The Cross: The Basis For Morality Part 1

Looking to Jesus in a culture that rejects Christ as a culture that says it's your choices and those choices lead to polling place choices determine the nation's destiny. So where does morality come from the church in Chicago this sir teaching helps us make cross the finish line certain America is fast approaching the moral point of no return, what's up is down and what's wrong is celebrated is right, you're absolutely right, and you put it very succinctly, that we are in trouble orally and I need to emphasize the fact that we might not be able to reclaim the culture. But the question is can we reclaim the church.

That's why I've written the book Christians politics and the cross and urgent plea for the church to return to its mission. What we need to do in the midst of all of this political hassle is to remember who we are and our ultimate allegiance. This is one of the last few days that were going to be offering this resource, Christians, politics, and the cross so go to the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337 or go online RTW offer.com for gift of any amount. This book can be yours. 1-888-218-9337 or RTW offer.com.

Now we go to the pulpit of Moody Church to once again understand that the cross of Jesus Christ as the basis for all morality.

Well, I know you won't believe this fact better not leave it, but I still remember the days when there were these locomotives that used coal fact when they pulled into town.

The town of about 100 people, but several elevators filled with grain.

When the locomotives pulled in.

Even though we live 6 miles from the town we could on a clear day see that the train had arrived, especially when it started up every one of those chugs just billows of smoke. I don't know where the EPA was in those days, but the atmosphere was polluted. One of the things that the engineers used to say about those trains.

Once they had about 100 boxcars filled with grain and going about 55 or 60 miles an hour is that it would take several miles to stop just the inertia of the weight those iron railings would keep the train going so long after the motor could be stopped, and the engine come to halt the train could still go along the tracks. As we look at America today, we can see that the train the Judeo-Christian morality that many of us grew up with. The train seems to be stopping the motor seems to have come to a point where no longer generates the power and the steam and what you have in society is the memory of a Christian consensus.

To quote the words of Francis Schaeffer where people know that at one time we really did as a nation, generally speaking, believe in absolutes that everybody agreed as to where the line should be drawn, but they knew that somewhere there was a line should be drawn and even though the Bible was not widely believed it was nevertheless widely respected and there were certain expectations that we had a people, and of course they frequently disappointed us but still everybody knew what the standard should be, even if they didn't live up to it and now the train seems to be stalled on the tracks and everybody is wondering how in the world can we get this engine going again.

How can we reverse directions and turn this country back. I think that one of the evidences of the confusion that exists in today's world is the increasing role of law in the United States and our courts. Let me illustrate it to you and it's hard for me to say it exactly, but maybe some illustrations will get at what I mean.

On the one hand you have radical individualism, fueling every ambitious, every greedy desire that the human heart might have and encouraging us to go for it. On the other hand you have the courts constantly being brought to play to Dallas. The fuel of this individual passion.

The if it feels good do it crowd so you have a conflict there that takes place. Did you read this past week about the couple that killed their newborn baby crushed its skull little baby born in a motel room with the father and the mother present the unmarried father and mother.

I don't know how you felt that I was shocked when I discovered that not only were they going to be tried for murder, but if they are correctly found guilty as it appears that they are, they might receive the death penalty.

I read that and I was I was surprised were you surprised I mean they could kill this baby a week before and done so legally. So on the one hand you have the abortionist to say that it is illegal to have an abortion whenever you wanted, for whatever reason, at whatever point of the pregnancy. So on the one hand you have that feeling society and then on the other hand you have the law, suddenly coming up and saying no you committed murder. Logically, you might say if it was murder. An hour after the baby was born. Why might it not be murdered a week before it's born. But you can't ask those kinds of questions in our society and so what you have is on the one hand you have this fueling of individualism with its arbitrary morality and then suddenly it is doused by law, that comes on the other side. Maybe that helps you understand what I'm getting at, but perhaps not yet in my clear what we have in society today is this, this middle point that existed in American life.

This middle area between law and freedom, where people were able to resolve their own tensions and their own problems, and only occasionally resort to law. That middle area has now been squashed in many instances, it no longer exists. People can't resolve their own differences anymore.

The law has to be brought in.

Did you read the trip front page of today's newspaper. Here's a man who is harassed sexually by other men at work. He goes to the management. The management will do anything about it. So now he has a court case and the judges are looking at it than their beginning to prosecute. In such instances, and you say to yourself, why can't this just be resolved.

Why can't there be compromise. Why can't there be understanding why can't a an organization, a factory in which he works Some rules and and why do the courts have to be brought into it. The problem is that America has so smashed character. It has so depleted those resources between relationships between people where it used to be able to solve those problems work. Reasonable people could come to some agreement now is being thrown to the courts. I think that we should guess.

Should we have not that a society that a country that has 70% of the worlds lawyers would eventually take every single desire and turn it into a right and so you have reproductive rights, and you have group rights, and you have PC politically correct rights.

They found a new right in the Constitution.

The new right is that nobody should ever have to ever hear something with which they disagree. So everybody has to say the same thing everybody has to approve the various kinds of behavior and what you have in society therefore is and forced tolerance and as a result of that people are beginning to ask the question of where do we go with this intrusion of the courts into our lives to to resolve what should be disputes that reasonable people should be able to deal with.

Did you read in the newspaper some time ago where a judge issued a restraining order, to a three-year-old boy in a sandbox who was harassing a three-year-old girl. I know making it up. Wish I were.

How can you have that it used to be that to mothers used to be able to work something out. If the mothers couldn't do it. The fathers didn't, and if the fathers weren't around. Maybe the church resolved it and now I judge has to adjudicate between two toddlers in a sandbox is evidence of the decadence of our society that no longer can reasonable people work out. Even the most basic human relationship problems, and they have to resort to law because character and reasonableness and trust and decency. No longer exists, at least not in large quantities. It's there so often the public square has been depleted that we have to go to the courts will understandably people are concerned and some of you parents are concerned about what your teachers are teaching your children in school and you want to be concerned and you want to be involved. You cannot throw your children to those who would teach them us how to be immoral and and teach them some of the things that are going on in the schools and so you're involved but in the larger question is asked what about the whole nation and you have groups today who say we need to reclaim it morally. Wish I could find it, but I have the habit of receiving things which disappear on their own.

Somewhere in the mountain of information, but this week I received a brochure from a very reputable minister I having another meeting on how to reclaim the moral grounds that we have lost.

I don't object to that there are things that we can do together even with non-Christians that are important.

I think that in Cincinnati there are no adult bookstores. No X-rated videos are sold by would be wonderful if that were to happen in the city of Chicago but it would not be a victory that would be that great because there's a lot of other things that can be purchased here in the city that would soon take the place of those videos and magazines years ago my wife and I in our home. We had ants. I don't know if you've ever had ants in your home, but it's not something that you want to necessarily go out and campaign in behalf of any, we discovered that if you close the basement. They come through the door. If you close the door they come through the attic. We don't know where in the world. These ants came from were just glad that they aren't there anymore and isolate is with sin you block this door and it comes through here during the days of prohibition they said you know know the whiskey wealth of whiskey was bootlegged and people got it from here, and if they weren't able to get it from here. They stole it from there. It's a tough world out there and when you're all finished. You wonder whether or not it was worth the effort because unless you keep up some kind of a campaign all the time your gains.

First of all, are minimal.

They don't last long, and they never really change the human heart of what I need to tell you today that if we want to put fire back into the train.

We want to release still but old locomotive.

We have to buy into some biblical propositions and let me give them to you today. The first is this that morality is based on God's based on God can't have morality without God is like asking for leaves without a tree.

It's like asking petals without a flower. It just does not exist. This would take one separate message. I could probably do it in 45 minutes in a lecture but that's not what you're getting today to prove that out of atheism. No morality whatever can arise.

None of the minute I say that you say oh I know an atheist is trustworthy. We've been given our keys when we go on vacation.

Yes, of course, because atheist you are created in the image of God and therefore they have a sense of rightness and wrongness. Augustine referred to them as well. As is those who were virtuous pagans.

He said there are such but their morality arises out of the fact that they are creatures created in the image of God. It does not arise out of atheism logically out of atheism. No morality whatever can arise when he is tied to God. When God said these are the 10 Commandments he meant. This is what I am like you look at those commandments, and you get a glimpse of me remember the liberals who thought that they could do away with the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and still keep the sermon on the Mount oil tell you that didn't last long because once they got rid of the supernatural Jesus and once they got rid of a transcendent God. They were left with the sermon on the mount that nobody wanted to obey, so it was constantly rewritten to fit the fallenness of human nature because you cannot have morality without God. Secondly morality ultimately is changed to the transforming work of Jesus Christ. The transforming work of Jesus Christ of any man be in Christ he is a new creation. Old things are passed away.

All things have become new is the transforming work, and that is the unique message of the church that you can't find in any of the political parties and that's not wrong I'm just simply stating a fact that there is a transformation of heart that God wants to bring about. And then there's 1/3 supposition that I want to give you today that is the most direct to office today and that is to say that we clean up the world's best we clean up the world the best by cleaning up the church first by cleaning up the church.

First, take your Bibles and turn to first Corinthians 1st Corinthians chapter 5 culture much like ours.

We been to Karen. Some of us, and we remember the temple up on the hill, which was dedicated in those days to a thousand prostitutes. Homosexuality were rampant.

As a matter fact, as Paul sat down to write this Nero was about to marry a boy by the name of Scorpius and it is said that 14 out of the first 50 teen Roman emperors were either homosexual or bisexual.

So you have all kinds of permissiveness you have adultery you have fornication you have everything that you could possibly think about sexually, and other kinds of sins in this pagan Corinthian culture and Paul is writing a letter to the church and he says in chapter 5, verse one. The first Corinthians is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind, as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. Very probably a step mother's mother probably died. His father remarried, and so the son and the stepmother are involved sexually and pulses you know things are bad in Corinth but you don't even hear of that. I mean there even the pagans draw some kind of a line in the sand. Now this is a good time for us to pause for just a moment to realize why it is that we should be so careful when we point our fingers of the world and the reason that we should never come off as self-righteous as as pharisaical is on a pedestal, pointing our fingers to all of the people in the world who disobey God's laws is one of the reasons is because the very same sin frequently exist among us.

That's why Paul is writing this. He saying they should've humbled you and yet you become proud and you've ignored it. Look at the sins that destroy society, whether it is abortion or divorce or homosexuality or alcoholism or drugs, you name it. It is within the church.

It happens among us and and what Paul is saying is that those are the kinds of things that must be taken care of now. It's not wrong to say that this was in people's past. In fact, as we shall see in a moment that's going to be Paul's emphasis is that people are converted out of all kinds of different sin that is understandable and that's why a church body such as ours or any other church in America is a collection of people who have been saved out of some very, very damnable sins and iniquities. That's the way it should be. I'm talking about people who claim to be believers. People who say yes I am a follower of Jesus, and they continue in their former lifestyle. So what the apostle Paul is saying here is that I'm not I'm not interested. He says in what happens in in other parts in Corinth want to know what's happening in your assembly. As a matter fact up all says that the whole body is affected by what this one person is doing last part of verse six. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough, don't you know that one man living in immorality in a church actually poisons the entire church. You take some leaven and you mix it in the dough and pretty soon the bread expands and just a little bit about a cup of it or whatever expands the whole loaf and Paul says that in the very same way this one man's compromise and sin affects the testimony of all of you all of you are compromised by it. See you can't quarantine sin, you Can't cut it off. You can't say well here it goes no further. I mean it's like trying to burn incense in a dormitory room matter how many towels you put under the door somehow it'll washed into the hallway, up the elevator, and soon they can smell it on the second floor. You just can't keep it neatly contained and and that's pulses. That's my great concern. In fact he says in verse nine I wrote to you my letter not to associate with immoral people and some people evidently misunderstood and said well if that's the case I have to go live on an island somewhere.

He said I did not mean that with the immoral people of this world or with covetous or swindlers or with idolaters for then you have to go out of the world you have to live with yourself.

I guess you know I have a friend, bless him, who doesn't think that he should attend a restaurant where a liquor is served because he's contributing toward the liquor will that's fine that he is that conviction but I wonder what happens when he eats somewhere else. How does he know how the money that is being given is going to be used if you have that view that you're not going to associate with idolaters and swindlers in immoral people then you have to going to go to northern Wisconsin, then by a little plot of land that a little bit of acreage and not see anybody for at least five years but watch carefully. The man from whom you purchase that plot of land he might miss use that money for immoral purposes.

Paul says that's not what I'm talking about. Of course you have to do business with these people.

Verse 11. Actually I wrote you not to associate with any so cold, the brother if he should be in immoral person or covetous, or an idolater or revile her or drunkard or swindlers, not even teeth was such a one for one of I to do with judging outsiders. Do you not judge of those are within the church. He said that's your responsibility you're pointing their fingers at them and you have not cleaned up your own act, but those who are outside thought judges remove the wicked man from among yourselves is a what Paul is saying is I don't come here to Corinth with a with a morality campaign to clean the place up.

You know, my friend, this is Pastor Luther. I suspect that if you go to church this Sunday. You'll find that there will be a lot of political discussion. Some of them might even become heated.

What do Christians do in the midst of the world. When you turn on the news you see you all of this wrangling, you see all of these false ideologies you see all of these accusations.

Where do we turn we always have to remember that the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ is our most precious possession. I've written a book entitled Christians politics and across an urgent plea for the church to return to its mission, and this is one of the last days that it will be offered love for you to have a copy for gift of any amount you can go to RTW offer.com's RTW offer.com or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337 let's turn off the news outlets turn off the noise as well and let us concentrate and remember who we are in Christ RTW offer.com or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337 thanks in advance for your generosity Christians politics and the cross. You can write to us running to win 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, IL 60614 running to win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Americans are adrift in a sea of moral we need a moral compass. The cross of Christ is that compass in the church must live by that cross. If our culture is to survive. Next time I'm running to win when Luther turns again. First Corinthians chapter 5.

Here Paul the apostle will clarify how believers should live amid moral chaos. Thanks for listening for Dr. Erwin looser, this is Dave McAllister running to win is sponsoring the movie church