Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Some scholars want to strip Jesus of anything supernatural.
They approach the Bible as its judges, not realizing that the book they scorn will one day judge them. Today, lessons to take home from our look at one of the lies being told about Jesus. 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, I'm reminded of the end-time judgments where all humanity, small and great, stands before God. Dave, it's very sobering to realize, as you pointed out in your intro, that we are not able to stand in judgment of Jesus, but Jesus stands in judgment of us. And you know, when we stop to think of that great white throne judgment, it is terrifying.
People ought to read passages like that in the book of Revelation and remind themselves that there is an end-time coming when they are going to have to give an account to God, and blessed are those who are under the protection and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. I want to share a word with our listeners. Truths like you are hearing on the ministry of Running to Win are going around the world because of people just like you. Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, what's an endurance partner?
Well, you help us run the race of life, and we endure together. Here's how you can find some info. Go to RTWOffer.com.
That's RTWOffer.com, and when you're there, you click on the endurance partner button, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. I encourage you to become a part of a ministry that is gospel-driven, even as we preach Christ as He is in the New Testament. Jesus is speaking there in verse 39, and He says, For judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see.
Let's pause there just for a moment. This man was blind physically. He was also blind spiritually. Jesus healed him physically, but Jesus also healed him spiritually. The man ended up worshiping Jesus. He ended up seeing Jesus for who He was.
For judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see. Something like this man, he was able to see physically but also spiritually, and those who see may become blind. Jesus loved these kinds of sayings which need to be pondered. What He's doing is talking about those who think that they see, who are convinced that they see, and Jesus says people like that become even blinder.
They become blind. There's an interesting passage in the Gospel of John that reads thus, John chapter 3, actually. You need not turn to it, but I would appreciate your continual attention to God's word. This is Jesus speaking, and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness.
It's a matter of what you love. If you're comfortable with who you are, if you love the way you are, if you're in love with yourself, and if you're in love with your sin, you can't hear a word that Jesus is saying. Light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.
Light. Light is terrifying. Terrifying to people because we all deny the dark side of ourselves, because of our propensity to defend ourselves and our unwillingness to be able to admit who we are, our unwillingness to expose our lives to God and say, God, whatever is in my life, find it.
Help me to deal with it. As human beings, we find that to be unbelievably difficult. We would rather close our minds to the evidence. We would rather take Jesus and analyze him and dissect him and criticize him and dismiss him than be confronted by somebody who's telling the truth about us.
I think of the man who read the New Testament and said that all of his arguments were like puffs of smoke in the presence of Jesus. If you're honest, that's our experience too. So there's a commitment to blindness, a commitment to blindness. We don't want to admit who we are. There's also a commitment to what I call self-deception. Self-deception.
It's a willingness for us to deceive ourselves. You'll notice that the Pharisees ask Jesus this question in verse 40. Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things and said to him, are we also blind? Jesus said, if you were blind, you would have no guilt.
In other words, there are different ways to interpret this. If you were absolutely stone blind and unaware of what is going on, I wouldn't hold you responsible for myself and the miracles that I'm doing. But because you say we see, your guilt remains.
It's the self-deception. By the way, when the Pharisees asked Jesus this question, this isn't clear in this translation, but in the Greek text, it's very clear. They intended Jesus to give a negative answer. When they said, now, are we blind also? They expected Jesus to say, well, no, of course you're not blind.
Because after all, they were the teachers of the law. But Jesus answers them differently. And he says, if you were blind, you would have no guilt. But now you say, we see.
Just ask us. Your sin remains. Your guilt remains. Martin Luther says this about the natural man, and that's the person who's unconverted. The Bible speaks of it as being the natural man. This is what Luther says in his very upfront in your face way. He says that the natural man is bound, miserable, captive, sick and dead, but who by the operation of his Lord Satan adds to this other miseries, namely blindness, so that he believes he is free, happy, powerful, whole and alive. He is blind, but he tells himself he can see. That's why you can look at the New Testament and hear messages on the gospel, and it does not faze you. Martin Buber wrote this about the human heart, and isn't this true of all of us?
The uncanny game of hide and seek in the obscurity of the soul is one in which the single human soul evades itself, avoids itself and hides from itself. You can be in the presence of Jesus and not believe. Could I say that there are some people who have genuine intellectual problems with Christianity. There are people like that that exist. I remember a man who could not come to saving faith in Christ until he had an explanation for creationism, and that was a barrier, and once that was taken away, he became a believer.
And as far as I know, he's a pastor today. But usually that's not the issue. Usually it is this lack of honesty in terms of willingness to expose myself to God and admitting my sinfulness, and therefore running from the light and making sure that the light does not catch me. Let's look at some of the implications of what I have said. First of all this, when you read the gospels, Jesus is not on trial. You are. When you read the gospels, Jesus is not on trial.
You are. Why does a man like Rudolf Bultmann tell us that we don't know anything about Jesus? That's so interesting. That is one of the most powerful affirmations of the truth of Christianity you could possibly hear. You say, how's that? I didn't intend to explain this, but I will in just a very short moment.
See, what happened is this. Scholars wanted to dissect the New Testament, cut it up, distinguish Jesus the man from Jesus the Christ, and they've not been able to do it. So in desperation, what they've said is, since we can't do that, let's just throw up our hands and say we don't know anything about Jesus at all. That's why they say that.
It's because they can't cut it up to anybody's satisfaction except their own, try as they might. I love the words of Augustine, though he lived long before some of these Bible critics lived. He says, if you believe what you like in the gospels and reject what you don't like, it's not the gospel you believe, but yourself. That's where the authority lies. So you have people coming to the Bible and they're going to decide what parts they want to accept and what parts they can't accept.
Oh, that's interesting. Tells us a lot about you, tells us nothing about Jesus, tells us nothing about the New Testament. When you read the Bible, Jesus is not on trial.
You and I are the ones who are on trial. Second, spiritual sight is more important than physical sight. Spiritual sight is more important than physical sight. Now, let's look at this ninth chapter and we think of the miracle that Jesus did. He does the physical miracle and the man born blind can see. And then he does another miracle. The man born blind comes and asks, who are you? And he discovers that Jesus is the one who healed him, who is the son of man, which is a phrase of the Old Testament that refers to deity and the book of Daniel. And he ends up worshiping Jesus and he becomes a believer.
Let me ask you this question. What miracle, what miracle was the greatest miracle of the two? You say, well, you know, healing the blind man so that he could see physically.
I don't think so. Did you know that the same creative power that Jesus used to enable this man to see physically is the very same power that Jesus uses to birth within us the light that we need to understand that he is the son of God. And the second miracle is much more important than the first because if you're physically blind, you will only be blind temporarily. Eternal blindness is forever.
But it's so much more important to be healed spiritually than physically. When I was in the church in Canada where I grew up, there was a man who was blind. As far as I know, he was born blind. He used to always stand up during testimony meetings and say, I'm so glad that the first person I'm going to ever see in this world is Jesus, he said.
Isn't that wonderful? Many of you are acquainted with Fanny Crosby. She lived in the eighteen hundreds in New York. You all know Johann Strauss of Vienna, the waltz king. Well, Fanny Crosby was the queen. We could say the hymn queen in New York. She wrote eight thousand songs. We still sing many of them like blessed assurance.
Jesus is mine. Now, she was not born blind, but at the age of six weeks, something happened because of a disease. And there seems to be a difference of opinion as to how it happened. But she became blind and was blind all of her life. Never complained, but used her awesome talent to write hymns and poetry. At the age of nine, she wrote these words. Oh, what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see. I am resolved that in this world contented I will be. How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't to weep and sigh because I'm blind? I cannot and I won't.
Fanny Crosby, the age of nine. There is something that is worse than physical blindness, and that's to hear the gospel and to read the New Testament and not believe in Jesus because of spiritual blindness. There's a third lesson, and that is that there has to be an acknowledgement of spiritual blindness. There has to be an acknowledgement, an honest acknowledgement of spiritual blindness in order for God to change our hearts so that we can begin to see and change our loves.
But why is it that people are unchanged? There was a man who did not like going to the symphony orchestra, but his wife persuaded him to because she loved the music. And one time as she was looking at him during the concert, he really seemed to be enjoying it, and she thought, you know, at last, at last my husband's getting into it.
Well, turns out that wasn't exactly right. Later on, he confessed that he had a transistor radio in his pocket and a little earpiece and was listening to a Cub game. You know, there are people who come to listen to a sermon and they tune out. If you don't have ears to hear and eyes to see, it'll be irrelevant.
It will not be life changing. As a boy, when I would read the New Testament, I'd come across the phrase that Jesus used so often. He that had ears to hear, let him hear. And I thought, well, you know, of course, if somebody even heard that, they'd have to have ears. You know, you try to figure this out.
Am I going too fast for you? Then I began to understand that Jesus is saying, yeah, you can hear the words, but it may not affect you because you're not hearing spiritually. You're not open to it. In fact, let me tell you that our dilemma of being spiritually deaf and spiritually blind is so pernicious. It is such a barrier that unless God comes and gives us light and does a work in our ears, we'll never hear and we'll never see.
That's how serious it is. That's why Jesus says, no man can come to me except the father, drag him, drag him. That's what the Greek word says, because we're not given to want to hear.
We're given to be committed to the idea that we can see. Thank you very much. Like a man on a plane to whom I was witnessing some time ago who says, I'm okay.
Thank you. I'm okay. You're okay. God says, I'm okay. You're not okay.
Sorry. Now, what should you do if you have been listening to this? If you have ears to hear and maybe you've not come to saving faith in Christ yet, what should you do?
Well, the answer is this. Throw yourself at God's mercy with an attitude of openness and honesty and say, I'm going to rethink this business of Jesus Christ and Christianity again. I'm going to read now with a willingness and an openness and God may indeed grant me light and grant me the ability to hear. Because without it, the Bible itself will not do you any good. Just look at the seminar, the Jesus seminar.
Think of Rudolf Bultmann and think of yourself. I think one of the best illustrations of what it means to come to the light is Nicodemus there in the third chapter of John. He comes to Jesus at night because he's afraid. He's a Pharisee. He's a teacher of the Jews and he comes at night because there are some things about Jesus that he has seen that are so wonderful and so beautiful and so compelling and he's still not convinced.
So he says, Rabbi, you are a teacher come from God because nobody can do what you're doing except God is with him. And then Jesus begins to explain. Nicodemus couldn't understand the new birth and Jesus explained that he couldn't understand salvation.
Jesus explained that the context in which Jesus gave the famous verse for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That's right there in the middle of this dialogue with Nicodemus. And in the end, Nicodemus becomes a believer undoubtedly because he comes into the light and publicly affirms his faith in Jesus and actually helps with the body of Jesus as you well know. So Nicodemus came from the midnight of confusion into the sunlight of confession. And maybe there's someone here who is listening, maybe many people, the internet, radio, this sanctuary. You are right now in the midnight of confusion. You don't know whether you belong to Jesus or whether you don't, but there's something within you that tells you had better. Could I ask you to open your life to Jesus, to believe on him, to know that you too can be saved as the Holy Spirit of God works in your heart and grants you light and hearing so that you are changed by God's holy word.
In fact, that can happen even right now. The Bible says that when Jesus was preaching, many believed on him. You can believe in the balcony. You can believe down here. You can believe in Jesus, the son of God.
Would you join me as we pray? Our Father, we do want to thank you for this marvelous story of a man who was healed physically and spiritually. And we think of all those around him who missed the clues. And we think of those who may have been listening to this message and they too have missed the clues.
And maybe they've heard the gospel many times, but they've never opened their life to Christ, content with who they are. Lord, the miracle has to be yours. I've said what I've said, but my words cannot do it.
Your word can. Help all of us, Lord Jesus, in openness and honesty to open our lives to you. Before I close this, can we just have a moment of prayer if God's talked to you? Especially those of you who have never believed in Jesus. Those of you who have come with doubts and questions, that's fine. For those of you who are ready to say, Jesus, I do believe in you.
Would you tell them that? Hear us in our need, we pray, O Lord. Amen.
Amen. So my friend, where does this message find you today? In an office, in a car, perhaps you're with friends, in a lonely house somewhere feeling rejected no matter where you are.
Come to Christ as you are and he'll receive you and he will forgive you. I'm holding in my hands five different letters. Three come to us from West Africa and two are Spanish-speaking listeners. Now the reason that we are able to receive information and encouragement like this is because of people just like you who have invested in this ministry. Running to Win goes around the world in seven different languages in 50 different countries. Here's what I want you to do. Go to rtwoffer.com. It's rtwoffer.com and when you're there, click on the endurance partner button. That'll give you some info. Pray about the possibility of supporting us regularly with your prayers and your gifts or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Some who study the life of Jesus cannot accept any supernatural factors. Thus the virgin birth of Christ is dismissed as a myth. For these people, Jesus has a dark secret who was his real father. To see why there is no dark secret, tune in for our next Running to Win. We'll be exploring lie number four, Jesus has a dark secret. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
