Wanted: Leaders – 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. When we're enjoying our sins, what does it take to get us to repent?

For Israel, it took an oppressive rule by a pagan king. God uses many means to bring us back to Himself, including bad leaders. Today, how a nation came to its senses, at least for a time. 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, as you've said, we've been down this road before. What's up today as you take us into Judges chapter 3.

Well, Dave, as we've emphasized in this series, history tends to repeat itself. But I want to give some encouragement to all who are listening. No matter which direction our nation takes, regardless of all of the bad news out there, will we remember that we as individuals can always be light in the midst of the darkness? We can walk with God even in difficult times. I have some excellent news for all those who are listening to the ministry today, and that is the month of August is actually our matching gift challenge month. You know what that means?

Means that every gift that you give is doubled. Now, some of you perhaps have never contributed to this ministry. Would you pray about helping us?

The Ministry of Running to Win goes to 50 different countries in seven different languages because of people just like you. 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. Thank you for helping us get the gospel to nations, and of course, most importantly, to individuals whose hearts long for God. Remember that only desperate people pray. It's only, you see, when all of our resources are gone, it's one thing to be on the top of the corporate ladder. And when you're there, you feel that you don't have to pray. But when you get knocked down onto the floor, suddenly you cry up and you say, God, I need you.

Where have you been? God had the people's attention finally because they cried up to him and now they were willing to do whatever God suggested. You know, of course, that one of the most interesting studies that one can ever make is on human nature.

It is endlessly fascinating to look at humanity. And you and I know that there are people who can be begged and cajoled and manipulated and we can harass them and do all that we possibly can to change them. And they will not change. It is an everlasting mystery to me as to why people think that they can change other people simply by trying to convince them to do things differently. You can have a little bit of success, but not much.

Why? You say, well, I want people to see the light. My dear friend, people do not change when they see the light.

They only change when they feel the heat. That's what it takes. I know a counselor who says that people only change when their misery is greater than their fear of exposure and their need to seek for help. And so what is God doing? He constantly is putting people in misery. He is selling them into addictions of alcohol and drugs and sexuality and so forth. And they have no idea. They don't understand that God is shouting at them and saying, don't you see that this is happening because I want your attention. And they serve foreign gods. So the second stage is the people do seek the Lord.

You know, I'm thinking about also Achan. You remember how he hid sin in his tent. He took that Babylonish garment and some silver and gold and hid it in the tent and he was not supposed to have it there. And the lots were cast. And first of all, there was a tribe taken. And then within the tribe there was a family. And then within the family there was his father taken and all the way down. Why didn't they can say, here I am. I'm the one, I'm the culprit. It's because his misery, his misery was not yet great enough, though eventually of course he was found out.

So I do have to ask some of you at least how miserable are you? It's a good question. Let's go on to the third stage. God gives them spirit filled leadership, spirit filled leadership. You'll notice we already read the text that Othniel, who happens to be Caleb's younger brother, saves Israel, wins this awesome victory, comes from a wonderful family, but that's not the source of his strength.

It says that the spirit of the Lord, verse 10, came upon him so that he became Israel's judge and went to war. And in the rest of the chapter, you also have another judge by the name of Ehud. Ehud was left handed. Some of you who are left handed, you may want to get together and form a club so that you can exercise your full civil rights because most of society is built by right handed people.

Maybe you could get someone to defend you so that you would be able to have all kinds of changes made in the way society operates. Well, Ehud was left handed. Now I won't tell you this story, how he overcame Eglon, because it's a little bit gruesome and you do have a Bible and you can read it on your own, except to say this, that he was a very different kind of person, yet God used him mightily. In fact, the chapter ends by a man by the name of Shamgar, and this is all that we know about him. After Ehud came Shamgar. But before they cried to the Lord, before Ehud became the judge, I did want you to notice what it says in chapter three, verse 14. The Israelites were subject to Eglon, king of Moab, for 18 years.

Wow. We read a few moments ago that the Israelites were subject to their captors for eight years, and then they cried to the Lord and God gave them Othniel. And the text says that Othniel ruled Israel as a judge for 40 years. And so there's a new generation and you would think that they would learn from the old generation, but instead of eight years, it turns out to be 18 years that they are in slavery before they cry up to God. And again, you have to ask how much does it take?

So those are the three stages. God sells them into slavery. They cry up to the Lord. God gives them spirit-filled leadership to lead them out of their woes.

What we need to do is to bring this down now to where we live though. We need to understand its impact for our lives that we might be changed by God's word. So I'd like to leave you with three life transforming lessons from what we've read in the text. First of all, number one, God does discipline his children for their disobedience and their sins. And usually the way in which that discipline takes place is to have them feel the full effect of their sin and not deliver them until they're really willing to come clean. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews that God disciplines every son that he receives. Now we know as parents, we only discipline our children when our children had difficulty conflicting with other people's children.

We dealt with it at home, but we didn't take the other kids home, though we probably would like to have at times, but we didn't do that because we're responsible for our children. And the scripture says that if you are without discipline, you are not one of God's children. You are an illegitimate child. That is to say, you look like a believer, you sing like a believer, you serve like a believer, but you aren't. One of the tests as to whether or not you're a Christian and there are others that could be added, but one of them is this. Does God allow you to get by with sin? Show me somebody who lives year after year, basically a sinful carnal life and totally unconcerned about it. There is no conviction of the spirit. There is no sense of the need to get right with God and he is perfectly content. He's able to manage his sin rather than repent of it. And I'll show you a person who very probably has never been born again of the spirit and does not belong to God.

God scourges every son whom he receives. You see the difference between the nation Israel and the Canaanites. The Canaanites, they could get by with all this wickedness without a twinge of conscience. The Israelites, they couldn't. They agonized and they struggled because they knew that they were offending Jehovah.

So I have to ask you today, where are you on your spiritual pilgrimage? Can you get by with sin? Can you live an essentially godless life and still feel comfortable and never have it really bother you? Examine yourself and see whether you are in the faith.

In fact, here's a test for you. How long does it take between the sin that you commit and the repentance that you offer to God to get back in fellowship? The more spiritually mature you are, the shorter the length of time. And I think that we should pray that in our lives that the minute we become conscious of sin, it is in that minute that we confess our sins and turn from it because we so love God that we do not want to go on offending him and grieving the blessed Holy Spirit of God who lives within us. That's spiritual maturity.

It's not that you don't sin, but when you sin, you run to the cross. Until eight years to get the message. Next generation. Eighteen years before they said, you know, this isn't working. Maybe we should turn to God.

How long does it take for you? There are some Christians who are not in fellowship with God. They back away from God and they go on a long, long time thinking that some time, somewhere, at some place, I'll get right with God.

Watch it. You may not even be a believer. And if you live that way, you are a carnal believer at best. I've known people living with resentments and bitternesses that they could never give up.

They held onto them and they kept them and they nourished them and they fertilized them to keep them alive. You may not be in the faith. God scourges every son and daughter he receives. What did I say to my friend? Alright, here he is. He's been fired from a job. Hurts when you know right well it's not a matter of competence. It's a matter of politics and somebody else who's envious and he was making somebody look bad and so they had to get rid of them. Is this just because all things work together for good to them that love God or is this discipline because he acknowledged that God was not number one in his life as a Christian?

Well, the very unspectacular answer that I gave him on the telephone this past week was it might be both. On the one hand, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God but the good is not necessarily that you're going to get a better job somewhere else. The good might be that you downsize.

The good might be that you cannot recap where you have been. The good might be that you learn to be content with who you are before God despite the injustice, despite the fact that now you're on a lower rung of the ladder because at the end of the day you know who you are as a child of God and feel secure in that relationship. When it says in Romans that all things work together for good, it does not leave us in the dark as to what the good is. The very next verse says that we might be conformed to the image of his son and he left the glories of heaven with all of the perks to come down to earth and be one of us and God says I want to work the same humility and fruit of the spirit in your life that will represent him. But on the other hand, there is no doubt about it that God also chastens us because of our sin.

We shut him out of our lives. He brings us into circumstances that make our lives come unraveled until we say God I need you and finally I'm willing to do absolutely anything so that you come and intervene and then God says okay now I've got your attention now we can begin to work. God disciplines his people. Secondly, deliverance is a community effort.

It's a community effort. Obviously in the life of Israel you couldn't have one person delivered and from the hand of these oppressors and others not because you were together as a body. I mean either this village was either under the suppression of an enemy or it wasn't and you grew up in that environment and had to live with your circumstances so that it's a little different when we get to the New Testament but the essential principle is still the same. God raised up leaders in the Old Testament times because they were to lead the people out. What does God do today? He gives leaders within the body of Jesus Christ and here I'm not just talking about pastoral staff and elders but but leadership within the whole body of Jesus Christ and together we seek God for deliverance whether it is from addictions or from our own cycle of defeat and despair and in the midst of that you see God begins to bring about the healing and the restoration and the deliverance and the strength that all of us seek but it is a work not just of individuals but of the body. There are some people who say well can't I be delivered from my problems just alone? I just cry up to God and nobody else needs to know. Well sometimes God may graciously do it that way but you know what? God loves to use the humility that it takes for us to individually meet our needs and to acknowledge our needs to one another and in the process of creating an atmosphere of brokenness of transparency of a recognition of our own need the Holy Spirit of God releases his power and we have throughout the congregation people being helped and delivered through accountability and through the body of Jesus Christ coming awake and coming alive.

There's a third lesson. God is near to us. God is near to us to deliver us. You know I still can't get out of my mind that 18 years that the people lived in slavery before they called to God. 18 years is a long time. Why wait 18 years? Why did God kind of back off for 18 years?

It's not because of God's lack of desire to bring deliverance to his people but the people weren't ready for it. They kept they kept thinking we've got to be able to work through this and they would not give up their sin, their bails, and their ashtras and and so they they just kept plunging on and God says all right I'm going to be here when you're exhausted and God is there when we are exhausted. I have never rescued anyone from drowning for the simple reason that if I were in too much water I think I would have to be the rescued rather than the rescuer. Now I can swim I could probably swim across you know a couple of hundred yards if I were desperate but don't ask me to rescue you my friend because there will be two people at the bottom of that lake in a big hurry. But I'm told that when someone is drowning the lifeguards have to kind of wait until he exhausts himself. As long as he's flailing around and thinking somehow that he's going to get out of this he's impossible to rescue.

Finally when he is finished and about to breathe his last then he can be easily rescued. I'm speaking to my own heart today as much as I am to yours. I just need to ask you at what point are we finally willing to really genuinely give it all up and turn to God? Why do we keep going over the same solutions of trying to change other people and trying to change this and fighting and and working against it and absolutely determined that we're going to see situations through that are hopeless anyway. When have we had enough and we say God from now on it is all yours. There was a Christian man and I believe him to be a Christian because Christians sometimes as you know do walk in disobedience.

For years he had in his heart this bitterness he was do you understand the description if I say that he had issues does that communicate? Issues with the church it's full of hypocrites. Well who else would come if it wouldn't be hypocrites?

We give them a reserved seat. Issues with his wife she poured water on my dreams. Issues with the employer just issues issues issues but he's a Christian. Through the brokenness of other people in a congregation it's a longer story than I want to tell you about. He finally decided that what he had better do is to come clean with God no matter the cost and these are his words now. He said I laid down the weapons of a rebel. The important thing today folks is not what you think of this message. The important thing today is what you're going to do as a result of it. Will you finally give up the weapons of a rebel and turn to God?

This man did it at age 61. 20 or 30 years of misery before he finally said God you got me. Let's pray. Father we ask today Lord that you might do something in our lives that only you can do. We fight and we squirm and we argue and we hold on and we justify and on and on it goes. Oh Father how much do we have to go through until we simply say God take it all.

At what point are we finally willing to say the battle is over and our weapons are laid down. Oh Father for those who have never trusted Christ as Savior may they see him today as the great deliverer to forgive us to cleanse us but also to deliver us from all those sins that bog us down. Grant oh God here at this church a spirit of openness, a spirit of freedom, a spirit of honesty that we might be the people that we are.

We are such deceitful sinners. Help us Father. Have mercy on us. In Jesus name. Amen. Pastor Lutzer here. I want to ask you a question. Do you believe that a message like this is needed for this nation at this time?

Do you believe that it is needed for individuals, all of us who need to continually accept the fact that we need to live in dependence and repentance before God. If you've been blessed, if you've been challenged, if you know of others who have been blessed and challenged as a result of the ministry of running to win I can assure you that the reason is because of people just like you who have contributed to this ministry. Could I say a word to those of you who perhaps have never contributed, you've never connected with us? Well this would be a wonderful time to do it because August is our matching gift challenge month. What that means is that every gift that you give up to $90,000 is doubled.

Imagine that. What an investment but most importantly the investment is for the gospel of Christ. Now I hope that you have a pen or a pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you some very important contact info. Here is what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. Of course RTWOffer is all one word. RTWOffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Thank you for helping us. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Pastor Erwin Lutzer has concluded a message on Wanted Leaders, the second of twelve on the topic, We've Been Down This Road Before, taken from the book of Judges. Israel's judges were not all men. Next time we'll meet a woman against the world. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.