Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. For two millennia, the consensus has been that there is a God and that He's at work in the world. But of late, He's been deemed dead by pseudo-intellectuals. The moral chasm we're now in is stark evidence of this, in a moment more about a funeral for God.
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, your series is The Eclipse of God, an apt metaphor for the approaching spiritual darkness.
The declaration that God is dead was certainly evidence of this. Dave, let me approach what you have just said this way. Have you ever wondered why it is that even though the moon is much smaller than the sun, that when we have an eclipse, the moon actually looks as large as the sun?
Now, the reason is, even though the moon is 400 times closer to the earth than the sun, it is also 400 times smaller than the sun. Why do I mention that? The moon of secularism, or as you put it, Dave, the declaration that God is dead, the moon of secularism appears to be as big as God in our society, but it does not affect God. God is still God. And the burden of my book is simply this, that God is necessary for society. Belief in God is the foundation of all decency. And what I want to emphasize is this, we need to get back to the God of the Bible, not the God of popular culture. Once again, the title of the book, The Eclipse of God.
At the end of this broadcast, I'll be giving you some info as to how this resource can be yours. For now, let us listen. You say, well, Pastor Luther, where was the church in all this?
Thank you so much for asking that question. The church had already been hollowed out from the standpoint of doctrine and in other ways because of another German, Friedrich Schleiermacher. You know, German is the only language in which you can say, I love you, and it sounds like a threat. Ich liebe dich, really.
Do you want to settle that out in the hall? Schleiermacher lived in the 1700s. He died, I think, in 1834. And he was the father of modern liberalism. And he basically said, as you know, we can't believe all the miracles, all the miraculous stories of scripture.
What we have to do is to find the real kernel that is most important. And the most important statement that comes to us from Schleiermacher is that religion is a feeling of dependence. What you have to do is you have to feel dependent, in which case one wag said, my dog is very religious. You know, cats, I shouldn't throw this in because we used to have cats, and they are socialists. I mean, they have such a sense of entitlement.
I mean, socialism ends up being a paradise for parasites, and cats absolutely fit that paradigm. I'm sorry, don't come up to me later and say that you love cats. We love them too. My wife loves them.
My kids love them. I'm just an observer of nature. You know that when the Church of Jesus Christ exists in the midst of a society, it can be attacked from without. And of course, that's what happened when you think of Marx and Darwin and others.
But the most serious attacks come from within. And Schleiermacher was brought up in a pietistic home. He was known as a scholar of Christianity. And from within, he and others destroyed all faith in the Scriptures as a revelation from God. It had value, of course, and all that it taught us really was a feeling of dependence.
And just think about how this goes all throughout history now. Today, you have those who say, well, I'm spiritual, but I don't believe any doctrines. I believe in spirituality, which really means your own consciousness becomes God. And so that's where society is. But Nietzsche finally decided, reluctantly, it was time for him to give God a decent burial. So in his book, The Madman, he describes the mad man as entering into various churches throughout Europe and singing the requiem for God. And thus he calls out, what are these churches now if not the tombs and the sepulchres of God? Go throughout Europe today, and the cathedrals are libraries and restaurants and nightclubs such as in Bedford, England. And Europe today does not have a culture war. In America, we have a culture war, but in Europe, the culture war is over. Secularism has taken over. And so Europeans are by and large totally in the secular kind of belief.
Now, there are individual pastors who if they preach the word, they of course sometimes are persecuted or they may even go to prison, especially if they speak about matters of sexuality from a biblical point of view. But Europe has been overcome by secularism. How did the death of God work out? Nietzsche dies in the year 1900. You have Marxism taking over Russia. You have Marxism taking over China with the death of millions of people. Rebecca and I were in Albania in April and God willing we're going to be going back next year if he wills it. And we saw there what Albania was like under communism.
It was awful. They have this museum to the communist regime. Did you know that even in the 70s and 80s, they had tape recorders in prisons to hear what the prisoners were saying? And if you rejoiced when one of their leaders died, your sentence would be extended.
The control was incredible. Leftism has always taken away the freedom of people. And it's happening here in America today. And pretty soon we're going to find ourselves in a digital prison because of all of the technology that there is. So you have communism.
You of course have Nazism. That's what happens when God does not exist and Nietzsche gave him a decent burial. At least he said these tombs are monuments to the time when God used to exist. Now what does God think of all this? Well, I want you to take your Bibles and we're going to turn to Psalm 2.
Psalm 2. First of all, obviously God attends his own funeral. You can't keep God away. God is there. God sees what is happening. And God remains in control. Psalm 2 is very easy to expound from one standpoint.
It has four different sections. First of all, you have the voice of the nations. We'll read the first three verses. Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together.
Notice that they are working together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords from us. Let's get together and do away with God. Let's get organized.
Let's do it together. The voice of the nations is a voice of rebellion. But let's look at the next three verses. Now you have the voice of God. The Lord says, he who sits in the heavens, this is verse four, he laughs. The Lord holds them into revision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury saying, as for me I've set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. God says, I'm laughing. Now, elsewhere in the Psalms, it says that God scoffs at the wicked.
So you're taking me on and you have a funeral for me. And you don't recognize that I continue to be God. Let's remember, and I'm speaking actually on the eclipse of God. When there is an eclipse, it doesn't affect the sun. It affects the earth because the moon comes between the sun and the earth. And the moon of secularism seems to obscure the sun, but the sun is shining just as brightly as ever and God is God just as much as ever.
There's nothing that anyone can do. And why is it that the moon looks approximately the same size as the sun when we know that the sun is millions of times bigger? Well, it's because the moon is 400 times closer to the earth than the sun is and its diameter is 400 times shorter than that of the sun.
So it appears to be big. And in America, the moon of secularism seems to be so strong. We're in trouble politically. We're in trouble morally. Our educational system seems to be coming apart.
You know all those things. But God is still God. And I think it was Spurgeon who says, hell cannot erase a single line of God's promises. Skeptics cannot cut a single twig from God's purposes. And atheists cannot cut a single flower from the garden of God's decree. The point is that God says, don't worry.
I've got it under control. And in the midst of all of the craziness that is going on in the world, and there's plenty of craziness, what we always need is a fresh vision of God. And when we have a fresh vision of God, we begin to worship God. And now we have, in the next part of the psalm, first of all, you have the voice of the nations, rebellion, the voice of God.
He laughs. The voice of the son, that is the son of God. And his is a voice of justice. I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I shall make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
Wow. What God is saying here is that I have a plan, too. You guys have a plan to do away with me, but I have a plan. I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I believe that this refers to the lordship of Jesus Christ still to come.
He is Lord, of course, but his rulership over the earth. You remember the song that goes, Jesus shall reign where ere the sun doth its successive journey run his kingdom from shore to shore. God is saying there is a future coming in which all of the injustices and all that is done against me is going to be taken care of. And that will be under the lordship of Jesus Christ, who is the savior and the one who is God in the flesh. And all of us know that a day is coming when Jesus is going to return.
Many of us believe he's going to be setting up a kingdom even here on earth, though everything is going to be changed. God says, I have it under control and justice is coming. The voice of the sun is one of justice. And now we come to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
The voice of the Holy Spirit in verse 10. Now, therefore, all kings be wise, be warned, all rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the sun lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all those who take trust in him. How do we summarize all this and leave with some transforming lessons? First of all, things are not what they appear to be. It may appear as if secularism, it may even appear the devil is winning, but he isn't. It may appear that way, but that is a superficial way to view reality because God is the one who is allowing this and in the end, God wins.
And you and I must recognize that to be the case. Even in the case, I remember being in Turkey, Rebecca and I visited the seven churches of revelation and there are no churches, they're only mosques. And a very devout Muslim guide said to me, Islam's ability to crush the church is proof of its superiority as a religion. All throughout the Middle East at one time, the Middle East was largely Christian, even Syria and some of those countries, at least nominally Christian and Islam crushed all that. So he said that Islam's ability to crush the church, he didn't use the word crush, he was more sensitive than that, but his ability to transform the church or to obliterate the church is proof of its superiority and this troubled me deeply because it made Jesus look weak. And we were on a cruise, this was about 12 years ago, I went back to the ship and I said, Lord, give me wisdom as to what these non-existent churches in these cities have to say to the American church. And that actually became the basis of a book I wrote about Islam and namely The Cross in the Shadow of the Crescent.
What lessons are there to be learned? Well, those of us who take the book of Revelation a little more literally than some of you might, and I'm not here to negotiate those things, but isn't it interesting in chapter 13 of the book of Revelation, you find Antichrist is ruling and the Bible says, all who dwell upon the face of the earth worship him, except those whose names were written in the Lamb's book of life from before the foundation of the world. They don't, but everybody else does, and those who don't, they are killed with a sword. Now, if you take the point of view that the person with the most power and the most authority is going to win, my goodness, throw in your lot with Antichrist because he's the one, the entire earth world worships him.
You have the political, you have the religious and you have the economic part of the world all coming together in one person. That's chapter 13. But then when you get to chapter 15, you see this reversal of fortune. I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire and them who had gotten the victory over the beast and over his image and over his number of his name and they stand on the sea of glass having the harps of God and they sing the song of Moses, the servant of the Lord and the song of the Lamb saying, great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God almighty. Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Chapter 13, Antichrist is winning. Chapter 15, those whom he kills arrive in heaven victorious.
A couple chapters later, Antichrist, the false prophet thrown into the lake of fire. So don't go by what you see, but recognize that things are not what they appear to be. And then I want to leave you tonight with the words of the Psalm that we have just read, kiss the sun.
That means do homage to the sun. The best thing that you can do if you've never trusted Christ as your savior, if you've never received his grace and his mercy and you've never worshiped him, what you must do is to worship the sun. I'm going to throw this in because I have a few extra minutes, but sometimes there are people who come to your door and they knock on the door and they want to talk with you and they have literature that says the Watchtower Society. And you often wonder how do I deal with this because I don't have a whole Saturday morning, but I want to leave a witness.
I've done this a number of times. What you do is you ask these dear people, and they are dear people, you ask them and you say, do you worship Jesus? And they say, no, we don't worship Jesus, but we do honor him, but we don't worship him. And then I say, did you know that in heaven they worship Jesus?
No, we honor him, but where does it say that you worship Jesus? I've actually had them hand me their Bible in which I take great delight. Then I turn to the fifth chapter of the book of Revelation where it says that there is one sitting on the throne and the lamb and they sing together the praises of God. Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God almighty, just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. And they are giving glory to Jesus. And then I kneel and I say, now I'm kneeling to worship Jesus. Why don't you worship Jesus with me? You kneel with me and let's get ready for heaven by worshiping Jesus together. And at that point they decide that this might not be the best house to stop in, you know, and then I just pray for them and pour out my heart that God might show them the light of the glory of the fact that Jesus is God, a very God. It's a witness.
It's a loving witness, but it helps people to see that in heaven not only is the sun magnified, but all people, every tongue and people and nation worship the lamb. In the movie The Last Emperor, the king wants to illustrate what it's like to be a king and he says, you know, I can do something wrong and my servant gets blamed for it. So he takes a vase off the shelf and he throws it to the ground and it breaks into a thousand pieces and a servant gets whipped. I want you to think of how different Christianity is. Christianity says that our king, we are the servants who take vases and we throw them down. And that's why you have 2 million people in prisons.
We are the ones who mess up our lives. We are the ones who commit crimes and we do evil. And lo and behold, it is our king who gets whipped for us because when Jesus died on the cross, his death was a sacrifice for us. He took our guilt, he took our punishment, and if we trust him and savingly believe, we belong to God forever. And this Jesus is someday going to come as our judge. But for now he is a savior and he's biding his time. God is in control.
God is on the throne and he has a plan and no human being can thwart it. Finally I got an amen. Praise God. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you shall take these thoughts and help us to see that even though there are those who want to speak against you to cast off all restraints, that ultimately you're God, help us to believe you, to trust you, and in the world that has lost its way, to remember that we belong to you forever and in the end we rejoice that you are the one who wins. And for that we thank you in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer. I want to tell you about an experience that Rebecca and I had about a week ago.
We were actually in a bus traveling to a spot to pick up a rental car. In this bus I had a discussion with a young man who told me that he believed that God was nature, that somehow nature was speaking to him. I said, is your God able to forgive your sin?
Well, of course the answer is no. Is your God able to intervene? Do you pray to your God during times of trouble and how does your God answer? Well, he of course is a representative of today's culture, people who want to be spiritual but they don't want to believe in doctrine. And of course my questions helped him to understand that the God in which he believed was the God of his imagination. You know, I wrote the book entitled The Eclipse of God to help us to understand how culture has redefined God but also how we have to get back to the God of the Bible. And I discuss various questions that have been leveled against God.
For example, is God more tolerant than he used to be, contrasting the Old Testament and the New? These are the kinds of questions answered in this book. Now for a gift of any amount, we're making this resource available for you. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. This book emphasizes that we need to get back to God but it is also therefore an apologetic. It's the kind of book that you want to give to college students to help them to understand why God is absolutely necessary to undergird morality and truth and law. The title of the book, The Eclipse of God, once again that contact info, go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 and may I thank you in advance for helping us get the Gospel to the many countries of the world. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Some see a stark difference between God in the Old Testament and God in the New. Next time, don't miss Can We Still Worship the Smitey Almighty? For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
