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Pleasure: Life On Empty – Part 1 of 2

Running to Win / Erwin Lutzer
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January 23, 2025 1:00 am

Pleasure: Life On Empty – Part 1 of 2

Running to Win / Erwin Lutzer

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January 23, 2025 1:00 am

The world is full of pleasures. But as Christians, we don’t live for the pleasures of this passing age. In this message from 1 John 2, Pastor Lutzer offers two reasons why we must avoid the snare of worldly pleasures: because of what the world is and what it does. God is squeezed out of our lives when we chase worldly desires.

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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. The commercial once said, you only go around once in life, grab all the gusto you can.

This, of course, is a lie. Today, a challenge to a pleasure-mad culture that's infecting the church, a challenge to reach for the real pleasures God offers. 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, never in history have there been so many diversions beckoning to all of us. How can we shut out all the alluring voices we hear?

You know, Dave, when I hear your comments, I want to answer this way. The only way we can win that battle is to make sure that we understand that we are in a spiritual conflict. And we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. If we don't see that, we're going to lose this war over and over again. We're raising a generation that is addicted to pleasure, binge watching, and all the options that are out there, living on their cell phones.

To quote the words of Neil Postman, they are amusing themselves to death. And God calls us to a life of discipline and holiness in the midst of all of this. And you're absolutely right.

No other generation has faced what we're facing. For a gift of any amount, we're making available a book I've written entitled Seven Snares of the Enemy, Breaking Free from the Devil's Grip. I'm going to give you some contact info right now.

You can go to RTWOffer.com, that's RTWOffer.com, or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now if you missed that, I'll be giving you that contact info again. But let's remember, we are in for the battle of our souls. You have to do what is best for you. Therefore, pursue pleasure.

Go for it. What's wrong with that statement? Is there anything wrong with that statement? Would I surprise you if I were to say that there's nothing wrong with it? That it is true both psychologically and ethically? Properly understood?

That might be a surprise. It is true psychologically because Pascal was not the only person who knows that as human beings, we always seek pleasure and seek ways to avoid pain. In this series of messages, you remember we've talked about alcoholism and drugs and pornography and what have you. And those are all ways that people are, what are they trying to do? They're trying to seek happiness and avoid pain. Doing it in the wrong way, but nonetheless, that's their motivation.

But that's true of all of us. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. Secondly, it is true ethically in this sense that there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of pleasure. The real point is what pleasures are you pursuing? The Bible is very clear that there are two different kinds of pleasure. There is what we would call worldly pleasures and we're going to talk about those today, but there are also God pleasures.

Imagine this. In thy presence, there is fullness of joy. At thy right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. What's heaven going to be? Heaven is going to be a pleasure. Delight thyself also in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Oh, I hope that you were listening to the choir as they sang Yezu, joy of man's desiring, holy wisdom, love most bright. And then speaking of those who receive their joy from Christ, theirs is beauty's fairest pleasure. There is wisdom's holy treasure. Thou dost ever lead thine own in the love of joy's unknown.

Go for pleasure, but make sure that you're seeking the right ones. A man by the name of Henry Sugol wrote that the soul of man hath in it a raging and inextinctible thirst and that thirst seeks to be quenched. You and I are born with that. Pascal called it that God shaped vacuum, but we are born with a raging thirst and the question is where can our thirst be quenched? When the Bible talks about pleasures of the world, it always does so in a negative light. Talks about the pleasures of God very positively, obviously, but the pleasures of this world negatively and we live in a pleasure, crazy world, worldly pleasures.

This past week, I finally decided to scan Neil Postman's book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. And in the book, he said that it used to be that there were cities that represented America, Boston, the intellectual liberal establishment. You have, for example, also Chicago, the city of industry. You have New York as the melting pot. He said the city that best characterizes us today is Las Vegas. Glitz, glamour, money, 24 hour a day parties.

That's the age in which you and I live. People are doing all kinds of things for pleasure. Problem is that they are running on empty because they are the wrong pleasures as we shall see today. I mentioned a moment ago that the Bible speaks negatively of the pleasures of this world.

You remember in 2 Timothy chapter 3, he says in the last days, perilous times are going to come. Men will be lovers of their own selves. And then he says, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.

And that's really the key. It is that these pleasures lure us and crowd God out. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, this is a series of messages titled Seven Snares and we've talked about some of those snares obviously. What about the snare of pleasure?

I mean, is that really a serious snare? As I began to reflect on this and prepare this message, I began to understand how very, very serious it really is. So serious that it's probably the one thing that we find the most difficult to accept, the one snare that we most easily fall into without even knowing it. And if God today can show us how easily we fall into it and what the marks of that fall really are, we will have achieved something because you and I are loathe to accept the message that I'm just going to preach today. Take your Bibles now and turn to 1 John. 1 John, three verses, three powerful verses. This is not the Gospel of John now. 1 John is near the end of the New Testament, just a few pages before the Book of Revelation.

And John is speaking here in the 1 John, chapter two, verse 15. Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world, the cravings of sinful man, your translation might say the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, it says, and the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man or woman who does the will of God lives forever.

What I'd like us to do today is to see why we must avoid the snare of the world, which is a snare really of pleasure. First of all, because of what the world is, because of what it is. You'll notice that he speaks of the world that we are supposed to hate. Now, let me be very clear that the word world in the Bible is used in various ways.

For example, there's the world of people, for God loved the world. That's not the world we're supposed to hate. There is the world of nature. We don't have to hate the world of nature, though it can mislead us. This is the world as an organized system. It's a world really that is antagonistic toward God and his truth. We sometimes use the word world in that sense in other ways.

For example, you hear a news reporter say, I'm going to bring you a report from the world of sports. He's not talking about some other planet that's out there. He's talking about the organized system that we call sports, though some sports do appear to be unorganized, but that's what's meant. Now, this world system, what do we know about it? First of all, it is a very subtle satanic system because your Bibles are open to first John chapter two. Notice what John says now in chapter five, verse 19.

We know that we are children of God and can you even believe this? The whole world is under the control of the evil one. He is the organizing principle. He is the prince of the power of the air. He is the one who keeps the system unified to the extent that it is.

He is the one who has the goals and the desires and the aspirations that he loves to impose upon people who do not know that they are being led by him. So it is a very subtle system. It is a seductive system as we'll see in a moment because it comes to us very innocently. The world presents itself to us as something that we need because it is tied in with some very legitimate needs and aspirations and desires. And sometimes we don't know where to separate the one from the other.

We're talking here about powerful seduction. It is also a world though that competes for our love for God. Love not the world nor the things that are in the world. For if any man loved the world, notice the love of the Father is not in him. If you love the world you may not be born again. The love of the Father is not in you. That's how antagonistic the world is to God. There are two loves, two loves in verse 15. The love of the world and the love of God. Many years ago there was a book written I think All That I Ever Learned I Learned in Kindergarten, something like that.

It's close enough for my purposes. I could write a book entitled All the Theology I Ever Learned. I learned from my children's questions. You know you talk about being a father. Fathers have to be marvelous theologians or else simply tell their children to be quiet and ask the pastor.

That's the option that you have. One day our daughter Laurie who is always ahead of herself, maybe seven or eight years old, said to me as we were praying together or preparing to pray, she said dad should we love everybody? You can know that when a child asks a question in that tone of voice there is a catch coming. I said yes of course we should love everybody.

A little hesitantly I said that and then she said well you know what that means. That means that we should love Satan too shouldn't we? Oh child.

No Laurie. We love people but we do not love Satan. Satan is God's antagonist and we have absolutely no room in our hearts to love him at all and he does not deserve love and he is on a trajectory that is going to lead him to the eternal pit and eternal judgment which he so richly deserves. So we don't love the devil and if we don't love the devil we don't love the world. There is a kind of love that God actually hates. If any man love the world the love of the father is not in him. Do you sense the antagonism here?

Two loves. We shouldn't love the world because of what it is. Secondly we shouldn't love it because of what the world does because of what the world does and now we begin to really unpack what John has in mind.

Now we begin to get convicted. What are those snares that we've talked about? We've asked that we not fall into the snares into the pits that we've been speaking about.

Well notice this. It says verse 16, for everything in the world the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

What are the snares? First of all the lust of the flesh which my translation says the craving of sinful man. The craving of sinful man. Now you and I were born with certain desires. We were born with a desire to eat. We were born with a desire to drink because we become thirsty.

We're born with a desire to sleep and sexuality and all those desires are a part of who we are. But you see the temptation now is to take these desires, these cravings and to satisfy them in ungodly ways. And that's why we read here that the cravings of men are sinful. You see our desire to eat can become gluttony. Our desire for water to slake, our thirst can become alcoholism or our weariness can become laziness and our sexuality can become immorality and and that's what the the cravings of sinful flesh are.

You say well have I ever had those cravings? Listen to this list of sinful cravings. The acts of sinful nature are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage.

There you go. Selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you as I did before that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. There you have a pretty complete list but Paul was afraid he might even leave some out and says things like these.

Wow. And you see because these cravings desire that they promise happiness you see. We're tempted to find pleasure in all the wrong places, the place that leads us to emptiness.

Now we need to hurry on. The lust of the flesh, notice the lust of the eyes back here in 1 John chapter 2 verse 16. The lust of the eyes. There is such a thing as eyes having an appetite. We've heard the expression feast your eyes on this. Feast your eyes on this. We want to have this appetite and it may refer to even the finer things of life.

I mean it could be art, it could be works of art, it could be nature, it could be going to an opera, it could be all kinds of things. You say well is that sinful? Well in a moment I'm going to answer that question.

Not right now but you need to hang on. The simple fact is that the lust of the eyes also may refer to covetousness where we desire that which is not ours and therefore our desires are never, never fulfilled because we mistake the cure for the real cause of the problem and the cause is within our hearts. So you can see here that there refers to the lust of the eyes. Thirdly the boastful pride of life and this is certainly one of the snares we don't even see. We don't see ourselves as boastful just because we want the things of this world. We don't see ourselves as prideful just because we judge others so quickly when they fall into sin and have that good smug feeling that we would never do that like the Pharisees did. You see that's the kind of thing that only God can show us. Now what's wrong with all these things?

Let me give you a couple of ideas here. First of all because they make the same promises as God remember. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of the life, they're all shouting this way to happiness, this way to pleasure.

We are where it's at, where it's at. God is the only one who has a right to make a promise like that. You come on to me and you will be filled said Jesus. You come and you drink from me the living water. Jesus you are the one who fulfills our desires. The lust of the flesh, the world comes along and says we'll do it, we'll do it, we'll do it, we'll do it and you and I are so tempted to believe and to try.

That's the first thing. It makes the same promises as God. Secondly, it detracts us from God that the world does. Now here we come to some quote innocent pleasures. Somebody says well there certainly is nothing wrong with sports is there? There's nothing with wrong with watching doubles or the Cubs or the Bears and these other animals that we have sometimes running around in various contexts. There's nothing wrong with that.

Now I want all of you to listen as if you've never heard me speak for the first time because this is so, so critical. I don't believe that the devil minds whether it is sports, whether it is even something terrible like the addictions that we've talked about. He isn't that concerned as to what it is, doesn't care what it is. As long as these things absorb our attention and take the place of God and even the good pleasures in life do that remarkably well. They squeeze out God.

They do. Well my friend this is Pastor Lutzer and I don't know how I can put it more clearly. There's so many pleasures out there that squeeze out God.

Whether those pleasures are pure or impure they have detracted us from what is most important. I've written a book entitled Seven Snares of the Enemy. Now these snares really are a commentary on all of our society and our culture and each of the chapters has a prayer at the end.

This would be a great book for you to use in your church groups to study together, to pray together, to understand together in all honesty the war that is against us. For a gift of any amount we're making this book available for you. I'm going to give this to you twice because I believe so deeply that it will help you and even if you think you don't need it I believe that you know someone who does. Go to OfferRTW.com. That's OfferRTW.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-800-215-5001. Hope that you have a pen or pencil with you because I'm going to be giving you that contact info again. For a gift of any amount this book can be yours.

Go to OfferRTW.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-800-215-5001. The title of the book Seven Snares of the Enemy, Breaking Free from the Devil's Grip. Unless we come to terms with the devil we'll never win the war. It's time again for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Today's question arose from the world of politics and has to do with Mormonism. Betty from Illinois writes, I have questions about Mormonism, especially in light of Mitt Romney's comments, I believe in Jesus Christ as my savior. It sounds good, but I wonder how many Christians know that the Jesus that Romney believes in is not the Jesus of the scriptures, but rather that there is quote another testament of Jesus Christ.

Betty, you're absolutely right. I hope everyone realizes that. When Mormons speak of Jesus Christ they are not talking about the same Jesus. They are talking about a Jesus who is a brother of Lucifer, for example. Furthermore, you need to understand that Mormonism has many occult teachings. It teaches, for example, the deity of man. As God now is so man once was. And then I think the quote continues, as God now is so man will be. That's occultism. At the root of false religion always is the deification of man. Bottom line, you have to understand that there are some people who use the same terminology that we do, but they mean something very different.

Best advice to listeners? Go into a bookstore, find a book about Mormonism, and study and discover what they really believe. It isn't Christianity. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at RTWOffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or call us 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, IL 60614. These days, Christians are awash in a sea of pleasures, having time for everything but God. Many waste their time in a myriad of ways, and the options only keep increasing. There is a price to be paid for wallowing in the short-term pleasures of this world. Next time on Running to Win, a challenge to all of us to get our priorities straight. Pastor Lutzer will give us the fateful bottom line for those pursuing a life of pleasure and not seeking the pleasures of God. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-23 02:09:39 / 2025-01-23 02:18:05 / 8

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