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Things That Matter Most – Part 1 of 2

Running to Win / Erwin Lutzer
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January 1, 2025 1:00 am

Things That Matter Most – Part 1 of 2

Running to Win / Erwin Lutzer

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January 1, 2025 1:00 am

Some things are more important than life itself. For the believer, even though our body is decaying, there is always new life within us. In this message from 2 Corinthians 4, Pastor Lutzer weighs the contrast between eternal glory and our momentary troubles. God’s promises give us an optimistic courage to face whatever comes our way. 

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Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If you believe the media, what matters most is who got elected.

In a hundred years, this won't matter. Let's cut through the clutter, fly above today's clouds of gloom, and find out what really is most important. The answer lies in the words of the Apostle Paul, words that will transform your life.

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, tell us what led you to preach on the things that matter most. First of all, Dave, I want to commend you for the intro.

You're absolutely right. When we look at the scripture that we're going to be studying together, what we're going to be doing is to fly above the clouds, so to speak, look into eternity, and find out what really matters. But to all those who are listening, Happy New Year. If you're like me, every year you wonder whether or not you're going to live until the next year. Well, here we are, and we're here by the grace of God. We've come through a difficult year politically. We've come through a difficult time economically. For many people, it has been a very difficult year.

Add to that some of the trials that people have been through. But I want to remind you that the ministry of Running to Win speaks to needs just like that. This message, for example, is going to bless us by helping us to look at the world, its reality, its disappointments, its pain, but look beyond that to eternity. I'm deeply convinced that if we want to live effective Christian lives, we will always think about running the race of life and will do so, as Jesus did, running the race for the joy that was set before him.

And so, even as we open the Word of God on this new year, it is with the hope and the prayer that your heart will be encouraged and touched and that you'll be better prepared to face an unknown future. I know that for all of us, life has its difficult moments, doesn't it? I think, for example, of the many of you who have suffered a lot more than I have because of circumstances that have been put upon you by others.

Some of you have suffered abuse and you know what it is like to be wronged and lied about. And life is tough. Then there are some circumstances in life that have more to do with what just seems to happen to us out of the blue.

There's accidents, health problems. We live in a world that is very, very fallen, a world that has a lot of problems and a lot of hurts. And the more you get to know people, the more you realize that your own hurts are quite a bit smaller because theirs are so much bigger. And I know that I'm speaking to many people today who are in pain. I know that because I know some of you who are in pain, and I know that for every person whom I know about, there are probably a hundred listening that I don't know about. The question is, how do we keep perspective?

How do we live in such a way that we aren't simply torn and blown away by the disappointments and the pressures, the hurts, the physical ailments of life? What we really need, it seems to me, is some perspective, some perspective. Many years ago, and just on the platform here, I looked at the publishing date of this book that I wrote, 1975. Can you believe it? It's been out that many years. It's called Failure the Back Door to Success. It sells very well at Moody Bible Institute during exam time. But in one of the chapters, in one of the chapters, I begin with this story.

It has to do with perspective. Dear Mom and Dad, this was a coed who wrote the following letter to her parents. Dear Mom and Dad, I thought I'd just drop you a note to clue you in on my plans. I've fallen in love with a guy called Jim. He quit high school after grade 11 to get married. And about a year ago, he got a divorce. We've been going steady for two months and plan to get married this fall. Until then, I've decided to move into his apartment.

I think I might be pregnant. At any rate, I've dropped out of school last week, although I'd like to finish college sometime in the future. On the next page, the letter continued. Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I've written so far in this letter is false. None of it is true. But Mom and Dad, it is true that I got a C- in French.

It is true that I'm going to need some more money for my tuition payments. Just so much better if you get the perspective. Well, what we need in life is some perspective. We need some way by which we look beyond the world to something that we can hang on to.

Bunyan in the pilgrim's progress, was it not pilgrim who kept looking on the floor and that's all that he would see until someone almost forced him to look up to see that there is something beyond the present. And we need to be reminded that there is something beyond cancer. There is something beyond heartache. What is it that matters most? Well, take your Bibles and turn to 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, and I want you to notice that the Apostle Paul in the last of the chapter, and this would be a great chapter to preach a whole series of messages on, but I've blown it because I already decided that I'm going to speak on the last few, so now I can't preach a whole series of messages on it because people are going to say, well, why didn't he do it in sequence?

So I have to let a couple of years go by and then do it again. Notice it says in verse 16, this is on page 1,099 if you're having a little trouble tracking this morning, therefore do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet the inner man is being renewed day by day for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond old comparison. While we look at the things which are seen, why I misread that one, didn't I? While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. What I'd like you to notice is that there are three contrasts in this passage that I have read and you can even write them in the margins of your Bible.

What are the contrasts? First of all, in verse 16, the contrast is between the outer and the inner. Therefore, we do not lose heart though our outer man is decaying. The inner man is being renewed day by day.

What is the outer man? It's the body. It's those functions of the body and the minute that we are born, scientists tell us that we begin to disintegrate. The process of death begins already. Usually what we call death is the termination of a long process because our bodies are always in the process of dying and the older you get, the more aware you are of it, the more difficult it becomes to live. Old age begins to slip upon you and there is within the body that wrenching, that inevitable decay and the disintegration is not only inevitable, it is visible and it is irreversible.

We are on our way to the grave and some of us are probably farther along than others, though we do not know who will get there first because sometimes even the young die. But those of you who are aging might appreciate just a little bit of humor and some of you perhaps have heard this. These are some signs of old age and if you don't know whether you're old yet or not, this might help you peg yourself in the process. You're old I guess when everything hurts and what doesn't hurt doesn't work. You're old when you feel like the night after when you haven't been anywhere. You get winded playing chess.

Your children begin to look middle aged. You know all of the answers but nobody is asking you questions. You look forward to a dull evening. You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going. Your knees buckle and your belt won't. You can't stand people who aren't tolerant.

Am I going too fast for some of you? You burn the midnight oil until nine o'clock. Your back goes out more often than you do. I like this one. Your pacemaker raises the garage door when you see a pretty girl go by.

You have too much room in the house and not enough in your medicine chest. You sink your teeth into a stake and they stay there. Now notice the contrast. The outer man is decaying but the inner man is being renewed day by day. That has to do with the soul. The Bible says that the inner man is renewed through knowledge. It is renewed through the word of God. It is renewed in optimism because of the promises of God because you know that even though this tent and Paul later calls our body a tent is going to be folded up because it becomes dilapidated yet we know that our true selves, the soul or the mind is going to live forever and it is that inner man that is being renewed day by day. It is being strengthened in courage and in power.

Now notice this. Those who are not saved, who do not have the renewal of the Holy Spirit and the word of God in their lives, they discover that the disintegration of their body and the seeming disintegration of their soul goes on at exactly the same pace and in the same way. So all that they can do is to see this deterioration and they grieve because they think that there is nothing else and there is no inner renewal. But for the believer it's like a tree that has fallen in the forest. It may be decaying but there is an inner shoot that is growing and there is new life constantly being energized and constantly breaking forth in the midst of that situation.

Now that's the way we are. There is always new life within us through the spirit, the life of character, the life of God, the power of the spirit. The outward man perishes, the inner man being renewed day after day in optimistic courage thanks to the promises and the power of God. My wife works part time in a hospital as a registered nurse and she comes home and she tells me stories about people whose outer body is decaying and all that I can do when I hear those stories is thank God that he in his grace and mercy has called me to a different kind of vocation. But you know there are people who begin to become senile and in their senility they become obnoxious, stubborn, angry, they swear, they make embarrassing remarks and they themselves are not embarrassed but people who hear them are.

Well you know what I heard somebody say? I heard somebody who had worked with these people and he became convinced that that kind of a response and those kinds of reactions are actually what that person has been like all of his life. The only difference is that as long as he had his full senses he could keep it under wraps, he could fake it so that he would be acceptable to society but that's a real individual. But you and I know that there are people who also have gone through times of senility as believers who have turned out to be sweet and caring and have gone through times of difficulty where the inner person is constantly being renewed even in the disintegration of the mind and the body. Paul says the outer man perishes, the inner man is renewed day by day. I think we've had two good examples here at the church.

Carl Johnson and George Cady both of whom died perhaps about six weeks ago. Beautiful men who to the very end maintained their sense of humor and their sense of desiring to learn and growing in God right to the last minute I visited Carl Johnson before I went to Morocco and he was giving me a lecture on a Latin verb which I didn't know the root form of and I thought to myself what in the world is this guy still being able to talk about the Philoquy controversy, controversy in church history, growing, learning, ever being renewed day by day. So one of the things that's important that matters most is the inner man and not the outer. There are some things that are more important than life itself. There are some things that are more important than bread and that is the renewal of the spirit before God because you begin to realize that though the outer man perishes the inner one is renewed day by day.

The inner outshines the outer. There's a second contrast here that we need to look at and that is the contrast between suffering and glory. Verse 17 for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. Notice that Paul uses the figure of speech of a scale and what he says is that on the one side of the scale there is all of our momentary light affliction. You say well the apostle Paul must not have gone through what I've gone through or he would not have called it momentary and he would not have called it light.

But remember what Paul says in second Corinthians chapter 11. Listen this is what he says he went through. Verse 24 five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. That means young people that he had rocks thrown at him. Three times I was shipwrecked.

A night and a day was spent in the deep. I have been in frequent journeys in dangers from rivers dangers from robbers dangers from my countrymen dangers from the gentiles dangers in the city dangers in the wilderness dangers on the sea dangers among false brethren. I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights in hunger and thirst often without food in cold and exposure and then he says apart from such external things there is daily a pressure upon me concerning the churches. Paul says you can take all of those things and you put them on one side of the scale and he says they are light they're like a feather.

It's like putting a fly on one side of the scale and an elephant on the other. He says in comparison to the eternal weight of glory that we are going to have all of these sufferings are light and they are momentary and they're a flash in the pan in comparison to the glory that is going to be revealed in us. You say well what is this glory?

C.S. Lewis has a message entitled the weight of glory. Lewis says he struggled with this idea of what it means to be glorified or what it will mean for believers to be glorified. Sometimes we use the word glory in the sense of fame. We say that some movie star has his or her moment of glory. Well Lewis pointed out very accurately that that can't be the meaning because that is actually a meaning from hell and not from heaven because what that means is that I am better known than someone else.

It is a selfish kind of competition. That's not what glory means. But just to think someday we shall stand before God and this is what it means to be glorified. We shall stand before God and discover that he takes delight in us like an artist delights in his creation and in his work. God will look upon us and he will be delighted with us because of our service and because of what we have done for him and because he has redeemed us and we are precious in his sight that will be glory.

And just think about it. We will finally fulfill the very purpose for which we were created. Namely to fulfill the will and the desire and the good pleasure of the redeemer creator God.

And so we're going to be in glory. You know people sometimes say well is it right to serve the Lord just to get rewards? What they want to say is that that is selfish. Shouldn't we just serve the Lord because we love him? Yes of course but those two ideas are not antithetical.

They are really part of the same piece of cloth. We serve the Lord because we are going to receive rewards but our greatest reward is his approval and his delight in us to know that we shall stand before him and we shall see him as he is because we too shall have glorified bodies that are exempt from all of the contingencies of earth and all of the accidents and the pushes and the pulls of human existence and the frailty of our own health. All those things will be gone forever and we shall stand before God and look like Christ. Paul says when that happens you're going to look back and you're going to say you know those 40 years on earth that I struggled with arthritis.

The 40 years on earth that I struggled with this or that will be like a feather in comparison to the eternal great weight of glory. All right my friend this is Pastor Lutzer. If you just listen to the last paragraphs of my message you will have some truth that will carry you through the entire year. I want to use these moments to emphasize the need for us to look beyond this world to the world to come.

We become so earthbound oftentimes the things that matter to us are the immediate situation and of course many of these things are important in order for us to live but my heart breaks because of the number of Christians who are emphasizing the present and they are therefore losing sight of eternity or you could put it this way they're actually sacrificing the permanent on the altar of the immediate. Would you pause right now and ask God to give you the strength and the help and that all of us might focus on eternity? Even as we begin the new year I'm going to conclude with a very special prayer for all of us that we might remember why we are here and look beyond the world to the world to come. Father thank you for the many people who support the ministry of running to win. Thank you for all who are listening. Thank you father for the number of people that are going to be reached in this brand new year but meanwhile make us faithful.

Help us to understand what faithfulness means in a world that is fleeting. It's time again for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. I hope you like being put in the hot seat Dr. Lutzer. Today's question from Mike will put you right there.

Mike emailed with this. Does Pastor Lutzer believe in free grace as opposed to lordship salvation? Well Mike as you know you've raised a question that has been controversial in the evangelical world and for those who are listening I have to explain. Free grace emphasizes the fact that salvation is a completely free gift and because it's free we don't have to make Christ the Lord of our lives we simply come as beggars to receive a free gift and then having received it God begins to work in our life and begins to teach us what is lordship really means. Lordship salvation means that you can't be saved unless you come making Christ Lord of everything asking him to be sovereign over your whole life. Well Mike this might not be very helpful to you but I'm somewhere in the middle.

I've always said that when you come to Jesus Christ to receive the free gift obviously you are turning away from your sin in that sense you are recognizing Christ as Lord you are recognizing the fact that he is the Savior you're turning from yourself and from your sin to Christ but having said that I do believe that lordship is something that we learn the rest of our lives we're constantly discovering areas over which Jesus Christ might not be Lord and even after we make him Lord then of course we still recognize that sometimes the territory is reconquered by ourselves or Satan so that's a lifelong process if we emphasize lordship salvation too much there are many people who are going to say who then can be saved this is demanding more than I can possibly give and so what we need to do bottom line stress salvation is a free gift you come as you are but of course you do come and in the process yes you're admitting your sinfulness and your helplessness to receive the free gift. Thank you Dr. Lutzer. Thank you Mike for your question. If you'd like to hear your question answered go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer or you can call at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at running to win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614. Running to win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago. Next time seeing the eternal unseen in the coming year as we contemplate the things that matter most. Thanks for listening for Pastor Erwin Lutzer this is Dave McAllister. Running to win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-01 02:16:15 / 2025-01-01 02:24:42 / 8

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