Fifty Years of Pastoral Ministry (Interview with Phil Johnson)

another QA John it is it is an honor actually for all of us to come together and celebrate your 50th anniversary in the ministry and and I know that public adulation makes you uncomfortable and scripture does honor men of faith and faithfulness so we have to do this it's a privilege to do this and and I hope you'll just let me ask you questions about your ministry in your life well we'll see yeah no I want to ask you questions about 50 years of ministry and your underlying ministry philosophy and the things that you you like and don't like about ministry and so let's just start at the beginning tell us first about your heritage one of the first things I ever heard about you was that you were in a long line of pastors I think I think the first thing I read said you were fifth generation pastor I know your father your grandfather were pastors and you had pastors on both sides tell us about that um yes my father my grandfather my grandmother's father and then I went back one generation Scotland probably pick up the story in PEI my grandfather my grandmother's father was Thomas Fullerton he was pastor of st. James Kirk the main church in Charlottetown PEI pastored for Anna bring Gables yes he was the pastor of the lady who wrote an of Green Gables they were close friends together they wrote whatever the provincial song is for the province of Prince Edward Island my so my grand mother's father was also in the Canadian Army and he was he was a chaplain in the Boer War so it goes back to you know fighting down in Africa my my grandfather's father drove the first locomotive on PEI so I was a railroad man and then a pastor their kids got together and my grandfather came to Calgary to be the chief telegrapher for the Canadian Pacific Railway followed in his father's footsteps and that's where my dad was born and my grandfather was genuinely converted came to Los Angeles to the old Bible Institute of Los Angeles to train became a pastor and raised my dad here he became a pastor and my father you mentioned the other day that you remember that your grandfather preached actually in writing the sermon at his own funeral yeah I have pretty vivid memories of my grandfather I think it was 9 or 10 when he went to be with the Lord and he died of cancer well it's a lot younger than I am but but he had I have I have sermon notes of his up in my study he was a faithful preacher of the word of God and of the gospel he he loved the church the story that I often tell about him is that when he was on his deathbed and I was with my dad and we saw him a lot because we lived in the same neighborhood he was pastor of one church my dad was the pastor of another one my dad was the pastor in Hollywood my grandfather in in Eagle Rock which isn't far from here and at one point they switched churches Wow they were both in the American Baptist Convention in those days which my father eventually left as it liberalized but my grandfather was on his deathbed and my dad asked him if he had anything that that he wanted and he said I want to preach one more sermon he had prepared a sermon on heaven called heavenly records and he wanted to preach it it was like fire in his bones so he wanted to unload what was in his heart about heaven and he was so near he never was able to do that because he went to be with the Lord so my dad took his sermon notes and printed them up and into a booklet and everyone at his funeral got his sermon notes so I always say he preached on heaven from heaven well so he was faithful to the very dying end to preach and his regret when he left was that he couldn't preach one more time your own dad inherited that as well I met him and and he was a delight I loved him but as I recall he he he was teaching Sunday school at least so giving his last sermon just a month before he died he was still teaching the Bible into his 91st year I remember he said to me he was a pretty insatiable reader right and he was terrified to step into a pulpit without being fully prepared I can tell ya so he had a manuscript and and I know you you you follow that absolutely I've been lost with him because you're you're you're at heart you're a writer and but my dad had a manuscript because he was he took it so seriously he used to say to me all the time don't you Johnny don't you ever go into a pulpit unless you are fully prepared that's advice you've followed I know how well and you know he always call it that and somebody referred to that I think was Mike today he called it the sacred desk yes and when he stood behind it he wanted to make sure he had done everything to prepare so I remember he was you know he was a few years from going to heaven and he said he said to me one day said I'm still reading but I don't know why that was a real turning point because he couldn't shut off the desire to take it in even though he knew there wasn't going to be the opportunity to that preach it and then the second thing that I remember was he's teaching a Sunday School class and it was his 90th year or so and the people started coming him coming to him and telling him he was repeating himself so he said to me I think it's time to stop because I I can't remember if I said something last week or two minutes ago they're already nice top yeah well if you do three services you can't remember when you said it I know I mean I but yeah that was kind of a sad moment when all of a sudden after preaching since he was about twenty years old and he's 90 and he you know letting go and feeling like people are complaining because he's repeating himself and soon after that you went to be with the Lord he had such an active mind he loved to read and refute things that were wrong yeah he loved apologetics he always wanted to defend the faith what the greatest legacy my father gave me was his consistent life he was everything at home that he was in the pulpit everything I never I never saw any difference but beyond that legacy of that life that what he gave me was just this absolutely complete confidence in the authority and inspiration and inerrancy of the Word of God and he was not only a preacher of that but a defender of it he he loved to defend the Word of God and he he was a an apologist in his preaching as much as he was a teacher he had a television and radio ministry right he started he was on my grandfather started a radio ministry called voice of Calvary many years ago and my dad when the radio when the radio program came on the air was a weekend program locally when it came on my dad played the theme song on the marimba my dad was a musician play a little trombone piano and he'd play the marimba as a theme song and his dad would come on and preach deep play it live every week it's not an easy thing to know you can't carry around a marimba yeah that's right but yeah and so my grandfather started the voice of Calvary and and eventually my dad just took that over and it was on for many many many years a Saturday and Sunday at kind of a weekend and then he decided to do television when he was pastoring in Burbank and he got a television slot they didn't do a lot of recording in those days pretty much live television right so some of the older people remember live television but so we would leave church on Sunday night make a beeline down to Casey Opie channel 13 in LA and do live preaching in TV some a little bit of singing and and then he would just stand behind the thing and the cameras were rolling there was I mean it was what it was there was no editing it was you know you had to make sure you you got it right so he decided to let me try doing that and that's really that was when I was very young and I was 20 maybe 20 to 23 so you'd had some college at least well yeah as a graduate from college I went to seminary when I was 21 okay so I had a little bit of seminar under my belt and I think I mean I I think I at least proved that I could you know do a 15-minute or 20 I wish there were recordings of that yeah I'm not going to tell you where they are you mean they exist because I've got some I got some your father of course was ministering mostly before cassette tapes I've got some of his sermons on little records like you know platters that you play on a record player yeah yeah they used to have things called kinescopes uh-huh that was for videos for me to talk about that it just ages me but yeah so I did some preaching with my dad on television and if anybody can find those and put them on YouTube I'll pay [Music] yeah and he was a high at the heart of an evangelist he was an evangelist with William Culbertson when Culbertson was president of Moody Bible Institute augo and he would go out and citywide evangelistic campaigns all over the place he was an evangelist in the early days of Charles fuller here in Southern California and he was traveling around he did evangelism with the Billy Graham team well Billy Graham was holding the great London crusade in the 50s my dad went to Northern Ireland Billy had a team of evangelists and my dad's responsibility was to preach every day for a month on the docks in Belfast Wow to the to the stevedores and the shipbuilders and when I when I go to Ireland even now I meet people who have hymn books from those days that's amazing back in the 1950s when they had those Christian and I meet older people who came to Christ during those days when he was preaching there yeah you know your dad a lot of in a lot of ways he prefigured a lot of the things that you've done he he actually wrote some commentaries which somebody sent me recently copies of your dad's commentaries and not as elaborate or thorough as yours but he was doing that as well but he he he came to he started out much an evangelist and then he kind of became an apologist and then he then he was influenced that he needed to teach the Bible and so he looked around for resources and you know in those days there weren't a lot of things I mean we were just sort of you know vanilla Baptists not a lot of theological clarity in many ways but faithful to the gospel so he he read books by G Campbell Morgan right and it was a more of a devotional kind of exposition and he loved that so he went through Acts and he went through John and he went through Matthew and and you know he would say that that was the richest part of his name right well you inherited all of his books and there was no place to put them so they came to your office in Grace to you which is right next to mine and I used to go in and just scour his library and I feel like I know his mind cuz I I saw what he read and you're right a lot of a lot of emotional things there were lots and lots of Kazakh kind of books right you know quiet talks on this by Gordon and Andrew Murray and I think my dad was trying to find try to find himself trying to find his way into exposition but he never he never got much past the more devotional kind although it was always accurate was always faithful to someone with such a keen interest in apologetics too he really had a tender heart didn't he didn't had a very tender heart use them he was very loving to all of us as kids very loving to me probably to a fault although he didn't spare the rod I would ask you about that because I'm curious to hear it but you probably don't want me to ask that question no I mean I I was I was disciplined with something very long and very hard frequently frequently I just called it curiosity he called it disobedience okay well you still you know what he disciplined me more for attitude than something I did really yes so he showed a little attitude he would bring the rod out he felt that he had to control the attitude if he was going to control the action interesting well it worked I mean you don't show a lot of attitude I don't think I've ever I don't think I've ever seen you I'm serious I don't think I have in in 40 years that I've known you I have never seen you angry never and I asked Patricia about it once and she said she tried to make you angry and couldn't do it well first of all anger does no good for anybody yeah and secondly I I don't want to get caught up in myself so much that somebody could actually make me angry well the only reason people would get angry was because they're offended so why why would I be angry only because I took offense right I'm just I'm just saying it's amazing if you could be with me for 35 years and never lose your temper that's that's really quite remarkable even my wife will tell you that no I've never seen you yeah you angry in my presence [Applause] [Music] you know you have a blessedly short memory for things like that as well honestly people ask me about your characteristics and all that I often say one of the most there's separate remarkable things about you one being that your discipline I always say you are the most disciplined person I've ever met so it it it surprised me the other day when you said you don't think about discipline you just are here in these habits that was kind of a remarkable thing but the other thing I always tell people is that when it comes to offenses people who have you know in some cases even people who've stabbed you in the back you have a really short memory for offenses like that you're one of the most forgiving people I know which has been really for me it's what scripture says forgive seventy times seven you know right what is the point of not forgiving you you put your own forgiveness in jeopardy according to the words of our Lord and you develop a root of bitterness you can't survive part of being in the same place for 50 years is being able to forgive readily and immediately and to fully embrace and love the people even the people who have done tried to do harm to you and there there's no way to survive in a pastoral ministry with the same congregation for half a century if you can't forgive right and if they can't forgive and they can forgive if you can forgive right let me ask you about your ministry experience before you came to Grace Community Church this was this was the first church you ever pastored prior to that give me a rundown on your ministry experience was I'm sure you did things even before your dad had you on television in fact I I heard tell me if this is correct the first sermon you ever preached was that the one in the bus station in Raleigh North Carolina was the first one but it was early yeah tell us about that I just I was told to go to the bus station and stand up and preach to all the people milling around in the bus station this was an assignment in Bible College yeah and I left that college by the way [Laughter] but I did that once and I thought this is ridiculous because it's it's not getting me anywhere people think something's wrong with you you know and so I when they would take me back to do that again I I would not preach I would just go find somebody sit down and give him the gospel right and I I found that I I thoroughly enjoyed it people responded differently but that made much more sense than shouting to people who were milling around going somewhere you know they were trying to take a picture from the New Testament that the Lord preached in the open right there but there were not huge buses belching smoke going back and forth and in front of it what are you so weak so what would you count as your very first sermon well the first German I remember was when I I gave some little talks in high school but the first official sermon I preached I just remembered that I preached in the angel rolled the stone away now don't hold your breath and I preached unrolling away stones in your life now that is bad to preach it so your look I I am still in remediation from that [Applause] that's that's really remarkable John MacArthur's first sermon was a bad sound horrible Wow and you would but you but I'm being honest nobody would know it if I didn't bring it up because nobody recorded it yeah how could you ignore the resurrection and talk about rolling away stones in your life out of that you know preachers do it all the time that people were saying deep deep well and I've also heard you tell the story of when you were in seminary and doctor who was it dr. Feinberg said that you missed the whole point of the passage he was um he was the head of Talbot seminary of the Dean he had Jewish guy his wife came out of that Fiddler on the Roof community in Europe they had a lot of really profoundly deep Jewish roots in Europe and he studied 14 years to be a rabbi most brilliant men I'd ever met and he was converted to Christ and his life was amazingly transformed he then went to Dallas seminary and and got a PhD and the Schaefer the president of the seminary said about him that he knew more when he came than he did when he graduated did they make him take Hebrew again no he was fluent and at the end of his life he was fluent in at least 30 languages he could read in at least 30 languages he could teach himself a language in a couple of months because he had such alacrity with that but he read through the Bible four times a year when we'd ask him questions in class he he could go to a passage in Kings and translated from Hebrew in his own mind and then give us the translation he was it was a formidable mind he then went to Johns Hopkins Hopkins studied under William Foxwell Albright who was leading archaeologists in America at the time so he got a PhD and a THD and his wife graduated from UCLA later in life his daughter was valedictorian at UCLA his son Paul Feinberg some of you guys remember Paul Feinberg and his writings that John Feinberg who is still around us some heavy writing that was that that was a lot of gray matter in that family yeah but they were I was very close to all them and loved them so I wanted to honor dr. Feinberg by whatever he why'd I took every class I did my best in every class with him and we had to preach every semester we had to preach and he would assign a text and we had to preach to the whole student body and I worked really hard on second Samuel 7 where David wants to build a house for the Lord and you know God since the Prophet Nathan tell him he can't do it then gives him the the the Covenant you know the Vedic covenants and you know I preached another rolling away stones in your life message in Feinberg's mind I guess I worked really hard on it for hours and hours to please him with it and I got up and there was a fairly good response from the students and the faculty would sit behind us when we were preaching and they had these long 8 and 1/2 by 14 sheets that while we were preaching they were checking off boxes you know what every element of the sermon that they would that their heads would go down someday if it's lighter didn't like and then they would hand you these sheets as you walked out so I didn't care what anybody said except Feinberg and kid folded his up which was not a good sign right and he didn't check off anything I open it up and said you missed the whole point of the passage that had to be devastating so I I went to his office and he was really disgusted with me so I said I'm so sorry could you like tell me what the point of the passage is [Music] did he say you mean you still though oh he was so upset at me so do you remember what the passage was 2nd Samuel 7 yes I remember I will never forget it so so anyway he then ramped up his grip on me because I think he believed that the Lord had called me to preach and he he wanted in whatever time he had to get a grip on me and get me going in the right direction so when I came to the end of seminary he called me in his office and he says I am concerned that you will continue to work hard enough to get the meaning of the passage so I have a gift for you gave me this huge box and then it was his set of Kyle and dalish Wow that he'd had for like 30 years and marked up with all his own markings and stuff he said now you have no excuse I still have that that treasure that's great and one of them one of the wonderful moments of my life was he you went to heaven he got some kind of dementia toward the end of his life and he kind of didn't remember things but when he died the family asked me to come and speak at his service I was so thankful for that because he must have felt that along the way somehow I had learned how to get the point out of the past so that was really an honor for me he was and if you could find an old Scofield Bible you'll see his name Charles L Feinberg so with all these influences on you your grandfather your father dr. Feinberg you went to seminary and all that what from which of these have you benefited the most what would you say is the most formative influence on you other than the Apostle Paul yeah I was going to say you know it's just a blending of all those things yeah obviously your parents have this dominating effect on how you face life and how you view Christianity and all but all of those pieces came together my dad huge huge influence on me because of his integrity and his love of the church and his pastoral ministry for so many years Feinberg for his exacting precision and high demands and there was one other guy in my life he who who gave me a lesson that has really shaped my preaching and that was a guy named Ralph Kuiper Ralph Kuiper was donal great barn house's personal secretary and barn house was in Philadelphia in in the hey days of his ministry and he was doing eternity magazine in some of you guys may remember eternity magazine years ago and barn house was formidable as an expository and a theologian and he was arranging kind of guy you know he could he could do the book of Romans and and say everything in the Bible in the exposition of Romans so he was really really thorough so ralph capper was his personal secretary and also a very good Bible teacher he only had 10% vision in one eye so it was kind of a an interesting a little guy couldn't see very much but he came out here to speak when I was in seminary and they asked me to drive him around and we became friends that he came two or three times and he always wanted me to drive him around and he he used to encourage me that if I wanted to effectively explain the Bible I had to use the Bible to explain the Bible that the best explanation of the Bible is in the Bible because of Anna logia scriptura the scriptures analogous to itself single author and he put in my hands treasury of scripture knowledge Treasury scripture knowledge was a tool that I had never even heard of or ever seen in the early years of my ministry probably the most helpful tool I had and that's why if you if you follow the way I preach or even the way we preach or you heard Mike preach today you explain the Bible with the Bible you you find the truth in a given passage and then you you and even you have broaden that you you lifted a higher you go deeper by bringing other scriptures around in the scriptures the Bible is its own best interpreter so that was a huge huge help to me and he challenged me that it would that with my with my Greek New Testament since I was bent on the New Testament with my Bible and treasure of scripture knowledge I could preach the rest of my life and so that was a huge point in that shaped my preaching more than anything else and I don't remember anything in homiletics class since in seminary at all being helpful yeah you gave me that same advice and and I always used it the Treasury scripture knowledge basically a collection of cross references so you got cross references not to the same word but to the same idea right yeah so you look at any text in scripture and there'll be these references to other Bible passages that either say something similar or related or whatever it's it's an amazing tool and I agree with you it's probably what a single tool I use most other than Scripture itself yeah yeah thanks for that advice you know if somebody asked me my most formidable influence it has to be you when I preach I like feel you standing over my shoulder and and it's that good it's it's had good effect it's a little nerve-racking but yeah it's had good effect the first time I preached you weren't here obviously or you would have been preaching but preach from the pulpit here and you listen to the recording later which I had hoped you wouldn't and you said I was new you listen to your sermon and you said you know what you did really well I said what you said when you read the scriptures [Applause] which is much much kinder than saying you missed the whole point of the passage I've always remembered that and I appreciate the encouragement you're way beyond that so so bring us from Talbot to Grace Church how did you get connected with this church you were in Southern California all that when I was in seminary I was well when I started when I was in college I was an athlete I was playing football and all that kind of thing but I was also teaching a college sunday-school class in my dad's church so that's where I met Patricia she was one of the college students in the in the Bible class that I was teaching in Sunday morning and so it was very natural when I graduate from college and I knew the Lord had called me to go to seminary to just kind of hang in there with my dad and I I served alongside of him continuing to work with youth and do a lot of other things while I went through seminary after I graduated from seminary my dad wanted me to come back and serve alongside of him that was his dream that we would share that ministry together but it was obvious after you know a relatively brief time that we were both doing the same thing you know you don't need two preachers in in in one church that size so it there was a kind of a sad thing for him because you know he had kind of put his hopes in the fact that we'd be together there was no animosity I mean he knew the hand of the Lord was on it so I left being alongside of him and I went back to the seminary because dr. feinberg called me back and asked if I would make my I would become the seminary representative in this sense that I would kind of be the model of somebody who graduated from that seminary preaching and they would they would send me around to preach and that would kind of demonstrate what the seminary did so I did that for I don't know two and a half or so years and I I preached about thirty-five times a month and I did that month after a month after a month after a month and I crammed 10 years of preaching experience into a very brief time in all kinds of settings churches everything from junior high to older people to a lot of college campuses a lot of high school Bible Club that was a big thing back then a lot of youth ministry things did you have a collection of standard sermons or were you making new sermons all the time yeah no no when you're doing that you you you that that's the revolving door of itinerant preaching and it was very I mean it was okay that's what the Lord wanted me to do to kind of and I learned how to communicate I think they're big because I I like to speak to junior high kids because if they're not interested they have the courtesy to talk so it just made sense for me to figure out how to get their attention but I I was very frustrated at the end of that two and a half years I I just couldn't hear myself say the same thing one more time hmm it doesn't lend itself to the disciplined study that I wanted so desperately so I told them I just need to go Pastor a church that's what I want to do two churches talk to me a little bit said I was too young didn't have enough experience I was still in my 20s but this church I spoke to this church had a high school camp and I went to that high school camp and I spoke and we had a great time and so the kids came back and their pastor had died second one in a row two passes in a row here had died they had two widows to support so the only qualification for the next guy was youth so I met the qualification 29 years old yeah the kids came back from camp and said can we get that guy that spoke to us at camp and so I came and it's kind of an interesting story but some it's not an unfamiliar one but I had been but human like conference all summer and I've been studying Romans six seven and eight to try to understand them with no necessarily no view to preach them but to come to grips with you know the whole the whole issue of the spiritual identity and the flesh and the spirit and the war and all of it all that's Romans six seven and eight and I just spent weeks and weeks on that so they asked me to come here and speak on an evening and I had that so much in my mind that I just I said well okay I'll do that and I just stood up and just kind of unloaded that and went for an hour and 20 minutes that's kind of legendary for those early people and an hour in 20 minutes in your DVR guest speakers just really ridiculous but I was just trying to explain to them everything I'd come to understand about those passages and I was oblivious so afterwards they said to me would you teach us like that every week if you were here and I said I would I would and so they invited me back the next week but the next week they had a huge clock on the back it was so big you couldn't miss it so they liked that kind of teaching they just didn't need that much of it at once joël Becky knows this but at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London where Spurgeon used to be there are actually two clocks in the pulpit one of them gives you the time the other one counts down and when it gets in the redzone if you don't stop you're in trouble so I was there once when Joe beaky went about 10 minutes overtime ya know we have a clock in our pulpit too but you know what if I had a clock er didn't have a clock I would go exactly or essentially within probably 60 seconds do you know what the vote was when they said let's let's vote on whether to call this man or not was it unanimous was it no no I don't know was it was enough we recently played you take what you can get that's right we all voted for you before you came they wouldn't need you I have to say this we recently played your first sermon at Grace Church it was taped that very first Sunday we were played it on grace to you a week or two ago and in connection with the anniversary of your first sermon and we got quite a lot of feedback we play it occasionally and we always get good feedback but the most common comment is for somebody who's 29 and never been a pastor before that is an amazing first sermon it really is it's called how to play church yeah I mean why would a guy do that the first Sunday he's here it was great it was Matthew 7 many will say Lord Lord and then I will say depart from me I never knew you I mean it was blasting that out the first Sunday here you know what it did set the tone for before you're teaching it you know there was a reason behind that yeah I had become very aware that churches were filled with unconverted people by traveling around all of course and I mean you know judgment begins at the house of God and the the judgment begins when you bring the Word of God to bear and and yeah but I think back I could have I could have come in a little more like a lamb and less likely that I wouldn't change a thing of it it's full of exuberance and passion and kindness so I actually had a guy come to me after the first three or four weeks he was at a church and he said I've been coming through it for weeks I said are you a Christian and he said no I'm in sales and you pumped me up so here's something I've always wondered now I'll ask you what what else do you remember about that very first Sunday what stands it out in your mind about this raining it rained really hard we were in the chapel that was the it was raining and I was full of passion and zeal this was what I had longed for and desired and I knew I was embarking upon the desire of my heart which was to week in and week out sequentially go through the Word of God that's what I'd always wanted to do and it wasn't because I wanted to preach it it was because I wanted to study it so that I would understand it I it was hard for me to just read the Bible and then close it and not know what I what I what I read I I was frustrated people would say you know spend 15 minutes a day reading the Bible I was very frustrated by that if I didn't know what it meant well you know that about me and I have to know what this means that's the curiosity your dad used to punish you for yeah it is well I yeah he didn't punish me for that kind of curio I know just but he was routing me in the right because in the early days so I really I just I just loved the fact that I told the board the first time we met they said well we know you're gonna preach on Sunday but what are you gonna do all week and I said well I I think I need about 25 or 30 hours to preach to prepare to preach because Sunday morning Sunday night Wednesday night and then you know whatever else and I was starting with nothing so they couldn't believe that they thought what what are you gonna where does it take that long yeah you said that the other day in the Q&A that the the you brought up the fact that one of the first things you said was you needed 30 hours a week studying and I thought back to that you were the first pastor I ever knew who spent that much time in this study every Church I was in you figured the pastor would study maybe 10 hours a week and that was a lot so when you said that to them did did the gas yeah they did because they couldn't understand it and I had to I had in some sense to validate it by showing up on Sunday with something that appeared as that it had some effort of course well we have all those tapes and I would say you succeeded well so yeah it was for me the incredible opportunity to just spend the time I was trying to understand the scripture trying to understand accurate theology I was being kind of reshaped in my theological thinking in those early years and I knew it that that way everything was at stake we consciously trying to build a understanding of doctrine or were you more just concerned with this week's text no well no because because as an expository just concerned with this week's text right every everything is a flow and I read probably always always 15 20 commentaries because I didn't want to lose I didn't want to miss any illumination from the past that would that would open up some of the truth in the text but also I was learning theologies where if you have if you're reading a sacramental kind of commentary series you're gonna see how a sacramental list deals with it if you're if you're reading Reformed commentaries like William Hendrickson you understand how how reformed theology connects to the text if you're if you're reading a devotional commentary you see that so I was getting a larger education I never studied I never studied to make a sermon when you find when you find systematic commentators you're inevitably going to find their theology if they're if they're honestly dealing with the text and that helped train my theology taught me what to write in fact my impression is as I listened to your tapes over the years that you you you gradually grew away from the sort of devotional books and devotional commentaries that your father would have used never really used those seminary seminary basically cured me directed me another way but there were there were some crisis moments when I had to jettison some things I had been taught one of those monumental moments was preaching through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and realizing that everything I'd been told in seminary about the Sermon on the Mount was not true right because in in seminary they were telling you the Sermon on the Mount applies to a different dispensation yeah it's it's Kingdom living in the future millennium right I couldn't understand that to start with I didn't make any sense to me but by the time I got through Matthew 5 to 7 with reformed commentators and particularly with Martin David Martin lloyd-jones this commentary on that all of that stuff had disappeared and you described it as Kingdom living in the Millennium and it's interesting because your first book on that passage is called Kingdom living here a hero now so that was that was this declaration that I had abandoned Kingdom living then and there for Kingdom living here and now and then you know I was sort of trapped I was like the you know the guy in the Civil War with gray pants and a blue coat I was getting shot by both sides I wasn't reformed enough for the reformed and I wasn't dispensational enough for the dispensationalist but you're still in that kind of position a little bit well no I because I think he you want to know the truth Joel Becky wants to have a Puritan conference at Grace Church that says something it does no you know presuppositional systems i abandoned my hermeneutics yield it to me what I think is a true understanding of the text presuppositional systems imposed on the text as what disappeared right for me yeah you can see that in your preaching too as you go through that you're lovers you're gonna do the whole New Testament you've got everything every doctrine that you affirm has to stand the test of every text right so but but I was I was eventually let in to this to the Holy of Holies the evangelical Holy of Holies when RC sprawl started inviting me to Ligonier conferences I thought how does this happen and I said even that is well yeah and then he assigned me the first thing he signed me to preach on the doctrine of election he was just impish enough you know throw me to the reformed wolves on that subject the first time and did you study more that in the front row with like he sat like this with a diet coke in his hand and no Bible anywhere in sight and he's just checking me out as I'm standing before four thousand people trying to explain the doctrine of election to the guy that invented it did you study more than 30 hours with an idea he later said that was a great message one of the best messages you'd ever heard on the subject so yeah but he also said he got tired of trying to tell me what I actually believed No yeah I think I think that that occasion was created a bond with us that just grew from there into a friendship and that was an amazing friendship really tremendously enriching to me and I always felt like an outsider I should say in the early times I felt like an outsider but I was so honored to be in the same environment with him and people like Sinclair and other guys at first I felt like I was kind of not in my my place but to be embraced and by those guys whom I've grown to love so much and was it was a great honor to me and I was you know I wasn't raised in that but it stood the test of every text I ever studied right right well I mean you're the one who persuaded me that way it was your series on Ephesians two that got me over the hump with the doctrines of grace because I come out of a Methodist background had all this are many and indoctrination in my head when I first became a Christian I dragged a lot of that along with me and for years the Lord just sort of chipped away at it theology classes and all that helped bring me along but it wasn't until I heard your sermons on Ephesians two that I really understood what total depravity means that were dead in trespasses and sins if that had been the starting point it all would have made more sense the funny thing is well the doctor Calvinism only makes sense where you get the depravity doctrine right that's right and it's it it it's really the easiest of the doctrines of grace to understand from Scripture necessitates all the rest yeah but on another note when I came the first time to your house to meet you yes you you sent me over to some Ramada Inn with orange carpet yeah to stay there and they had no heat and it was in the dead of winter in Chicago and I had to take the carpet off the floor and put it on top of the bed not to freeze you should have called me I would have warmed up my car and let you sleep in there yeah great way to start a friendship Phil that's how I knew it would last if you still liked me after that then it was gonna be an issue I love you yeah you too so back to the beginning at Grace Church describe some of the changes that you you realized immediately we're going to have to be made this was a church that had come from a pastor who'd come out of Methodism and Arminianism and and I think the second pastor was a Baptist right so it had shifted a little bit theologically but really wasn't anchored in any identifiable doctrinal stance so doctrinally and even ecclesiological II some significant changes needed to be made I want you to talk about that and then I have a specific question about it well they didn't even have a doctrinal statement none at all well no it was like in it was a three-fold statement in in essentials unity in non essentials charity you know I forget it doesn't matter because it's not a doctrinal statement right but yeah that was it and there there was that there were some people here though who had relocated from Church of the open door in LA where J Vernon McGee everybody knows Haven McGee he being dead yet speaks literally yeah so there were people here who had Bible background Bible background and they were really warm and receptive to me but they had no sense of biblical ecclesiology they had they had all kinds of crazy structures and organizations and a lot of unconverted people on boards and in the choir and it was just it was a mess which is why I preached on Matthew 7 right out of the gate I you know I was you know I in my mind I had you know I may never preached again I got to do this this time that's why it was the first one but there was a ton of work to do so I knew I needed to preach but I also knew that if I tried to preach the through text of scripture to build a systematic theology would take forever and it would take too long so what I what I did was I started first of all I want to start basically in the Gospel of John because nobody can argue with Christ and he's such a compelling person and so the first two years was just the the Gospel of John but every Saturday for seven or eight years I had all the men of the church together and took him through systematic theology I started with prolegomena theology proper and everything just your own notes or did you use it a a combination of my seminary notes and my notes and I made some there were some little books that were kind of simple like William Evans and Anna Marie Bancroft a little theology books and there was abstract biberkopf and so I would encourage them along that line but they really weren't ready for that book right anything I had to kind of walk them through that and that's how we developed the leadership at the church so the leadership was being sort of taught theology behind the scenes and that went on for for many many years while we were exposing the scripture together and exercise I have to exercise like Paul says preach the word but do it with patience so you have to be very patient for all these changes to take place that's that's what I wanted to ask you too I've heard you say and I think it's a profound observation that the number one mistake a lot of young pastors make when they go into a church is they're impatient in making the changes that need to be made people are where they are because somebody they trusted brought them there right might have been their parents might have been their grandparents might have been a pastor that led them to the Lord friend that led them to the Lord they've sat in a Sunday School class and a school teacher you can't walk in and just by the sheer force of your own personality or authority make them throw away all those influences it is a long process of loving them being patient with them instructing them carefully in the Word of God and not only telling them what it means but showing them why it has to mean that really good Bible exposition does not tell the people what this text means it shows them what it must mean and the best way to show them what it must mean is to use other scriptures that elucidate on that unit you couldn't argue for example listen to Mike this when he could not argue any of his doctrinal points because he bolstered all of them by going all over the place to other scriptures and that's how you preach expositionally with with the process exposed and over time over time they begin to let go of things that and I think happily so as that as the light begins to dawn me you come in there's nothing more offensive to our minions than the sovereignty of God in everything they hate that but once they see it they see it everywhere because it is everywhere right then they can't abort it's on every page of the Bible and and then the there they're different people worship is dramatically changed when people understand the doctrines of grace worship is revolutionized because the you you now you have to try to contain them not whip them up you gotta whip up our minions you just have to kind of hold on to Calvinists well in fact the the way you do your logic has always stood out to me because in the early days when I first started listen to you some things that you taught were unfamiliar to me and I wasn't sure of it when I first hear you say something and I think not sure that's quite right but then you would begin to make the argument why this text must mean that and you would pile argument upon argument upon argument but what I noticed also was that you you started with the weakest argument and nailed it down with the best argument at the end so that by the time you were done I couldn't discuss the only way to do it if I give you my best shot first and you don't buy it I might as well stop well it's brilliant and I so that just listening to you teach like that the the political aspect of your sermons has shaped my own feel on so much and more than anything else I don't know what I do I don't know why I do it this is they do you rehearse your sermon in front of a mirror are you kidding what I don't even understand that I'm not even self-conscious I don't even know what I'm doing the only thing is going on asthma is this thing in my mind to give these people this truth I'm oblivious I can't be self-conscious if I'm an actor if I'm an actor and I memorize lines then I can think about acting but if I'm a preacher and I'm just I'm just fighting to make this truth clear and pour out my heart I'm utterly unconscious of myself so I don't know what I'm doing except that this is a battle to communicate these things that are critically important at that time to me but I don't know why I already know what I'm doing right I don't study what yeah I realized that about you in the late 1980s after the Gospel according to Jesus came out and there was some controversy about it and ETS decided to devote majors a couple of sessions to the subject they asked you to deliver a paper on James chapter two faith without works is dead and I think it was Oh what's-his-name from somebody somebody gave a paper on the other side that's right and and so I went to that meeting and I knew what you're gonna say I'd read your paper ahead of time but I looked over and there was a Naja's in the front row and I couldn't get that out of my head the whole time you were talking and but you delivered it so powerfully and and it was so persuasive and all and I asked you didn't persuade him of course it didn't look you know anyway down the road but I asked you afterwards did it does it trouble you when you know the person who's most hostile to your view is sitting right there in the front row and you said I didn't even think about that it didn't it didn't even cross your mind it was amazing people ask me that do I worry about how guests in the church are going to respond to something I say like against Catholicism or Mormonism or you know I thought never entered my mind right you know I don't I'm not even I'm not aware of what I said what I am supposed to do not to offend somebody I'm not trying to offend anybody I don't want to and I think we have to speak the truth in love and tone goes a long way and demeanor goes a long way to demonstrate a kind of affection and a kind of compassion for people but I'm never you know in fact recently I did that Ben Shapiro program I don't know if any of you ever saw that but the closer I get to somebody the closer I get to somebody eyeball to eyeball that needs the Lord the more likely I am to drive at what I think is the best way to get to their heart about the gospel so I thought that was really interesting that he asked me the question what's the difference between the Jew and a Christian I mean this is the ultimate setup and I said the difference is Jesus Christ and what was so interesting was in a later podcast that was given to me somebody asked him were you offended as a Jew and John MacArthur was giving you the Gospel message about Jesus he said no for two reasons I wasn't offended 1 I knew he believed it with all his heart and 2 I knew he cared about me and he felt that needed to know that yeah I think we that's the easies if he's a fine guy in many many ways but I think we have to we have to preach the gospel whatever the right response might be but you might be surprised at being direct communicates compassion and care and love and that your own conviction is really your conviction yeah you excel at that John you were on a string of Larry King Live programs there for several years and they were all great I would always ask you once were you nervous going on there and you said no you just you knew what you were gonna say no matter what he asked you were gonna say what you had planned but but the questions were irrelevant right my response was I was nervous for you I was always nervous for you and yeah you know what Larry King said to me one day somebody asked me down there in the studio we were between things and they said to me does this make you nervous some other person on the panel and Larry interrupts and said he's not nervous I know nervous he's not nervous and you know we talked about that and I said the reason I'm not nervous is I know what I'm going to say and I always had I said I know the two things I want to say the Bible is the only divine authority and Jesus is the only Savior I don't care what the question is well it's still very remarkable because even if I knew what I was gonna say if you set Deepak Chopra next to me and I knew he was hostile it would rattle me well no you Deepak no you know Deepak has a problem because Deepak is very small and he thinks he's God he's a pantheist and he thinks he's God literally thinks he's a he's but pantheism is limited pantheism may be limited to everyone but me because he does not like me but the interesting thing about him is he always wanted his chair cranked up so he got to my level because it's hard to be God and be shorter than the people [Applause] right no all right let me get back to the the question I asked earlier about changes that needed to be made what were some of those changes we needed to put spiritual leadership in in the in the hands of the right godly men that was the number one issue and that's why I started that class and we needed to take spiritual authority away from the wrong people there were I don't know five six seven boards around here that were making all kinds of judgments made up of all kinds of people who knows where so there was that there were people who needed to stop having official responsibilities and people who needed to be given the spiritual ways yeah it's really hard for someone with your depth of conviction to be patient when changes like that need to be made so what did you do you're never going to get him anywhere if you don't love them in the process right I remember there was this big guy named Frank and one of the early times he introduced me he said this young guy thinks he's going to come and be a leader around here we'll see that was the introduction to a large group he was really snide and you know cocky and so next time I saw him I put my arm partway around him and just tell them I was gonna be praying for him and I loved him and if there's anything I could ever do for him I I wanted to let me know and you just don't gain anything if you just start having grudges about people I had patio protests out here a whole Sunday's class sitting in the patio at their backs to the worship center but this was a group of people in the church yeah as we get protests now every now I know but this is this is the Sunday School class of adults Wow because we took away their teacher because he was teaching bad stuff that's a story that's our future we've you know how a guy's been teaching a class for a long time there was a silent patio protest so III just had a meeting with him and I said I just started the meeting by saying I read first Corinthians three are you not carnal what are you doing but in the process you have to you confront them with truth but you have you have to love people in the process the potentials to make enemies over a half a century in the same church is massive it is massive yeah I mean it got who doesn't offend with his tongue as the perfect man that's not me and how many other offenses have I laid down into half a century how do you overcome that I'm more concerned about me than I am about somebody else's issues with me hmm well that's pretty good well take heed take heed to yourself and your doctrine and exhibit patience and at the end the process you've got to reprove rebuke the probably the biggest most dramatic change that we made in the church was to introduce church discipline how far into your ministry um you know just a few months really yeah and I didn't know any church anywhere any time that I'd ever heard of that did church discipline and I asked a few pastors and they said you'll empty the place you cannot do that you you mean you're gonna stand up in a church service and give somebody's name and tell their sin and put them out so well that's what it says not it's not difficult what we have to do it we have to do this this is what scripture says and the it was month it was a few months there was a guy in the church who was an elder a piano player and teacher of a Sunday School class so he came to me he and his wife and said we have a daughter who's gonna get married and she's gonna marry this divorce guy from Las Vegas and he's not a Christian but you know we're praying for him and she's going to marry this guy and we want to have the wedding at the church and we'd like you to do it okay that's not gonna happen so I went to the elders and I said I told him what the story was and they said well we got to do it he's he's you know involved in the church I said we will violate the clear instruction of Scripture if we marry a believer in an unbeliever what Concord hath Christ with Belial and went through all that okay I can't do that I would I cannot do that I cannot flagrantly disobeyed clear command they said okay we'll have it in the church and somebody else would do it that this this was this was a moment this is a moment in history in which this church turned I said whose church is this is this your church is this my church or is this the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and one guy said we can't do it we can't do it that whole family left this church hmm the price was high but the moment transformed his church yeah and that was [Music] and I'm thankful for that because that was so clear cut it wasn't it wasn't like you know Solomon cutting the baby in half cause you any angst at the time no no no right never calls me it causes me angst not even when you were younger no I mean like I'm worried about what would happen no just I mean that's a difficult situation to go through right well I felt bad for the people and I tried to be kind to them and just let them know that I can't do this this this isn't this is not gonna honor the Lord you would have been probably the youngest of the elders at that time right yeah and did was there anyone else I mean you mentioned the guy that said he well there was another story yet you need to know I came I came in 1968 on December 21st 1968 three astronauts Apollo 8 went around the moon and came back this is massive I mean this is the moment right of all moments and in American exploration history there we are in a race with the Russians so this is 68 in December 21 four weeks before that there was a guest preacher here I won't give his name who preached the sermon on why God will never allow man to reach the moon so yeah he tried I didn't I wasn't here then so I don't know but it was kind of a interesting tale six months later or so I think was July 21st of 1969 they're walking on the moon and so everybody kind of associated my coming here with all that moon stuff because I was I came in the middle between the two moon deals but just to show you they actually had a preacher who said something the Lord wouldn't do and it happened immediately so they were I I think that was they saw the foolishness of that and I think they they wanted some more seriousness I think it I think they were ready for the teaching of the word of God right right so the more you're teaching them the more yeah they never resisted it there were questions always but they never resisted the teaching particularly I think because I was teaching John in the morning Sunday morning and you just you can't improve on the person of Christ so compelling so magnificent so glorious in the Gospel of John I just wanted them to I wanted them to the ones that weren't converted to come to Christ and I wanted the rest to love him more and I think going two years through the Gospel of John focused this the whole church on on the Lord Himself and then we did a lot of teaching about spiritual gifts because I believe that the body of Christ the first book I wrote the church the body of Christ and that's that was early in the ministry here that that was I don't remember the year was but but then that guy came to write a letter write an article about the church and we had 900 people then and he had titled the article Lowell Saunders right from Moody and he wrote the article title was a church with 900 ministers and that was his observation that people were busy ministering and that those were the two early focusing on Christ and seeing the churches the body of Christ where everyone is gifted and everyone serves and those were transformative years for our church right I was talking earlier with Sinclair Ferguson he said that I think he said it was a pastor who mentored him who celebrated 50 years in the same ministry and he was asking him about this is years ago asking him about was that really still yeah and he said how did you do it what was the secret to the longevity of your ministry and all and that pastor told him it was it was more like multiple ministry seasons of ministry that things pass and you realize and I know you've had this experience you realize you're actually ministering to a group of people who weren't there at the beginning you you almost have to go back and redo some of you could go a lot of places and minister to different churches or you can stay in the same place and minister to different churches right how many seasons of ministry like that would you clock you have not only you have not only in evident flow of people seasons but churches have seasons there's winters and they're summer and they're springy churches go through seasons of trial and seasons of joy and seasons of challenge and seasons of flourishing but there's an ebb and flow you know if you go back to the beginning they're still charter members here they're they're still I'm but I'm in and I'm also ministering to the fourth generation right I'm to to the great-grandchildren of the people who were here at the beginning but in the process this church head this church has absorbed the city of Los Angeles and it looks like LA as it should because this is the Lord's Church in Los Angeles so it's changed as the city has changed this was originally a Jewish community totally Jewish community all around this thing that's why the synagogue is down on the block it has morphed and there's we think there's about 11 languages within five mile radius of here and there's a Buddhist temple on the other end yes so it's a Thai community now yeah and then there's there's a lot of Arabic people and right and that so that makes you know I've I said this through the years if you tried to follow the church growth experts and find some target culture we wouldn't know which one to pick right in fact when fuller seminary started doing church grow stuff under Donald McGavin and peter Wagner it was kind of a goofy guy for sure but they were doing these they were doing these church growth things that fuller with McGavin and a you know the world mission and all that peter Wagner said we want to bring people to grace because we're the fastest growing Church and they were all into o1 o2 o3 and all that you know that analysis of you pick a culture you pick a target culture and you do everything it suits that culture and you drive your church in that cultural direction and so Peter Wagner would these modular classes he'd bring these guys over and I'd sit down spend a couple hours talking with them and they'd bring him to a church service and after doing that for a I don't know maybe a year several different classes he called me and said I'm not doing it anymore he said because it confuses our students because you don't fit the model so I said Peter that's pretty selective research maybe the Amada needs to be adjusted you know but we were always diverse and continue to be diverse and which is absolutely wonderful there are lots of ways that you don't fit the narrative and I get the feeling you like that no it's not a matter of like it I I don't I don't really I just want to be biblical right I don't I don't here you are five miles north maybe nine miles north of Hollywood like the entertainment capital of the world really and and yet of all of the pastors I know in large churches and influential ministries you are the least interested in trying to connect with the culture or whatever I so it's like that to you as a we have a culture it's called the kingdom of God right talk about that because me because you know in a way it is the secret I think to the future longevity of your ministry and the the far-reaching aspect of it that because you're not into cultural issues but you're teaching scripture and explaining Scripture with Scripture and illustrating scripture with biblical anecdotes it translates into any culture and any time yeah it's it's I don't really care what the culture is doing I mean it herbs and flows and shifts and changes and what does it have to do with the kingdom of God has nothing to do with the king of God my kingdom is not of this world they don't like for me anything I don't need to understand anything about them other than what the Bible tells me about them I'm not looking for cultural cues now III will say tonight I'll talk a little bit about first Corinthians 9 becoming all things to all men I understand that but that's the that's been prostituted to make it mean something it doesn't mean at all I don't want to be insensitive but that I have I have just watched the nations of the world come to Grace Church and culture is part of their heritage but doesn't intrude into the kingdom of God in any sense so I'm not looking for anything from for the world to give me any clues or any cues or any at suppose that access to hearts a lot of the Word of God is alive and powerful it's sharper than any weapon the Spirit saves through the word by the word of truth you you're begotten again and so I've never thought about culture I and in fact I think when you do that you inevitably get too close to it and then it's hard to draw the line for your people right one last question you're not only pastor of Grace Community Church but you had a number of very large and complex organizations how do you do that and manage your time what's the secret to that and in the midst of all that how much sleep do you get it every night on average it depends on how much my wife wants to talk to me and I love talking to her but not what you know the answer to that Phil because you are one of those people that make it possible for me to stand here and preach because I don't have to manage grace to you which I don't I can't I'm not wired to do that anyway it's just you still lead us you know how do I do that just by example and precept and I don't tell you what to do not unless we do something wrong and then there is some truth in that yeah I just think the Lord surrounds you with people you know you could ask the same thing about anybody in a corporate situation there's a certain certain leadership that you provide and I provide that not so much in a personal way although for some people that's true but primarily in articulating the with clarity the message and the mission from the pulpit and whatever other books or whatever but it's just the Lord has just collected people around us it's just it's amazing how many incredibly gifted people the Lord has brought to grace church through the years and then gone through here and gone out and you know we have 100 missionaries now out in TM AI training thousands of pastors and church leaders around the world and we just added about three new schools one in eleven and one in Brazil and one in Japan and ready to add another one in French Canada Quebec and this is just guys training the next generation of pastors and leaders and yeah this is it's just amazing and I'm a spectator this is I need to say this this is not my vision I've never had a vision the only vision I ever had I married so I know nobody knows the future no one knows the future all I can do is teach the Word of God live a faithful life disciple the people that God gives me and only he knows the future and I think you you have to be very careful the most the most popular con in the evangelical world is for some guy to say the Lord gave me the vision of this we need to do all we need a plant 10 churches here and five over here and build this and do that and do that when you start hearing that it's good time to go out the back door because somebody's about to steal your wallet mm-hmm and what's gonna drive that is personal ambition not any word from heaven because God's not giving that kind of revelation right well John I want to say this and I know I speak for multitudes thank you for your faithfulness because there is no more profound influence in my life no better example I've ever seen in the flesh and just grateful for your faithfulness over all these years and I know I speak for all of us just to say thank you for what you teach us thank you thing

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 52,902

Rating: 4.8999071 out of 5

Keywords: John MacArthur, Bible, Preaching, Christianity, Expository, Exposition, Sermon, Jesus, Christ

Id: wRSrn-b0iTk

Length: 79min 26sec (4766 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2019