Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. God's power is not ignited in a man or woman by education or upbringing.
It's set on fire by the Holy Spirit. God chooses whom He will use to advance His kingdom. One man He chose was Dwight Lyman Moody. Today, more on being usable by God like D.L. Moody was.
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, is the Holy Spirit still in the business of igniting the power of God in ordinary people?
Dave, the fact is this. God has only ordinary people to work with. I mean, just the other day I preached on a passage very closely related to what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians when he says, we have this treasure in jars of clay. And the jar of clay actually enhances the beauty of the treasure, the beauty of the gospel that the excellencies and the glory of God may be manifest in our ordinariness.
It's very encouraging, isn't it? Well, the first of January is just around the corner and we're making available for you a very special devotional. This devotional illustrates the beauty of God's creation.
It helps us to understand animals and of course astronomy and all kinds of other subjects that relate to science. 365 full color pages, one for every day of the year. If there's someone in your life who doubts whether or not there is a creator, well, this is certainly a book that they need. It'll be an encouragement to you in your spiritual journey and will lead you to worship. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com.
That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Let's worship the God who creates and the God who gives us light. And he is there in Glasgow week after week, night after night in the Crystal Palace. Now you need to understand that when he left in the final meeting there in Glasgow, it is estimated that between 30 and 40,000 people gathered as an overflow crowd. And they gathered in the botanical gardens and D.L. Moody stood on the roof of a house and he preached to them and everyone, almost everyone was able to hear him. By now, his sermons were printed in newspapers around the world, sometimes front page in their entirety. The media was printing everything that he said. And then after that, he went to London and he was in London for about four months, night after night, filling halls and auditoriums and theaters and stadiums.
And the people simply couldn't get enough of this man. When he was there, he preached the gospel. Now, the people in Great Britain had sort of thought that the good news of the gospel is that God received saints and Moody was there to tell them that God loved sinners. And this was news to a lot of people because they had bought into some of the extremes of what is known as Calvinism, where only the elect are saved, which the Bible does teach. But they had so emphasized that to the exclusion of whosoever will, that people were glad to know that God actually did love sinners.
One day when Moody was preaching, he said these words. A young man told me last night that he was too great a sinner to be saved. Why, they are the very men Christ came after. This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them. The only charge they could bring against Christ down here was that he was receiving bad men.
They are the very kind of men he is willing to receive. All you've got to do is to prove to me that you are a sinner, and I will prove to you that you've got a savior. And the greater the sinner, the greater the need of a savior. You say your heart is hard. Well, then, of course, you want Christ to soften it.
You can't do it yourself. The harder your heart, the more need you have of Christ. If your sins rise up before you like a dark mountain, bear in mind that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. There is no sin so big or so corrupt or so vile, but that the blood of Jesus Christ can cover it. So I preach the old gospel again. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.
That's the way D.L. Moody preached. Remember, as I told you last time, a plain man preaching the plain gospel and preaching it plainly. London made him, of course, even more famous than Glasgow and Edinburgh. By the time Moody returns, and he had been in the British Isles for nearly three years, by the time he returns, of course, he's met by all of the newspaper people and the media of that era because Moody was now known around the world. And he basically told them he had nothing to tell them except that he needed to go to Northfield to get some rest, which is very understandable. London alone, the estimate is he had between 100 and about 150 meetings, the estimate is, with two point five million people in London hearing him directly.
What a legacy. Now I have to tell you about the city of Chicago. He comes back and he begins to have crusades in all of the major cities of the United States and also in Canada.
I counted up at least 36. He's six months in St. Louis. He's in Boston twice.
He's in Philadelphia. And when he was there, he was there months at a time. That was the remarkable thing. And people kept streaming to hear him.
Fifth grade education, but preaching the gospel. And he had that ability to do it. And they came and they listened.
What about the city of Chicago? Well, in 1893, you have the World's Fair here in Chicago. And Deal Moody always was looking for opportunities to preach the gospel.
He was very creative, always thinking about how can we strategically reach our era and reach our time. And so Deal Moody thought of something. There were some Christians who wanted to just boycott the World's Fair because they said it's open on Sunday. And Moody said, let's not have a boycott.
Let's do something positive. So what he did is he recruited pastors from Germany and France and Poland and all of the countries of Europe. And he brought them over here because he wanted everyone who came to the World's Fair to be able to hear the gospel in their own language. And then he recruited about 200 evangelists and Bible teachers. Moody Bible Institute was about six years old at the time. So he took them from his training school and he began to put them in ministry and they hired tents to be built. And they were in theaters and churches and everywhere preaching the gospel.
And it is believed that tens of thousands of people were saved in 1893 during the time of the World's Fair. What a man he was. Now, we still haven't answered the question, though, why did God so mightily use Deal Moody? Ultimately, we only know that that's in God's providence and in his sovereignty, because we can't pry into his diary and find out why. But we do know that there were some things that Deal Moody did that gave God much liberty and much joy in blessing him. If you were here last time, you'll remember hearing me say that, first of all, he turned away from success to significance. When he said no to a hundred thousand dollars, when he said no to making money because of those girls that were converted in that Sunday school class, Moody said that from now on, money can't tempt me.
And money never did tempt him. After that, he had received a taste of what it was to lead people to Christ. There was a second decision that Moody made, and that is to go from many things to one thing, not to these 40 things I dabble in, but this one thing I do, passionately driven to see people come to faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
And that's all that really mattered. He was consumed with it. But there's another reason that God used him, and that was that Moody understood in ways, perhaps that we do not, what is called the filling of the Holy Spirit. When he was here in Chicago, there were two women who continually prayed that he might have the anointing, that he might have the filling of the Spirit. And Moody used to tell them, don't pray for me, pray for the unsaved. But they continued to pray for him anyway.
After the great Chicago fire that we talked about last time, Moody was in New York trying to raise funds to build the new church. And when he was there, he had an experience of the Holy Spirit that he never forgot. He was walking down Wall Street, and suddenly it seemed as if the presence and the joy and the love of God came upon him in a way that was gripping. As a matter of fact, he had to ask a friend and said, can I just stay at your place and give me a room so that I can just be alone? He had such an encounter with God at that time that it seemed to him as if God didn't stay his hand. If God wouldn't, he might even die there on the spot in the presence of the Lord God.
Dale Moody never forgot that time. He said he could scarcely talk about it, but he knew now what it was like to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He said the difference was this.
It was previously as if I was carrying water with a bucket and I was tired. He said after I had this experience in New York, it was as if I was being born along by a river. And he referred to the words of Jesus who said that he who believes in me from within him shall flow rivers of living water, that there is such a thing as an artesian well which can bubble up within us the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Every Christian receives the Holy Spirit at conversion. We are indwelt with the Spirit. In fact, Paul says, if you do not have the Spirit, you are none of his. So we all have the Holy Spirit. But there are many people who never experienced the fullness of the Holy Spirit. They don't understand the work of the Spirit as the Spirit of God leads people along. Now there were some folks who believed that Moody was really a Pentecostal because he experienced the blessing and the fullness of the Spirit. But Dale Moody never did talk in tongues.
That was never a part of what he was into. How do we interpret this experience of the Spirit? Should we seek it? Well, yes, we should first of all seek God. And if God then is pleased to give us an experience like that, that's up to him.
It's not our responsibility to seek an experience as such. But as we seek God and as we are pure before God, God may indeed choose to anoint us in a very special way for whatever ministry we have. No matter what our vocation is, we may experience the fullness of the Spirit. One of the reasons that many of us don't is because in the Bible, purity and the fullness of the Holy Spirit are related. And for many Christians, their cup of joy has sprung a leak because sin causes that to happen. And there are many Christians who have no joy at all. They are like a cup half full, trying desperately to spill over.
But they don't have enough for themselves, much less for anyone else. But D.L. Moody entered into the fullness of the Holy Spirit in a way that was indeed remarkable. One day somebody said to him, D.L. Moody, what you are doing has to be a work of God, because I see no connection between all of the things that are happening in your meetings.
I see no connection between that and you. And D.L. Moody said, that's true.
And I hope it always stays that way. I think that God is pleased when there seems to be no connection between what we're able to do and who we are and all that God enables us to do. And so that was the experience of D.L. Moody, the fullness of the Holy Spirit. So the third lesson could be he turned from human strength to divine strength, from human strength to divine strength.
And then there's a fourth lesson, and that is he turned from self will to God's will. Early in his ministry, when he went to London long before he was famous, he met a man by the name of Henry Varley. Henry Varley was an evangelist, and one day Varley said to him casually, so casually that later on Varley didn't remember he had told D.L. Moody this. He said to D.L. Moody, the world has yet to see what God can do through a man who is totally yielded to him.
D.L. Moody never forgot those words. He said that when he came back to America on the ship, it seemed as if those words were painted on the boards of the ship. And he began to think about it and he said, you know, Varley didn't say the world is yet to see what God can do through an educated man who's yielded to him. He didn't say that the world has yet to see what God can do through a talented man who is wholly yielded to him.
He said he just said a man, any man. So D.L. Moody said, by the grace of God, I will be that man.
And I think by the grace of God, he was that man. When D.L. Moody gave up self will and yielded himself totally to God, one of the most clear evidences of it was his humility.
D.L. Moody, it is said by those who knew him well, was one of the most humble, self-effacing men that they had ever met. One day, Moody was preaching and a man came to the platform, not sure exactly why this man was at the platform, but he criticized Moody's grammar and his inability to really organize a sermon well. Now the average pastor would walk off the platform and say, if that's the way Christians treat their own, I'm out of here. I can do something else that would have destroyed him.
D.L. Moody stood up and said that he totally agreed with the man and he apologized to the people for his bad grammar and for his sermons, which were not well organized. And then he said to the man, come over here. I want you to come to the podium and I want you to pray for me that God will help me to be able to preach better and to have better grammar.
What are you going to do with a man like that? You know, it was Bunyan who said, he who is low need fear, no fall. One day here in America, a man shook hands with Moody and said, well at last I get to shake hands with the man whom God has mightily used. And Moody said, I'm sure glad that in your sentence you put that little phrase, a man whom God has mightily used. Then Moody scooped up some dirt in his hand and let it fall through his fingers and said, you see this? That's what I am. I'm only dirt.
And what makes the dirt different is that God may use dirt, but that's all I am. So there he is, a man whom tens of millions of people heard preach, spending his last days in America, ending in a crusade in Kansas City and getting sick and being taken back to Northfield. And so now, because all good things must come to an end, we come to the end of Dwight L. Moody. It's 1899, it's December the 21st, and he is very ill and it's very clear that he's going to die at the ripe old age, by the way, of 62. So he's lying there and his son-in-law's with him all night. His son Will comes in at three in the morning and D.L. Moody begins to say, Earth recedes, heaven opens. His son Will said, Dad, are you dreaming? And he says, this is no dream. He says, if this be death, it is glorious.
A few moments later, he revived and I had a conversation and once again told his wife what she needed to do and told his son what their responsibilities were and said a few things about what needed to be done at the school. And then he again very clearly was in a period of transition from this life to the next in which he said, I already see the children. He said, I can see Dwight and Irene.
Dwight was a little baby, a little grandson of D.L. Moody's who died when he was only about one year old and Irene died at the age of four. And Moody said, I already see Dwight and Irene. A few moments later, D.L. Moody said, this is my coronation.
This is the day for which I wait. And then Moody died. A few years before that, he had said, someday you shall read in the newspaper that D.L. Moody is dead.
He said, do not believe it for in that moment, I shall be more alive than I have ever been. And so D.L. Moody went into eternity.
A number of years ago, it was my privilege to be in Northfield and to visit D.L. Moody's grave. He's buried there along with Emma. And on his tombstone, there is a remarkable verse that was one of his favorites.
In fact, it hung over his office at what used to be the facilities of the Moody Bible Institute. And it is this taken from the Book of First John. The earth passes away and all of its lusts, but he who does the will of God abides forever. And that's on his tombstone. At the end of the day, the world does pass away.
The 100,000 that he was hoping to earn and could have earned, all that passes away. But there is one thing that abides, and that is the will of God. And those who do it, they do abide forever. And you and I have the wonderful privilege of having a legacy of a founder such as Dwight L. Moody to motivate us through his life and through his witness. We here at the Moody Church do not revere D.L.
Moody. He was far from perfect. There were some things that he believed that some of us might not even agree with, but we do honor him as a great man of faith and as a man who loved God and had a passion to lead people to Jesus Christ. So what do we say now as we conclude?
How do we sum it all up? What was it all about? What was his dying passion? One day he and Sankey were riding on a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
And on the way, D.L. Moody was reading a letter and Sankey was reading a poem. The poem was actually written by a woman by the name of Elizabeth Clefane, and she had had a brother who was a lost sheep.
He was the kind of person who was an alcoholic and actually died and was found along the side of a road. And as his sister was contemplating this tragedy, she hoped that maybe her brother at some point came to saving faith in Jesus Christ. And the idea occurred to her to write a poem about her own heart's desire that there are those out there who are really lost sheep and the shepherd, according to the book of John, Jesus said, the good shepherd, he leaves the ninety and nine if there is one that is lost. And then he goes out into the hills and he finds the lost sheep. And that's what the poem was about. Well, the very next day, Sankey had, by the way, had taken the poem and put it in his pocket, hoping to put it into his scrapbook. The very next day, the theme that was used in the service was the good shepherd.
D.L. Moody preached and some others preached, and the emphasis was on how Jesus, the good shepherd, seeks for his sheep. And then at the end of the meeting, Moody turns to Sankey and says, Sankey, what I want you to do now is to conclude with a hymn.
Would you conclude with a solo? Sankey doesn't quite know what to do. He can't use Psalm twenty three because it was already sung twice in that very meeting. Sankey takes the piece of paper out of his pocket and puts it on the organ and thinks to himself, you know, here's a poem. There was no music to it. Maybe I can make up some music. And so he improvises and he begins to sing. There were ninety and nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold. He begins to think to himself, I got through the first stanza, but can I even repeat what I just did for the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth?
Well, he did. When it was over, D.L. Moody was in tears, as was half the congregation there in Edinburgh.
The ninety and nine became an instant favorite. It was part of the Moody hymnal and it was sung throughout Scotland. It was sung everywhere where D.L.
Moody went. It became a famous song. One person who listened to Sankey sing it said that it was as if Jesus was going up and down the aisles, in the balconies, in places where people couldn't even see the singer.
And Jesus was knocking on people's hearts and he was rescuing sheep even when the song was being sung. And that's really the passion of D.L. Moody's heart.
D.L. Moody, if he were here today, would say to you, have you trusted Christ as savior? Have you come? Are you the lost sheep that Jesus is looking for today?
All right. This is Pastor Lutzer. So I have to ask you, are you the lost sheep that Jesus is looking for today?
Would you come to him? He is the good shepherd. He knows his own sheep by name. And you're not sure whether or not you are one of his sheep? Well, make sure today. Come to him in repentance and faith.
Believe the gospel and he will receive you. You know, the first of January is just around the corner and all of us think of beginning a new slate, so to speak. We have a very unique devotional. Now, I need to tell you that oftentimes science and God are pitted against each other. Well, this book really shows that there is no need to do that. As a matter of fact, it enhances God's immediate wonderful creation. Three hundred and sixty five full color pages, one for every day of the year, every day reminding us of the fact that God is the creator and the intimacy and the accuracy with which God creates is breathtaking.
Well, for a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Very quickly go to RTWOffer.com, RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago to help you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. The Christmas season is upon us, a time of goodwill and rejoicing that Jesus was born. Next time, we begin a series from the Gospel of John on The Light Has Come. Plan to join us. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
