"Hacking Agag to Pieces" (S1 E5)

[Music] welcome to the truth matters podcast i'm your host daryl harrison the truth matters podcast is a production of grace to you the bible teaching ministry of john macarthur and my guest today on the truth matters podcast is executive director at grace to you phil johnson phil welcome back to the truth madison park thanks daryl it's always good to be here with you how are you doing man how you feeling i'm good i'm good phil i got to tell you i was really amped uh to do this episode of the truth matters podcast with you i always enjoy sitting down with you man and chatting things over uh about john uh and and his material his library and things of that nature but this episode is a special one uh for me and we'll we'll get into that in a second but we're here to talk about john's sermon titled hacking a gag to pieces hacking a gag to pieces one of the best sermon titles ever it's a great sermon too that's one of my all-time favorite john mcarthur sermons when people ask me you know what should i listen to i'll give them a list of four or five and that's always one of them yeah and i want to talk to you about that man can you tell us because as i understand it this sermon is not part of a sermon series from john is that correct this is that's sort of correct okay uh yeah this go ahead he preached this sermon at the very end of 1993 it was the day after christmas 1993 and uh the week before that he had done a christmas message like a themed christmas message but this was day after christmas and attendance is often low on those holiday weekends and so i think he didn't want he was in a series on first corinthians or second corinthians and uh he didn't want to take that back up with so many people off you know visiting relatives and all that so he did this one time special message which actually is kind of linked to the the second corinthians material the second corinthians material he was in a section where he was talking about the conscience okay uh the beginning of uh second corinthians and at the same time just finishing work on his book the vanishing conscience that had just been two weeks before sent off to the publisher and it had a chapter on a ag but it also had the material from second corinthians so in in john's mind all that stuff fit together it was thematically linked but it wasn't part of the second corinthians series yeah thanks for sharing that because one of my questions was if you could give us the back story on where that sermon came from because the title is just fantastic and and i said earlier just a second ago why i was so excited to talk to you about this sermon hacking egg act to pieces because it's very personal to me in a way because this is the first sermon that i ever heard john mcarthur preach it's a good one to start with yeah because you mentioned that he preached the sermon at the end of 1993 very first sermon i'd ever heard john macarthur preach it was my in initial introduction to what an expository sermon sounds like uh you know growing up in the quote unquote black church expository preaching is not the norm there it's all about homiletics it's not necessarily about the hermeneutics but um another reason that this this uh sermon means so much to me is because what john talks about we're gonna get into this in just a second but once what john talks about in that sermon is something that i can personally relate to uh especially when it comes to the matter of sin and in my my own life i've committed some really big sins some really big sins matter of fact what i enjoy doing when a lot of my personal bible study is i like to study what i call the big sinners i like to study people who send really big people like abraham saul david peter i could go on samson for example but when i came across this sermon here hacking a gag to pieces you don't listen to this sermon and remain the same i mean you just don't i mean here we are 27 years later and i'm still uh gripped by the content uh of this sermon so can you help us understand um uh what's the sermon essentially about what is john getting at in hacking egg active pieces he's he's talking about the mortification of sin scripture says mortify that sin that's in your members and that's sort of the starting point for the sermon and it does come out of the book the vanishing conscience so which as i said john had just completed the draft and sent it off to the publisher and there was a chapter in there about the mortification of sin and when i was listening to some of john's material uh in the process of editing that book i came across a place where he referred to agag and um as a illustration of someone who who doesn't really mortify his mortify means put to death someone who doesn't really kill his sin but thinks i can tame this sin you know i can domesticate this particular favorite sin and and still be okay i just tone it down a bit keep it under control keep it a secret or whatever and john was was using the illustration of uh king saul with agag first samuel 15 i think it is where uh saul defeats the amalekites and before the battle the lord tells him slaughter them all don't let any of them live there's good reasons for that by the way because the amalekites were were a murderous tribe that continued to trouble israel and and in fact it was just one generation after saul while david was uh king of israel the the amalekites had recovered enough from this great defeat under saul saul's regime where they came and actually kidnapped members of david's family and so they they illustrate this sort of troubling hard to destroy evil influence and so the lord had told saul put them to death and instead saul kept a gag perhaps as a trophy perhaps because he thought it somehow enhanced his stature and power as a king to have captive this king who had been king of a of a violent and and uh you know warrior nation and um saul kept him alive which was disobedience to what the lord had commanded him right and at the end of that chapter then it says uh that samuel the priest took a gag after he rebuked saul and told that's when saul learned the kingdom is going to be taken from you and given to david basically and uh samuel took a gag and scripture says he he hewed him in pieces before the lord that's the word that's used both in the king james and the new american standard he hewed a gag to pieces before the lord which means he basically took a sword and carved him into pieces yeah you know you mentioned uh uh the word illustration i have several questions for you today phil matter of fact a lot of the questions come from actual quotes of john from that sermon hacking egg act to pieces and one of the things that john says in this sermon is this he says quote that the story of king a a gag is a tremendous insight into god's attitude towards sinners and his holiness and wrath against sin unquote now the question i have for you is what happened to that god today what happened to that god in the church right the god who still who still is the god who is holy and who still cannot tolerate sin what happened to that god right we don't hear him we don't hear about very much that's i think one reason this sermon stands out it's uncharacteristic even for john mcarthur to to spend that much time in the old testament you know he's a new testament preacher for the most part but it is true that uh john when he needs to illustrate a truth rather than go to some you know story or whatever that has nothing to do with scripture he'll look for a biblical illustration this is a classic example of that where you know the command to mortify your sin is a command to deal decisively with it and there's no better illustration of how the lord deals decisively with wickedness than the slaughter of the amalekites in first samuel 15. and in fact that that's a troublesome passage for a lot of people because it's you know people say well this is an act of genocide so how can god countenance that it's actually an act of divine judgment saul had an order from god to to do this and so the sword with which samuel ultimately killed a gag is the executioner's sword which is not unusual at all either in scripture or in human history it's interesting that uh you know when that passage of scripture is talked about it's often talked about in such a way that the question is raised about the character of god that god is somehow deficient in his judgment in executing his judgment right uh you know how do you respond to someone who would say to you well uh you know who wants to serve a god like that who would wipe out an entire you know genus of people well if you understood the character of the amalekites you would see why that's it's the same reason that uh any any nation like all of the the uh allied nations in world war ii were determined to get rid of hitler right because he was an evil man exercising his power for wickedness and the amalekites were that kind of wickedness on steroids they just loved slaughter and devastation they were like human locusts they would go through areas and and uh conquer peoples and tribes and not not in order to possess the land but just because they love to leave it lying waste and they had been a perpetual threat to israel and so the lord commanded saul to utterly get rid of them and that's what he should have done because he had a clear command from the lord to do that it's not a that doesn't legitimize or countenance real acts of uh you know that that level of brutality but this was the lord commanding them to to execute his judgment against sin and saul should have obeyed you know i asked you a second ago phil whatever happened to that god uh you know today especially in the church that god who judges sin that that holy god who cannot tolerate sin i have a similar question and it sort of is extended from a quote that john mentions in the sermon where john says this he says that the story of ag again is an excellent illustration analogically of the sin that remains in the believer's life so similar question to whatever happened to that god i want to ask you whatever happened to sin whatever happened to sin in the church you don't you don't hear about the god who doesn't tolerate sin and equally you don't hear about sin period whatever happened to sin in the church that's one of the points john makes in that book the vanishing conscience that uh sin is a concept that even christians today don't like to talk about or focus on uh and here's a here's a point of interesting history uh i said john macarthur preached that sermon hacking a gag to pieces on december 26 the day after christmas 1993 two days prior to that norman vincent peale had died no okay norman vincent peale was you know the power positive thinking he was the mentor of robert schuller who wrote you know self-esteem the new reformation and in fact there's a large section in the vanishing conscience john's book that critiques norman vincent peale and his teachings all written prior to peel's death but then peel died on that same weekend that john mcarthur preached this and um uh you know i i would say norman vince appeal and and that type of sort of quasi-neo-orthodox preaching it all sounds good it sounds positive people love it people respond to it uh that has done more damage to the church and our perception of god and what he thinks of sin uh than maybe any other kind of popular religion in our lifetimes yeah you know that comment actually leads into you know the next question that i wanted to ask and again this is dovetailing off of another quote from john in hacking egg acted pieces i mean the sermon is just absolutely amazing and i just i just cannot let go of the fact i don't want to sound like a broken uh record here but the personal impact of this sermon on my life cannot be understated because i know my own depravity and i know how huge a sin i'm capable of committing apart from the grace of god and and his his grace upon me to to walk in his truth but john said this in the sermon hacking again to pieces he says quote sin is not killed when it is merely covered up you have not done your duty with regard to killing sin until you have confessed it and forsaken it covering covering it only makes it worse unquote so can you talk about what true confession and repentance of sin looks like because i think going back to the question i asked you a second ago on why we don't talk about sin anymore is it because it is one of the reasons that we don't talk about sin often in the church anymore because we've lost a sensitivity to or respect for god's holiness in that he demands total separation from the practice of sin so we don't really have a clear understanding of what confession and repentance are anymore because we don't tie that to god's holiness can you speak to that for a second yeah i think you're right that all of that goes together the the idea of downplaying the wrath of god against sin because we don't want him to seem mean or too decisive in his judgments and and all that so we've changed the notion of god and made him less holy we've also you know monkeyed with the definition of sin and made it less sinful you know yeah which scripture says one of the reasons for the law is to show us the sinfulness of sin how evil it really is and in the church today you just don't have much of an appreciation of that's why there are movements in the church to say look it's okay to to harbor homosexual desires as long as you don't act it out uh one of the things john is saying in this 1993 sermon is if you harbor the desire even if you don't act you have not mortified that sin uh and john is borrowing there by the way from john owen and his great book on the mortification of sin well i think what you've got in that sermon and in the corresponding chapter in the vanishing conscience book is a kind of condensation of john owen's great treatise on the mortification of sin uh just sort of boiled down into a single chapter and made easy for people to read you know phil i think about how john's been in the pulpit at grace community church now for 51 years and i think about um you know his legacy once he steps down from the pulpit his legacy is going to be so multi-layered i mean i don't even know where to begin but i think one aspect of that legacy is going to be his consistency in shepherding his flock against sin right and and being courageous and bold and speaking about sin and leaving leading holy lives uh but i think about that part of john's legacy but also think about other bold preachers like spurgeon martin lloyd jones and others who were they were they planting churches today i don't know that they'd be tolerated very long in the pulpits of many churches today because they were so boldly speak they boldly spoke out against sin that's right they they wouldn't be tolerated and spurgeon actually recognized that there's a famous passage from spurgeon where he says look you love to read about luther and calvin and some of the great men of god of the past but you don't want them you don't want people like that in your pulpit today yeah and he compared it to you go to the zoo and you you look at and admire the lion but you know uncaged that lion and you don't want him around right um and he compared you know bold preaching to that sort of lion-like um you know power and and a real threat to people who who love sin and people don't want that it's like the apostle paul said it would be they want their ears to be tickled they have itching ears yeah exactly i tell you as i listen to you phil i'm thinking about how uh you know listen we as christians are beholden to a faith where its savior its god was nailed to a cross and yet we act as if when it comes to this matter of sin we act as if we act as if christ just fell asleep in a lazy boy uh that that he he just went to heaven in his sleep that he wasn't nailed to a cross that he wasn't beaten and spat on and um uh mocked uh even on his way to the cross uh so so talk to us about john's sermon as it relates to uh john simon hacking egg active pieces as it relates to our uh lackadaisical that's the only way i can think of our laxadaisical or our apathetic approach to christ's suffering on the cross you know his passion his suffering on the cross for our sins we say that so casually it's like bumper sticker material t-shirt material right jesus paid it all but when you listen to hacking egg act to pieces john john places you there he places you there at the cross and reminds you of what your sin cost god right you know can you talk about that for a second yeah you know i think most people don't really even have a a very realistic concept of what christ suffered on our behalf we think of the the crown of thorns and the whip you know and and all of that is grotesque there was that mel gibson movie a few years ago that that you know showed i think to some degree very realistically what uh the process of crucifixion would look like to a victim and yet despite all of that the worst thing christ suffered was the outpouring of god's wrath against sin which is a a kind of suffering that we can't even comprehend but if you if you realize uh in order to pay for your own sin you would have to be punished in hell eternally and still never quite pay the bill christ somehow took all of that the wrath of god the full outpouring of god's wrath on behalf of his people and um and willingly suffered that um and and you know a measure of of how how serious that was for him is seen in gethsemane the night before where he sweat blood because his soul was troubled even to the point of death just by the thought that on the next day he would suffer the full wrath of god against sin you know another quote that john makes in that sermon hacking a act to pieces he says that every honest christian will testify that the tendency to sin is not erased by becoming a believer we still derive pleasure from sin john says we still derive pleasure from sin so that's tha is that that romans 7 battle that paul is talking about yeah exactly i think that's exactly what it is can you delve into that a little bit why do you think it is that we we still derive pleasure from sin why isn't that why isn't that battle brought to an end when we come to faith in christ yeah i don't know it it makes me look forward to yes glorification when that won't be the case anymore but yeah and it is troubling i mean i'm i'm in my late 60s now and uh i remember thinking as a new christian teenager even that uh some of the things that would that tempted me then i would eventually outgrow that the time would come when i would be sanctified enough that you know i didn't get troubled by sin just you know selectively on a selective basis that's true but if you look at sin in general i i you know i can testify that as a 67 year old man my heart still resonates with what the apostle paul wrote in romans 7 that i am nothing but a wretched man who can't seem to to break that that you know desire for things that are sinful wicked you know i think about what paul says here in first corinthians 15 56 he says that the sting of death is sin and the power sin is the law but thanks be to god who gives us the victory through our lord jesus christ that ties into something else that john said in his sermon hacking egg act to pieces he says quote when we were saved there was a crushing defeat of sin but we still have remaining sin there are some amalekites running around loose in everybody's life we all have our a-gags we all have our a-gags uh and and again this this sermon because of the analogy that that john uses in the story of king ahab a gag rather and our own uh sin just penetrates to me personally because again um i know me when i when i sin phil i get my money's worth and and and this sermon meant so much to me in bringing me back to a point where uh i am taking my sins seriously even what because we have a tendency right to index our sins to categorize our sins and judge certain sins as being more egregious than others but god doesn't look at sin that way uh right even the smallest what we would call the smallest sin would have been enough to send christ to the cross yeah well think about the original sin adam basically disobeyed god and ate a piece of fruit that was he was forbidden to eat in that one act the entire universe of evil was unleashed that's that's how much evil there is even in the smallest sin we need to cease in that way and think of it that way and and what what that sermon and and the text mortify the sin that's in your members what that encourages me to do is realize that those sins need to be dealt with uh decisively and firmly and even violently i mean that in the in the spiritual sense that as jesus said if your right hand offends you cut it off that's pretty extreme measure and of course he's not saying literally that you should mutilate your body but he's he's using uh language and terminology that shows how seriously we need to see the issue of sin mortify that sin put it to death uh and and really no measure is too extreme no and no sin is too small to to deal with um and you know we need to revamp our thinking and uh you know we tend to forget that on a daily basis we need daily constant reminders to mortify the sin put to death every day and that may be part of what paul meant when he said i die daily he was subject to literal death every day but but i think he's clearly from roman seven we know he's dealing with sin in his own mind and heart covetousness he says is his besetting sin uh one of the notoriously hard sins to to kill anything takes place in your mind because you carry that temptation around with you and um yeah uh if we don't see it as seriously as god does we're gonna fail you know you uh you're segueing into another quote from john that i want to go to next uh phil in the sermon hacking egg acted pieces john says this he says sin is not killed and this goes to your point about mortifying john says sin is not killed when it is only internalized sin isn't dead if you can still ruminate on the pleasure of it we deal with our sin courageously when we strike it at the head so this is what you're going back to with the text that you just alluded to your right eye right arm affinity your right hand infinity your right eye uh the gospel calls us to some very drastic measures in dealing with our sin and mortifying our sin but let me ask you phil what would you say to someone who would ask you well how do i get there how do i let's say yeah there's a sin in my life that i just i'm hanging on to i love that sin like john macarthur says here i desire pleasure from that sin um how do how do i get to the point where i don't desire to do that sin anymore so that i do desire to mortify it let i'm not even getting to the practical aspect of how mortifying it looks like how do i get to the point where i want a more genuinely want to mortify a sin in my life how do i get there you have to you have to choke out that appetite and feed more righteous appetites for one thing and uh i think that's the that's the probably the most important key to sanctification that you fill your mind with scripture meditate on whatever things are pure whatever things are good and so on um so it's a matter of you know basically reprogramming your mind be renewed by the always 122. yeah renewing of your mind which is a a constant and actually lifelong task to have to do it and meanwhile we've got our culture throwing at us images and billboards and and things designed to provoke covetousness a sin that paul says he he struggled with so it's it's a constant battle and until you recognize that you you can't put your weapons down and and rest and say you know i've achieved this paul says at the end of his life it's not as if i've achieved he he hadn't reached the goal but he says i press on and that's how we have to think yeah yeah i think uh man what you just said there at the end i think it's a great question to i'll just personalize it to myself just ask ourselves am i pressing on am i pressing on or have i given up have i given up in this area this center area of my life have i have i given up or am i pressing on uh you know and uh you know as we we prepare to wrap up on this episode uh phil one last question i have for you if if uh if if i were to ask you why should someone take a few minutes out of their day to listen to this sermon hacking egg act to pieces that is so convicting that it's so confrontational that is so bold that is so unapologetic in addressing the sin the remaining sin in our life um why is that sermon relevant to me today why should someone pull the car off the side of the road or take some time out at home or while they're in the car listening to hacking egg active pieces if if they know that this sermon is gonna bring them face to face with the reality of sin in their own life why should i bother listening to that because that's what we need you know uh scripture says if we would judge ourselves we would not be judged judgment is coming and you can either deal with your sin now or it will be dealt with and that's a that's a frightening thought because it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living god our god is a consuming fire we don't hear those things as you pointed out earlier uh in the church today those truths tend to be suppressed and silenced and it is to our detriment as individual christians also collectively as the church the church today has a very poor testimony and and to a large degree it's because we have failed to deal with our own sin seriously enough well phil i want to thank you again for joining me today on the truth matters podcast we've been joined by phil johnson executive director of grace to you talking about john mcarthur's sermon hacking egg act to pieces which i encourage you to go listen to go to gty.org plug that in the search field just search for hacking egg active pieces and listen to that sermon you will be blessed by it thanks for joining us today on the truth matters podcast and we will see you next time

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 32,861

Rating: 4.9134355 out of 5

Keywords: John MacArthur, Bible, Preaching, Christianity, Expository, Exposition, Sermon, Jesus, Christ, Grace to You, church, sin, repentance, sanctification, mortification, temptation, desires, righteousness, Scripture, purity, judgment

Id: VyveJlHph14

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021