BINGHAM: Good evening. I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and welcome to Ask
Ligonier. It was almost two years ago that we launched
Ask Ligonier, a biblical and theological chat service, a rather ambitious new outreach for
Ligonier Ministries as we positioned team members across multiple countries and multiple
time zones so that that we could answer your Bible questions twenty-four hours a day, six
days a week. And since that time, thousands and thousands
of biblical questions have been answered, coming in either through social media, online
chat, or email. And occasionally, we like to bring a teacher,
a guest teacher, into the studio to be really a guest member of the Ask Ligonier team to
be able to answer your biblical questions live and to do it on camera. And tonight is one of those nights, and our
special guest this evening is someone who really doesn't need an introduction. He's a popular author and Bible teacher. He served as the pastor teacher at Grace Community
Church for over fifty years. Our guest this evening is Dr. John MacArthur. Dr. MacArthur, thank you for being with us. MACARTHUR: It's my pleasure, Nathan. Thank you for the invitation. BINGHAM: Well, if you have a question for
Dr. MacArthur, be sure to use the #askligonier hashtag on Twitter, find Ligonier's Facebook
page and send us a message or basically leave a comment wherever it is that you're watching
the live stream this evening. Now Dr. MacArthur, you know that Ligonier
has been committed to providing trusted teaching to students for approaching fifty years now,
and so we launched the Ask Ligonier chat service so folks on the internet in countries around
the world could come and ask Bible questions whenever they had them. And as I said at the beginning, we've got
people in the United States and Australia and other countries so that we can answer
those questions twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, and so tonight there are thousands
of people watching from around the world, and they're flooding Twitter and Facebook
and YouTube and other places with questions for you. And I know we've had this in the schedule
for close to six months. I've personally been looking forward to it
for a number of months, and so what I really want to do at the beginning is to start with
a lightning round so that we can get to as many of these questions as possible. MACARTHUR: Is this an Alzheimer's test? BINGHAM: Possibly, we'll find out. I'll let you know at the end if you pass. MACARTHUR: Okay, okay. BINGHAM: But, here's the challenge. If it's a lightning round, your answers need
to be around thirty to forty-five seconds each, and I can promise you everyone online
is going to be timing your answers. So are you ready for the challenge? MACARTHUR: Okay, I'm ready. BINGHAM: Okay. MACARTHUR: Hit me. BINGHAM: Alright, the first question comes
from Jim. He's on Twitter and Jim wants to know if,
"I'm really saved, why do I still have guilt from my past?" MACARTHUR: Because you cannot rid yourself
of your memories. Regeneration renews the soul, the inner man. You're a new creation in Christ, but that
new creation in Christ is incarcerated in flesh, and that flesh is the composite of
what it means to be a fallen human being. So, your memories are a part of that flesh
and that's always going to be there. The good news is that as you grow in grace
and in the knowledge of Christ over time, those memories will fade. But look, sinful experiences, perhaps you
would say, are as vivid as any experiences in life, maybe more vivid than other experiences
of life because of the heightened emotions. So it's not likely that you're going to forget
your sin, but gradually it'll fade away as you are renewed in your mind and in your Christ-likeness. BINGHAM: That's a great length for an answer. So I think you're going to do well for this
lightning round. Alright, next question is from Facebook. Someone's asking, "Is there a prayer that
God cannot hear or answer?" MACARTHUR: Well, yeah, there's a prayer that
God will not hear or answer and that's a prayer that's inconsistent with His will or His purpose
or His plan. The prayers that are going to be answered
are the prayers that are prayed consistent with the name of Christ. "If you ask anything in My name, the Father
hears and the Father responds," John 14 says so. That's why we encourage everybody to pray
according to the will of God. You don't really want to pray against the
will of God. You want to find yourself lined up with the
purposes of God. So God will not answer prayers inconsistent
with His will because He's going to accomplish His purposes. BINGHAM: Okay, next question is from Tina. She's also asking from Facebook. Her question is, "Discuss the meaning of 'Let
he who is without sin cast the first stone.'" What does that mean? MACARTHUR: Yeah, it's just a simple idea that
says, "You're not the final judge of anybody." You know, when our Lord says, "Judge not lest
you be judged," some people say, "Well, you're not supposed to judge me. You're not supposed to judge me." That's not true, because we are told in the
Scripture to evaluate everything, to discern everything. But what it means basically is you're not
the final judge. You're not sitting in final judgment on anybody's
life, because Paul says to the Corinthians, "Even when I know nothing against myself,
herein am I not justified? Only God knows my motives and the inner thoughts." So, we can certainly look at someone's life
and make a determination, and we need to do that. "By their fruits, we will know them." So we need to make determinations about people's
spiritual condition by what we see and what we observe, but that is not the final judgment. The final judgment rests with God. BINGHAM: Someone using our online chat service
is asking, "Under what circumstances is it appropriate to leave a church?" MACARTHUR: Well, there would be a lot of circumstances
when it would be appropriate to leave a church; when God is dishonored, when error is taught,
when sin is condoned. I think what the question implies is somebody
who's in a church that basically is preaching the gospel, opening the Bible, but it's not
everything it should be. And my answer to that question, which I get
an awful lot, is put yourself in the best possible church available to you. Find the place because before the Lord you're
responsible to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. You need to be in a church that's going to
help that the most. So don't languish in an inadequate church
when there's a better one nearby that's more faithful. BINGHAM: Another one from our online chat
service. This question is, "Why did Jesus weep at the
death of Lazarus in John 11?" MACARTHUR: Because He is moved with compassion. He is, basically, in all points tempted like
as we are. He feels what we feel. We have not a High Priest who cannot be touched
with our infirmities. He was weeping with those who weep. He wasn't weeping because of the end of Lazarus,
because the end of Lazarus was going to be resurrection. He was weeping because of the sorrow of Mary
and Martha. And this is the empathy, this is the sympathy,
the tenderness, the kindness of Christ manifesting itself in that setting. BINGHAM: A question sent to us on Facebook,
"Which Bible commentaries do you recommend?" MACARTHUR: Good ones. BINGHAM: That's a good lightning round answer. MACARTHUR: Yeah, well, look, I mean, faithful
to the text, faithful to the text. And look, any Bible commentary typically is
going to have some theological predisposition. Let's say some of them are Reformed, some
of them might be Arminian, some of them might be devotional, some in the middle. Find one that is relentlessly faithful to
what the text teaches, and I don't mean by that some technical commentary, but find one
that grapples with the text without a lot of presuppositions. BINGHAM: Another question from Facebook. "How should we approach being in the world
but not being of the world?" MACARTHUR: Well, we don't have to approach
it because it's where we are. I don't have to worry about how to do that. I'm there. And the simple answer to that is to be in
the world rather but not of the world. And I think, Paul answers that question in
a simple way in Colossians 3, "Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth." So, what you have to do is focus on the fact
that heaven is your home. That's where your citizenship is. Your Father is there. Your Savior is there. The redeemed and glorified saints are there. The church triumphant is there. Your inheritance is there. Your reward is there. A home being prepared for you is there. So it's a matter of where your affections
lie, and this is what our Lord was saying also in the book of Matthew when He said,
"Wherever your heart is that's where your money's going to go," so if your heart is
in the world that's where your money is going to go, but your treasure is going to follow
your heart. So I just think living a heavenly life is
making sure that the priority in your life is always that which is related to the eternal
kingdom of Christ. BINGHAM: Michael, on Twitter, he's asking
us, "Do you use any Bible apps or audio Bibles?" MACARTHUR: Yeah, I sometimes use basically
the MacArthur Study Bible app, and it's got…Grace to You has an audio version of that so while
I'm driving I can turn on and listen to the Bible. I love to do that. I love to listen to it. I don't use a lot of Bible apps in my study
because I'm basically hard to retrain, and I've spent my whole life surrounded by books. I'm not really adept at running on the computer,
so I'm still working through stacks of books. That's my world. BINGHAM: Alright, next question. This is a comment on YouTube. Liz wants to know, "Does God hear the prayers
of unbelievers?" MACARTHUR: It depends on what they are. God would hear the prayer of a penitent. Jesus said, "Him that comes to Me, I'll never
turn away." If you call on the Lord from a pure heart,
from a sincere heart, He will hear that cry and that prayer. God is...the better way to understand it is
this: God is under no obligation to answer the prayer of an unbeliever. He has no relationship. He is bound by nothing. They have no claim on Him at all. Yet, you hear people say, "I'm praying for
you," in a very vague kind of non-Christian way. God is under no constraint and no obligation
to answer the prayer of anyone who is not His own children. BINGHAM: One final question for this lightning
round. We're almost there. This is a message to us on Facebook and the
question is, "Can you expound on what it means to fear the Lord?" MACARTHUR: Yeah, I think, fear is just another
word for worship, adoration. It's hard to put that in a lightning round,
Nathan, because fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's where everything starts. It's having a reverence of God. And as R.C. would say that, "The greatest
need of any human being, believer or unbeliever, is to know God, and until you know the fullness
of God you don't know what it means to fully fear God." The ability to fear God is directly correlated
to how much you know about Him. The more you have imbibed the wisdom and revelation
of God's character on the pages of Holy Scripture, the more glorious He becomes to you. The more you see His beauty, the more you
will have awe and fear and worship Him. BINGHAM: Well, you survived the first lightning
round. So, congratulations, but we're going to come
back closer to the end of the hour and we'll do that again. MACARTHUR: Thank you! BINGHAM: Keep sending your questions in for
Dr. John MacArthur. Be sure to use the hashtag #askligonier on
Twitter, send us a message on Facebook, leave a comment on YouTube or wherever it is that
you're watching the live stream this evening. And remember, as I said, the Ask Ligonier
team answers Bible questions twenty-four hours a day, six days a week. So, if we run out of time this evening to
get to the questions you've submitted, we're going to seek to get them answered for you
in the coming days, but whenever you have a Bible question be sure to turn to Ask Ligonier. You can find all the ways that you can take
advantage of that free service by visiting ask.ligonier.org or you can take your time
with your answers for these questions coming up now. MACARTHUR: Okay. BINGHAM: This one's from Brian. He writes to us on Facebook and says, "What
does it mean to offer worship with reverence and awe, referencing Hebrews 12:28 and 29? MACARTHUR: Yeah, and again, it's following
up the last question in the lightning round. How can I connect this in a simple way? The ability to rise high in worship is directly
correlated to your ability to go deep in understanding the nature of God. So, a deep understanding of the Word of God,
a rich and thorough and deep understanding of sound theology is directly the producer
of elevated worship. If you have a superficial understanding of
God, you have superficial worship. Even if somebody's whipping you up into a
frenzy, and it's loud and noisy and the lights are flashing and the noise is overpowering,
that's not necessarily worship. That's just noise. Worship is when the heart is elevated to the
heights of its love and adoration in the contemplation of what is true about God. It is your theology that produces your worship. What we have so often and what we see so much
in evangelicalism today is called "worship," but it's kind of an unemotional frenzy whipped
up by certain styles of music among people who have very little thoughts about God and
are really riding an emotional roller coaster with the words of Jesus or the names of Jesus
in it. True worship is deep grasp of the glories
of God, a contemplation of those glories, appreciation for those glories, gratitude
for those glories, that results in a heart that literally bursts with thanksgiving and
praise. That's the real thing. And the reason that, the reason that if you
come to, for example, Grace, or you go to St. Andrew's, they're singing hymns...why
are they singing hymns? Because they don't need to be whipped into
some emotional frenzy. Put in their hands an articulation of their
doctrine and let them sing from the soul the glories of those truths. We sing hymns because we don't need the repetition. We don't need the emotional stimulation externally. We want to sing hymns because they're rich. They advance the truth from verse to verse
to verse, and then they celebrate that truth in the choruses. So, when you think about, "Well, you know,
hymns, that's old-fashioned," no. The experience of someone singing great hymns
is the ability to borrow words to express what you feel about the great realities of
your theology. That's a very different experience than some
emotional experience with lights and loud noise. That may not be worship at all. BINGHAM: Alright, we've got another question,
this time from Facebook. "Is there any biblical support for someone
being, quote, 'demon possessed' in today's world?" MACARTHUR: Well, sure. It's only a question of degree. There are only two possibilities. You're either in the family of God or the
family of Satan. When Jesus in John 8 said to the leaders of
Israel, "You're of your father, the devil," He was basically saying, "If you're not a
child of God, you're a child of the devil. If God's not your Father, Satan is your father." So, "The whole world lies in the lap of the
evil one" John says. So, it's only a question of degree or manifestation. Every single unbelieving person is under the
control of Satan, whether or not that person has a demon inside him or her or several demons
inside him or her, it's just a question of degree and manifestation. I think demon possession is far more prevalent
than we ever would understand. We tend to see it in biblical terms in a kind
of a bizarre behavior, and that's what missionaries tell us when they come back from the mission
field and they see demon-possessed people and they do the kind of things like people
did in the Bible, throw themselves into the fire, and all of that. But I think demons are much more "gray flannel
suit" in our culture. I think they occupy souls and beings, but
they behave in a way that's consistent with the culture. I would believe that many of the people who
produce the filth and the trash in our culture are demon-possessed people, that they're being
driven by satanic powers and they don't even know it. It doesn't manifest itself in bizarre ways. They're not throwing themselves into the fire. They're not out of control. The demons are sophisticated enough to keep
that contained to accomplish their purposes in another way. But again, it doesn't matter in a sense whether
an unconverted person has demons in him, has one demon, or maybe is free of demons but
under the control of Satan, the end is the same. BINGHAM: Let me just ask you a follow-up question
to that because I know a lot of people often ask, "What about Christians? Can Christians be demon possessed?" MACARTHUR: No, of course not, because you're
the temple of the Spirit of God, what you have of God. You're not your own. You're bought with a price. You've been purchased. You have been redeemed. You have been transformed. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. "Greater is He that is in you than he that
is in the world," There's the distinction. He that is in you is the Holy Spirit. He that is in the world is Satan. No true believer can ever be possessed by
a demon. There's no reason to be chasing demons among
Christian people. Does that mean that demons don't, you know,
do things to distract us or distort things in our world? Sure. I mean, they're loose in the world. They're operating under Satan's purposes and
plans, and we do "wrestle against, not flesh and blood, but principalities, powers, and
the rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual wickedness in heavenlies," Ephesians
tells us. So, yeah, we're in a battle with demons, but
the battle for a believer is fighting the demons that have literally taken over the
thoughts of people in the world. And the passage to think about is 2 Corinthians
10, "The weapons of our warfare are not fleshly." We can't fight this spiritual warfare with
fleshly weapons. Pragmatism isn't going to work. The weapons of our warfare are not fleshly. They have to be "mighty to the pulling down
of strongholds." So, if we're going to get into spiritual battle,
we are going to have to realize that this battle is about tearing down spiritual strongholds,
and the word there is the word for "prison," "castle," "fortress," and to "massive stone
edifications." So, here's what spiritual war is. We're coming against these fortifications. And what are they? The next verse says, "Even logismos," "ideas,"
"ideologies," "theories," "philosophies," "psychologies," "religions." So, we're battling against ideologies that
have become people's fortresses and will end up being their tombs. And the real spiritual war is smashing down
the fortresses that people are captive in and then bringing every thought captive to
Christ. That's spiritual war. Chasing demons is pointless because you have
no power over them. You remember the sons of Sceva trying to chase
demons away, and the demons said to them, "Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who
are you?" You know, "Get out of our way." So, we don't have power over demons; that's
not our domain, but we are the instruments by which the Lord brings the truth, and the
only thing you can do to destroy error is to bring the truth. So, let's just sum that passage up, 2 Corinthians
10. We are fighting against these massive fortifications,
which are ideas raised up against the knowledge of God, okay. Any ungodly idea is a fortress that's going
to become someone's tomb if they don't get out of it. So, we smash those ideological fortifications
with the truth of God's Word and we are the instruments the Lord uses to do that. Obviously, He does the work by His power and
then lead every thought captive to Christ. People shouldn't be chasing demons. They ought to be taking the truth and bringing
it to bear against the lies that have held people prisoner and captive. BINGHAM: We've got a question now that is
one that we hear frequently on Ask Ligonier. This is from a lady called Christy. She wants to know, "What happens to the souls
of babies who die by abortion?" MACARTHUR: Well, I think, the same thing that
happens to the soul of any baby that dies. It goes into the presence of the Lord. Jesus said, "You'll die in your sins and where
I go you'll never come because you believe not on Me," in John. So He said the reason "You'll never come where
I am" is "because you believe not on Me." That is impossible for a baby. And, you know, our Lord even said that, "Permit
the little children to come unto Me for of such is the kingdom of God." What in the world was He saying there? I wrote a book called Safe in the Arms of
God, and I would encourage anybody who's struggling with the question of what happens to children
that die, Safe in the Arms of God. And, in fact, that book came out of a Q&A
at Ligonier with a bunch of guys who seemed to have not landed somewhere. But if you're the pastor of a large church,
and you have people that are losing their babies, you need to come up with a biblical
answer, so. I believe they are a marvelous illustration
of how God saves people apart from anything they can do. Is that any more, is there any better illustration
of saving grace than when God rescues the soul of a baby that dies and takes it to glory? I think the case can be made repeatedly. I think particularly of David, and the contrast
between David's son that died, and he said, "He cannot come to me but I should go to him,"
he's not saying, "I'm going to the funeral." He's saying, "I'm going to go where he is,"
and the contrast was he washed his face, he went out, he cleaned up, and he entered into
life. On the contrast to that, you look at Absalom. Absalom died and David could not be consoled
because he knew Absalom was lost in hell forever. So, this is the upside of abortion. This doesn't make the crime right any more
than killing anybody would be made right. I mean, you could say, "Well, if Christians
are going to heaven, we could kill Christians," if you're going to make that argument. So, God overrules the slaughter of infants. God overrules higher mortality rates in some
countries of the world and has through human history. God overrules all that by gathering the little
ones to Himself. BINGHAM: This question from Vicki on YouTube. She says, "My teenager finds evolutionary
science convincing but intelligent design models less so. How do I help him navigate a respect for science
while retaining respect for Scripture? MACARTHUR: Yeah, well, let's just back off
the Scripture point for a moment. To start having a respect for science, you
would have to have a respect for reason. Reason. And reason would say this: this entire universe
does not exist because of a series of unrelated accidents. That's not reason; that's insanity. That's when you put somebody in a padded cell,
because reason basically operates on one basis, cause and effect. Cause and effect, that's how reason operates. You see a cause and an effect, then a cause
and effect. You track that, that's what reason does. So, to look at the massive universe, macrocosm,
look at the microcosm universe and conclude that "nobody times nothing equals everything"
is a form of insanity. Is there anything more insane than that? That's like saying, "I'm a potato chip." I mean, this is completely irrational. You cannot have personality, intellect, emotion,
complexity, massive displays of power coming out of nothing. One of the interesting things that I read
some years ago was Von Neumann, who was a German scientist, had the idea of a perfect
machine. And so, he designed this perfect machine by
concept, and he said a perfect machine would be self-propelling. In other words, it would have within itself
its own energy source. It would be self-repairing. It would have the ability to repair itself
at every point. And thirdly, it would be self-reproducing. So, this perfect machine that was self-propelling,
self-repairing, and self-reproducing, he concluded, would be so infinitely complex as to never
be possible to build. And then he realized that that's exactly what
every single living cell in life is. It is a self-propelling, self-repairing, self-reproducing
complex machine that has within it structure and DNA and information systems that cause
it to do exactly what it does. If you look at that, you have to understand
that this demonstrates a massive, massive complex mind. Now, one other thing to say about it, science
doesn't have any business talking about creation. All science can do is observe. Science can say, "This happens, this happens,
this happens." There is no scientific explanation for creation
any more than you could say there's a scientific explanation for Jesus walking on water. What's the scientific explanation for Jesus
walking on water? There is none. What's the scientific explanation for Jesus
raising dead people? There is none. What's the scientific explanation for Jesus
giving sight to blind people? There is no scientific explanation. So, if there's no scientific explanation for
miracles, which is essentially why they're miracles, then what is the most monumental,
massive, incomprehensible miracle of all miracles? And that is that the entire universe comes
into existence in six days. There's no scientific explanation for that. If you walk back into the creation account
with science as your tool, you're a fool. The only way you'll know creation is to hear
from the first eyewitness of creation, the Creator Himself, and that's Genesis 1 and
2. So, science has no business going into places
where they can't see a reproducible reality. Creation is the most massive of all miracles. But again, if you're talking to a teenager,
what you want to say is, you know that every effect has a cause, and the complexity of
all the massive effects in the universe cannot have no cause. How do we know about creation? The only way we could possibly know is if
we have an eyewitness account from the Creator, and that's what Scripture is. BINGHAM: So the second part of their question
was about the reliability of Scripture or trusting Scripture. I want to note that you've written a number
of books that Reformation Trust has published. One that we released this year was titled
Final Word, which is basically on the authority of Scripture. So, I'd love to let that person that submitted
that question know that as our way of saying thanks for watching live, and this is true
for everyone watching live tonight, we would love to be able to give you a free copy of
Dr. MacArthur's book, Final Word. If you would like to request the e-book edition
of that for free, simply visit ask.ligonier.org/offer, that's ask.ligonier.org/offer, and you'll
be able to request your free e-book copy of Dr. MacArthur's new book, Final Word, as I
said all about the authority and reliability of Scripture. Alright, well we're going to turn to another
question, Dr MacArthur. This one's from John on Twitter. And John is asking, "What is the danger of
taking a universalistic approach to Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 5 verses 14 to 15,
noting there, "One has died for all." MACARTHUR: Yeah. "One has died for all," is simply saying,
"One has died for all for whom He died." That is a verse that is connected intrinsically
to the idea of a specific atonement, a limited atonement. And if you parse the verb of the verse, you're
talking about 2 Corinthians 5. I don't want to depend on my memory, so let
me... BINGHAM: Yeah, 2 Corinthians 5, 14 to 15. MACARTHUR: Yeah, no, I know that. "The love of Christ controls us, having concluded
this: that one died for all, therefore all died." You see, He died for all, "so that they who
live might no longer live for themselves but Him who died and rose again on their behalf." All that is simply saying is that Christ died
for all, therefore all for whom He died died. It doesn't define the "all." We know the "all" is defined as "the elect." The "all" is defined as those who have been
chosen by God before the foundation of the world. He died for "all." So, the point that Paul is simply making doesn't
define the word "all." We always have to define that. I mean, all men perceive that John the Baptist
was a prophet. Well, does that mean everybody who ever lived
in the history of humanity perceived John the Baptist was a prophet? Of course not. So, the "all" here simply is saying Christ
died for all. What "all?" The "all" who died in Christ. Backing off that verse itself to the issue,
the issue is this, did Christ die for no one or did He die for someone? If you say He died for everyone, the whole
world, if you take a universal approach to that, then in reality He died for no one,
because all He did was provide a potential sacrifice, and that potential sacrifice would
have to be validated or applied by some act on the part of the sinner. Now, what you've got in the death of Christ
is a potential offering, a potential sacrifice, so that He died but nobody really died in
Him. There was just a potential death in Him that
later on people could reach out and sort of apply to themselves. That is a very troubling reality because now
you have Christ, think of it this way, doing the same thing on the cross for all the people
in hell that He did for all the people in heaven, which means He didn't do anything
in particular for them except create a potentiality that they could somehow activate by their
own faith. This is deeply disturbing when you think of
what the atonement is. What Paul's saying there is when He died,
the "all" for whom He died died in Him so that He died for His own. They were in Him when He died. We were in Him when He died. We were in Him when He rose. This is a specific atonement. This is the particular redemption that Christ
wrought on the cross, and I think that's all that verse is saying, but the issue here is
not whether we're going to deal with the fairness of the death of Christ but whether we're going
to deal with the nature of it. Did He die for nobody just potentially or
did He actually bear in His own body our sins on the cross and win redemption for the elect? And that's what the Bible teaches. BINGHAM: This question from Wills on Facebook. He's asking, "Regarding Philippians 2, 6 to
7, what does it mean that Christ emptied Himself?" MACARTHUR: That's a really important question. First of all, it does not mean that He became
anything less than He was. It does not mean that He ceased to be God,
because then He would have ceased to be who He was. It does mean that He basically submitted Himself
to the power of the Holy Spirit and the will of the Father. In fact, if you go through particularly the
Gospel of John, He says, "I only do what the Father tells Me to do. I only do what the Father shows Me to do. I only do the will of the Father." And then He also said that, "When you deny
the things that I have done and attribute them to Satan, you have blasphemed the Holy
Spirit," in the Gospel of Matthew. So the self-emptying is, in the simplest way
to explain it is that Christ set aside His own life as an act of total obedience to the
will of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn't cease to be God in any sense. "Fully God," or "truly God," as R.C. used
to like to say. Truly God, truly man, no diminishing of His
glory as God, no diminishing of His glory as man, but all the Person of Christ completely
bound, as it says in Philippians 2, to lower Himself to the point of a slave. And that's the language that's so important. He became, he defines the kenosis by using
the word "slave." All the way down, One who was face-to-face
with God, pros ton theon in the Gospel of John. Then He prayed in John 17 to be restored to
that pros ton theon, face-to-face with God, because He had made a slave of Himself, voluntarily
submitting to the will of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit. Look, those are words that I can say without
fully comprehending that in a Trinitarian sense. BINGHAM: Jen on Facebook has a question, I
think very appropriate today, in today's church climate. "Is speaking in tongues still a biblical practice?" MACARTHUR: No, it isn't. It was for a period of time a sign gift in
the New Testament. I've spoken a lot on that through the years,
written a lot on that. There's a lot of good material on that, but
there was a time, particularly when according to what Isaiah said and Paul repeats it in
1 Corinthians, this was a sign to Israel that there was a time when God spoke to them in
a language they could understand and they would not receive that and they, obviously
they killed the Messiah, and God was going to speak in a language they couldn't understand. It really was a judgment. So, it was part of the sign gifts associated
with the apostolic era that has since passed away. BINGHAM: Why do you think it is that this
phenomenon is so present in the church today? MACARTHUR: Well, it got a resurrection back
in the early nineteen-hundreds in the Azusa Street meeting. It came out of the early annals of Pentecostalism,
but it's not isolated to forms of Christianity. It appears in other religions. There are other non-Christian religions that
have this kind of sort of hyper-spiritual talk and communication. I honestly believe that it's part of a whole
network of sought experiences from people who think the Word of God is not enough. I don't think it's faith that causes people
to seek this; I think it's doubt looking for proof, because they have basically been exposed
to teaching that says, "God wants to do more. The Lord wants to speak into your life, like
listening for the voice of God. There's more. You need more of God, more of this, more of
that." In those environments, there's a generated
dissatisfaction with what's available in the Word of God, and so this is not faith; this
is doubt. This is people who are disappointed because
they're not knowledgeable in the Word of God, looking for some higher experience. This is a kind of Gnosticism with Christian
words attached to it where, I mean, you hear this from, for example, a typical contemporary
charismatic preacher would say, "Jesus talks to me. Jesus told me to say this." In fact, I heard a woman preacher say that,
you know, "I don't really care what you think. Jesus tells me what to do." Well, that's pretty, that's a pretty dominating
idea, and if somebody believes that what are they going to do? They're going to back off and say, "This person
is getting a special message from Jesus." So, I think it's the chase for something esoteric,
that is a false spiritual experience rather than the true spiritual experience that comes
from interacting with the Spirit of God on the pages of Holy Scripture. BINGHAM: We have Carrie on Facebook. And they're asking, "Why is understanding
the doctrine of penal substitution vitally important to the Christian life?" MACARTHUR: Well, because if you don't understand
the doctrine of penal substitution, you don't know why Christ died, and you would assume
that if you're Christian you would want to know why Christ died. If you took one verse, 2 Corinthians 5:21,
Paul says, "You're ambassadors," right? In 18 to 21. So, you know, we go into the world, we beg
people to be reconciled to God. He's given us the Word of reconciliation,
right? That's the message we preach, "You can be
reconciled to God." We have the ministry of reconciliation. We have the message of reconciliation. But how is that possible? How is it possible for a sinner to be reconciled
to a holy God? That is the most legitimate question that
a sinner could ever ask. Ok, you're telling me God's holy, that God
is righteous. that God is perfect. How is it possible for me to be reconciled
to a holy God without Him not tarnishing His holiness? Or to put it in the language of Paul, "How
can God be just and the justifier of sinners?" That is the absolute apex question of all
religion. The primary question that religion attempts
to answer is, "How can I go from being God's enemy to being His friend? How can I make peace with God?" whatever god that religion espouses. So, all religion is designed to somehow come
to terms with the deity. In Christianity, the question is built around
holiness and justice and righteousness. So, how can God forgive me and still be holy? And, the only thing that answers that question
is penal substitution because penal substitution says God is so holy every sin will be punished. Every single sin in the life of every Christian
believer through all of human history will be punished, was punished. All sin must be punished. Either the sinner will bear that punishment
eternally or Christ took that punishment on the cross. The only thing that protects the pure, righteous
holiness of God is that sin is punished. That's penal substitution. If you remove that part of the cross, then
how does God reconcile His holiness with just wishing sin away without a punishment? There has to be a punishment for God to maintain
His justice. That punishment falls on His Son. BINGHAM: I can remember before I became a
Christian but had heard the gospel a number of times, sitting down with the woman that's
actually now my wife and asking her, "Explain to me John 3:16. Why did God have to send His Son? Why did Jesus have to die? Why didn't God bake brownies to save the world?" Like, "What's was this whole 'dying on the
cross' thing?" At that time, she couldn't answer the question,
and it was actually hard. We had to go into church and try and get information. "Explain to me penal substitution," because
all the gospel presentations I'd heard was missing that phase. MACARTHUR: You see that is "the question." That is not some kind of optional issue, penal
substitution. You've got a massive problem if God just says,
"Hey, you're forgiven." Now, the character of God is called into question
as to His integrity, His holiness, His virtue, His righteousness, His perfection. And so, God is so pure and holy that He will
punish every single sin ever committed by every person either in that person or in the
substitute for that person. That is the purest heart of Christianity and
soteriology. BINGHAM: We'll go to one more question before
we have another lighting round. So that's just a little warning for you that
we're going to come to a lighting round. But Madeleine on YouTube wants to know, "Is
limited atonement," lots of questions on the atonement tonight, "Is limited atonement biblical
and how would you explain that in light of the verses that says that Christ died for
the whole world?" MACARTHUR: Well, we know He's the Savior of
the world because there's only one Savior for the world. The world has only one Savior but we also
know the atonement is limited. We all know that, right? The atonement is limited because people go
to hell. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Many
will say to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and I will say to them, 'Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.'" Jesus talked more about hell then He did about
heaven. We know that hell is a reality, and we know
people go there and perish forever. So we all believe in a limited atonement,
right? Not everybody's going to be saved. You either believe in a limited atonement,
or you believe in a universal atonement, and if you believe in a universal atonement, to
be logically consistent, then there's no hell and no one will be in hell. Everyone will be in heaven. If you're going to affirm an unlimited atonement,
then you really are going to end up as a universalist, because if He actually died for the whole
world then the whole world is saved. So, we don't, we can't go there because there
is a hell and it's full of people, in fact, most people. So the atonement is limited. Then the question is, who limits it? Do we limit it or does God limit it? And the answer to that question biblically
is crystal clear. God limited it. He limited it to the elect. Either God determined whom He would save and
take the glory or God just threw atonement out there as some nebulous option and hoped
some people would grab hold of it and become a part of His redeeming purpose. The Bible does not allow for that. So, you just need to remind yourself you believe
in a limited atonement. Now, you ask the question, are men sovereign
or is God sovereign? If God's sovereign, then He limited it. BINGHAM: Alright, we're going to go to the
lighting round now, which means that answers need to be thirty to forty-five seconds. I can take as long as I want asking the question,
but the answers need to be thirty to forty-five seconds in length. So, first question is, "If you could only
preach through one book of the Bible for the rest of your ministry, which book of the Bible
would it be and why?" MACARTHUR: That would probably be the Gospel
of John because you can't find a more glorious, compelling, overwhelming subject than Jesus
Christ. There's nothing comparable to Him, and I've
lived that in preaching through the Gospel of John twice. The most transforming thing that anybody will
ever have is a vision of Christ. BINGHAM: Great answer. Good lighting round answer. Next one's Ryan on Facebook. He wants to know, "Why do some believe that
they can choose to be saved when it is by God's choice that we are saved?" MACARTHUR: Well, lots of people believe in
wrong things. I think people believe that because they're
ignorant, that they don't know, and so, you know, they say, "Hey, listen, we grew up in
a democracy. You get to choose. You know, we get to vote." Particularly, in America, we've never lived
in a monarchy. We don't know what it is to have a sovereign
over us, so American politics can kind of get in the way of our theology sometimes,
but I think it's...some people are just ignorant, there are other people who think its kind
of unfair, but if you study the Word of God faithfully, you know, I say this so often,
I'm telling you, Nathan, this comes up I bet every single week of my life, somebody fought
against the understanding of divine sovereign election. They fought against it, fought against it,
and then all of a sudden the light went on, and then they see it on every page of the
Bible. Every verse, every chapter, every book. It's just jumping out all over the place. Once you see that reality, Scripture comes
alive in a way that is just incredible. So when the resistance is there, you're fighting
for your freedom. When you abandon that freedom, and you let
the Word of God speak, you fall into this glorious exhilaration of realizing you've
just been chosen and it's everywhere in the Scripture. BINGHAM: A question coming in through our
online chat. This question is, "Does God give people free
will?" MACARTHUR: No, God doesn't give people free
will, if you mean by that that they can choose anything they want. I would define free will as this: every human
being has the freedom to choose whatever sin he wants. There you go. That's free will. You can choose whatever sin you want to choose. You just can't choose not to sin. So yes, there's free will, but there's only
free will within the framework of depravity and corruption. The one thing you can choose is to get out
of there. And for that, you have to cry for the mercy
and grace of God to extract you by His own sovereign love and power. So sinners think they have free will, but
the Bible defines the sinners as in bondage to sin. It is a bondage to sin that is so profound
that the only thing they can choose is which sin. BINGHAM: Britt on Twitter wants to know, "How
do you mortify sin?" MACARTHUR: Well, that simply means "to kill
sin." It's a simple way of saying, "Don't let it
raise its ugly head." You know, you want to basically push...and
I think, David…look, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you." It's all about your thoughts, "As a man thinks
in his heart, so he is." So, if I expose myself to sin and temptation
and garbage in the culture, I'm going to have a hard time suppressing sin because I'm activating
all the beachheads of sin in my human flesh. So I have to control my mind. I have to have my mind renewed continually
in the Word of God so that my mind is down the righteous path, not down the sinful path. This isn't something that is some kind of
an esoteric experience. This is daily exposure to the Word of God. This is having the Word running around in
your heart and soul and your mind all the time. Another good reason to sing great hymns is
those hymns put theology in your heart in memorable ways. Very few minutes in my day ever pass that
I'm not singing a hymn in my head, and that's a recitation of the things that I believe,
and those are righteous truths that insulate me from sin. So, killing sin is not something that happens
at one point in time. Paul says, this is important, "I die daily." So, you're killing it all the time, but in
the strength of the Spirit and through the truth of the Scripture. BINGHAM: René on Twitter, "Why can't we lose
our salvation?" MACARTHUR: Because you didn't do anything
to gain it. I'll reverse that a little bit. If you could lose your salvation you would. If it depended on you at all, you would...if
my salvation depended on me, I would lose it, I would lose it. I don't have the power to hold my salvation. I don't have the power to keep my salvation. Listen to the words of Hebrews, "That He ever
lives to make intercession for us, for the purpose of bringing us to glory." Right now, the reason that Christians are
going to get to heaven is not because they hold on; it's because Christ holds on. He will bring many sons to glory. If Christ didn't hold onto me, I would never
get there. That is the incredible reality of His high
priestly work. I think we, you know, you hear this, just
to comment on that a low bit quicker. People say, you know, "If you want to get
in touch with the wonder of your salvation, think about the cross, think about the cross. Preach the gospel to yourself." I say this, "If you want to think about the
wonder of your salvation, think about this, Christ right now, this split second, is holding
onto you eternally in His everlasting arms and will not let you go." That's the most glorious reality. It isn't that you look back and look at what
He did. You realize what He is doing as He ever lives
to make intercession for you to bring you to glory. BINGHAM: Amen. Another question, Slava on Facebook, they
want to know, "You've said that you have begun reading more biographies. Can you name two that have impacted you the
most?" MACARTHUR: I think, probably, the biography
that impacted me the most was the two volumes of Iain Murray on Martyn Lloyd-Jones, because
he gave a lifetime to the preaching and teaching of the Word of God and sound doctrine, and
he was a bit of a maverick and also he was a warrior. He was a fighter for the truth and that, you
know, I read many years ago but had a really strong impact on my life, that particular
biography. There are many others, William Tyndale's biography
by David Daniell, the Yale series. I read it twice and it's a cumbersome read. But, you know, there's something about these
men that makes you feel small and inadequate and insignificant. I think that for me one of most humbling experiences
that I ever have is to read these biographies because I feel small, and I say to myself,
"How did I ever get to serve the Lord the way I'm serving the Lord when I can't even
touch the hem of these guys' garments?" So a biography of William Carey by his nephew
Pearce Carey and the ministry that he went through in India translating the Bible and
all of his work burned up in a fire. I mean those things are powerful. The story of John Payton, when I was very
young in high school, a missionary to the Hebrides who, basically his wife and he arrived
there and his wife died and he slept on the grave to keep the natives from digging her
up and eating her body, and he stayed there for years and planted churches. Yeah, I need all of that I can get. I'm reading a new biography, The Pastor of
Kilsyth, a new Banner biography that is so heartwarming of a guy who served in a country
church for seventy years in obscurity, but whose life is a treasure. We need those because there aren't a lot of
heroes in this culture that we can look up to, and sometimes you have to look back to
find those kinds of people. BINGHAM: The last question for the lighting
round, Wade on Facebook is asking, "What are your thoughts on Christians telling unbelievers,
'God loves you,' or 'Jesus loves you?'" MACARTHUR: Well, it's true. God loves the world, and I think we have that
message, but I think that that's not the whole message. I think if you say what the old Campus Crusade,
"God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life," that's not accurate. Actually, there's currently a terrible plan
for your life and destiny. So yes, I think we're to express that. "God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son." God does love. He actually is the Savior. Paul says, "He's the savior of all men, especially
those who believe." So there's a sense in which He puts His saving
grace on display in common grace. Sinners don't die when they deserve to die. "The soul that sins should die." We should all have been dead before we ever
came to the cross. So, we see the love of God in the survival
of sinners. People say, "Well, look at the Old Testament
and all those people that God killed." That's not the issue. Look at the Old Testament. Look at all the people who lived when God
is putting on the display of His grace and mercy. Yes, we preach that, but the other thing that
has to be preached, and it has to be preached equally, is that sin will bring you to eternal
damnation and eternal destruction and only the love of God can rescue you and that's
only through Christ. BINGHAM: We survived both lighting rounds
tonight. So a big congratulations to that! I know we didn't make it easy for you with
some of those kind of more challenging questions, but you did great. I want to remind you watching live to request
your free copy of Dr. MacArthur's book Final Word. You can request the e-book edition of that
for free by visiting ask.ligonier.org/offer. Well, you've served as pastor teacher at Grace
Community Church for more than fifty years now. As you think back to, you know, fifty years
ago when you entered the pulpit, what advice would you give now to that young John MacArthur? MACARTHUR: I think what comes to mind when
I'm asked that question is, "Be patient." I was impatient to some degree. I think that's part of being young and being
an aggressive personality, and I think it's worse in this generation today when impatience
is a dominant feature of life in this world, "I want it. I want it now. I've got to have it now." Even success is expected by young people to
come instantaneously and if it doesn't come fast enough they try to think up mechanisms
to make things happen even in a ministry. I think that the message is, "Be patient." The Word will do its work if you're faithful. The Spirit will do His work. Be patient, and fifty years later you may
look back and say, "I am not the explanation to this." Patiently teaching the Word of God, week after
week after week, day after day after day after day, whether it's in the church or from house
to house, patiently letting the Word of God do its work with the same people over a long
period of time, and the rewards are beyond comprehension. So be patient and let the Word do its work. It's a slow process. Sanctification is a slow process, but if you're
around long enough to see the third and fourth generation, it's absolutely exhilarating. BINGHAM: For those who have never visited
Grace Community Church, how would you describe this community of people? MACARTHUR: I think, probably the most evident
reality here is love, and I think that would surprise people because they think, you know,
if you're strong in doctrine you're going to get kind of hard-nosed people. Strong doctrine makes soft people. Weak doctrine makes hard people. The Word softens people's hearts. And people who come here, I hear this all
the time, we have all kinds of events and conferences, people are amazed at the kindness,
the love, the compassion, the care, the service, the gentleness, the humility of this congregation. I think that's what the Word of God does produce. It produces a loving congregation and that's
manifest. BINGHAM: Well, turning back to some of the
questions that people are submitting live online this evening, Damien on YouTube is
asking, "What advice would you give someone who will be the successor to the senior pastor
role?" I don't know if he's got his eyes on Grace
Community Church, but he wants in one line, what would be your advice to someone that's
going to succeed another pastor? MACARTHUR: Honor your predecessor. Show love and respect, and even though you
may want to do things differently, he owns the hearts of those people. And if you don't show him honor, you're going
to lose the people who love him and those are the people you're going to depend on for
the future of that church. So, the more honor you show to that man, the
more love you show to that man, the more respect you show to him, the more you will move those
people from loving him to loving you. BINGHAM: A question from Facebook. "How do you discern if someone is called to
be a pastor?" MACARTHUR: Well, first of all, Paul says,
"If a man desires that office, he desires a noble work." But then you have to have the test. Is he qualified? 1 Timothy 3. And who lays those qualifications down and
affirms them? That would be the church and then the elders
would lay hands on that individual. So I think it starts with a desire of the
heart. If you desire that, if that's what your heart
desires, and it's confirmed by the leadership of the church that you have the character
qualifications and the skill to teach and that there's fruitfulness when you do that
that, you know, that's the direction you go, but...and this is an issue, and we don't have
time to talk about the whole issue, but all this entrepreneurial pastoral trend that's
going on now where a guy decides he wants to be a pastor, so he goes and gets a storefront
and turns it into a church and ordains himself and pops up in the front and makes himself
the pastor is alien to anything scriptural. No man should engage in the ministry. First of all, you better be careful because,
"Stop being so many teachers," James said, "there's a greater condemnation." You don't want the condemnation that comes
with a failure. So you better be sure you have the gifts and
the purity of heart to get into this, but I think this freewheeling approach where people
basically are autocratic rather than the product of careful, prayerful evaluation by mature,
godly elders placing him into ministry has created massive problems in the church. So, if you think that's something you want
to do, get in a church where you can be mentored by the leadership and pastors of that church,
and as you grow and develop the skills and they affirm those skills, then you'll know. And in the end of the day, I would say this,
if you can do something else, do it, because if you can do something else there'll be many
days when you wish you could. This is something for people who can't do
anything else, so compelling. BINGHAM: Caroline on Twitter wants to know,
"What do you think the church will look like in the next ten to twenty years?" MACARTHUR: That's so hard to predict because
trends used to come every twenty years, then every ten years, then every year, now every
week. It's hard to keep up with the trends. I mean, the faces of the churches are changing
as fast as the culture changes, and that's frightening. That is frightening. One of the things about Grace Church, fifty
years, if you were here forty years ago and you are here now, you would say, "This is
the same as it was," because we know what the Word of God tells us to do and we're just
doing what we've always done. We pay no attention to the culture, no attention
to the trends. We're not trying to find ways to make unbelievers
happy. But the church is in such a mad rush to accommodate
the culture that whatever the culture looks like in ten years, I'm afraid the church is
going to look a lot like that too. BINGHAM: A final question for you this evening,
and it's a question again we get asked a lot on Ask Ligonier. Susie on Facebook is wondering when she says,
"I grew up in the church and I've asked the Lord for salvation but I still doubt my salvation. How can I have assurance?" MACARTHUR: Yeah, there are a lot of people
who struggle with doubt. There are several reasons. One, you don't know enough of the doctrine
of salvation to understand that it is built in security, so you need a more biblical understanding
of salvation. You know, there are a lot of people who minimize
doctrine, but the very foundation of a believer's security is a full understanding of the doctrine
of salvation. You can dismiss penal substitution or you
can believe it, and there the foundation is laid for your understanding that your salvation
is eternal. Secondly, I think people doubt their salvation
because they are basically in a situation where doubt is cast on salvation. "You could possibly lose this." The reverse of that is this: don't go back
to an event and say, "Well, I know I'm a Christian because I prayed this prayer." Ask simple questions like, "What do you love? What do you have strong affections for?" If you've been transformed by the power of
the Spirit of God, if you are a new creation in Christ, there are going to be some marks
and I'll just lay these out in the simplest way I can. The first one is love. You will love the Lord. There'll be strong impulses in your heart
toward Christ, toward the Lord. You will love the Scriptures. That's not an unbeliever's affection. You will love the church. You'll want to be there. You will love God's people and you will even
love the lost. The second thing is if you're a true believer,
you'll be marked by humility. You won't be proud, boastful, brash, self-exalting. There will be just a very sweet kind of brokenness
that's just part of you. Thirdly, you will desire what is right. Your heart will long for those things. So, I say this. It's not the perfection of your life that
demonstrates your salvation. It's the direction, and it's in the direction
of love and humility and righteousness. BINGHAM: Well, thank you so much for your
time this evening, Dr. MacArthur. MACARTHUR: My pleasure, thank you. BINGHAM: And don't forget when you have biblical
or theological questions, you can ask them and get answers twenty-four hours a day, six
days a week, free of charge, thanks to the Ask Ligonier chat service. To learn more about Ask Ligonier, simply visit
ask.ligonier.org. Well, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and I look forward
to seeing you next time.
