chop some of it off. Woodsman said sure so the man did that and carried his cross and it was much lighter. Then the story goes that the man came to the promised land and noticed that there was a gulf between him and the promised land that only the cross could bridge but his cross was too short. And may I say to you today that when we make our cross lighter through our own selfishness, our own advancement and our own agendas, the lighter we make our cross the weaker our witness to the world. I don't mean to imply by the way that if you're here and you've never accepted Christ as Savior that the way to get saved is through suffering or taking up your cross. That's a challenge for Christians.
The way you get saved is to accept the expensive cross that God gives us where Jesus died for sinners as a sin bearer and if you believe in him you can be saved today, freely saved. Then the challenge to you and to me is take up your cross and follow me. And so I end today by asking you the question, what do we do with Nietzsche's challenge? The answer of Philippians chapter 2 is that when we have this mind in us which was in Christ voluntarily choosing the low road, the humble path, the path of abuse and the path of brokenness and the path of one who had humbly given himself into the hand of God to be crucified. It is out of that death that life comes.
It is the cross with all of its weight that changes us and makes us members of the redeemed who actually look, look redeemed. I end with a question. Who is there now? Perhaps this person sitting beside you.
Maybe it's in your home, your neighborhood, your community, your sphere of influence. Who is now the person to whom you can be Christ? Who is Christ to you today and this week? And now I invite you to pray. Our Father we ask in the name of Jesus that you will break down the selfishness that exists in my heart and in the hearts of all those who have heard this message, how unlike Jesus we really are. We ask that graciously Father you might work in us a deep work. May we be willing to serve unrecognized, unknown, humbly and then Father may we be willing to suffer on the behalf of those with whom we don't have to suffer but we choose to lighten their load through our own sacrifice. Help all of us Father to look like our Redeemer. Now if God has spoken to you, you tell him whatever is on your mind and heart right now.
Invite him to begin in you a work that will take the rest of your lifetime. Begin a work that will change you and make us like Jesus. Hear our prayer O Lord for we are needy. Amen. Well this is Pastor Lutzer.
As you look around you, you may be very confused because of everything that is happening politically. Centuries ago a man by the name of Augustine wrote a book entitled The City of God. What he pointed out is that even when the city of man is in decline, the city of God can continue and of course will continue for all eternity.
This is the last day we're making a very special resource available for you. It's a book entitled Christians Politics and the Cross. I wrote it to help us think through what our relationship should be especially in this political year. We as believers, what is our role? Should we be involved?
If we are involved, how should we be involved? For a gift of any amount we're making this book available for you. Hope that you have a pen or pencil handy.
Here's what you can do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now because this is the last day we're making this resource available for you, I'm going to be giving you that contact info again. But I want to thank you so much for helping us as running to win goes around the world. But we believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ has to be lived out in all the spheres of our life including politics.
That's why I wrote the book Christians Politics and the Cross. Once again that contact info RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com. Of course RTWOffers all one word.
RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And from my heart to yours, thank you so much for your prayers. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you also for your financial help.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. What does God look like? Michelangelo pictured him as an old man with a flowing beard. We don't have a visual description of him nor are we to attempt to find one.
But we are given clues as to what he's like in the Bible. Next time on Running to Win, Erwin Lutzer begins a brief series he's calling In the Divine Presence. Plan to join us. Running to Win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
