Shining the Light in a Dark Culture: A Conversation with John MacArthur

macarthur yes what's new [Music] uh a lot um you've been busy i've seen you on tv lately yeah i um i in a sense i i feel like um it took me to get to 80 years before um maybe the most critical moment in my life has taken place and it's i think it's because there are more people listening to the word of god at this particular time from this pulpit than ever in the history of our church in a regular way sunday after sunday because of the multiple dire conditions in our world and so and there's a greater interest in hearing the word of god uh it's it's um it's not just sort of inside the church that it's outside many many people wanting interviews wanting me to write articles and and even putting these articles on basically secular websites and things like that to hear from from the lord i think uh this is a new experience but i i'm so thankful for the opportunity to do it so back in march the live stream saw a lot more traffic because everyone was locked down so that increased the amount of people looking here but you're talking about not just the live stream looking at us more and more you're talking about the cultural changes taking place and people looking for answers yeah i think there's a level of desperation um i forget who said it but people don't take their life because they're weary of the pain they take their life because they're weary of the pleasure people are running out of pleasure it's becoming pretty common among young people younger and younger all the time to take their lives and it isn't that they suffer from pain it's that they suffer from the meaninglessness of even pleasure there's a fear about the future everything is shifting um you have a generation of young people who've gone through university systems and they have been denied the true knowledge of god true morality true virtue true character and their lost souls saw the other day six young people who were smashing stores i think it was in chicago six of them were upper class wealthy white kids they're the kids who ran out of pleasure and so all that was left for them was a kind of nihilism where you start to smash and break things because nothing is left and so i think it's um it's a frightened generation who have been told that their truth is the real truth but doesn't sell in the soul somebody can tell you that your truth is all that matters you should feel no shame you should believe yourself you're the most important person in your world i can sell you that but you can't sell your soul that because that's vacuous that's empty so you have two kind of young people today you have the conservative young people conservative millennials who tend to be truth seekers you know they're the ones that listen to ben shapiro and people like that they want to know the truth they they want to know what's right they're truth seekers and uh i've had the opportunity to do some writing for them and uh i love that and then there's the the liberal millennials who are just iconoclastic they've run out of pleasure and they just want to tear down burn and destroy and um it's a lost generation and because the kids are lost the parents have have angst and shame because they've lost their children and they have no hope for their grandchildren so there's a sense of existential emptiness pervading this society and wherever they might look for help they don't want to look to politicians because that that's a terrifying thing they can't look at the educators that's equally terrifying and those people who represent order and um um kind of sanity um are under assault like the police and any orderly morally upstanding kind of uh approach to life is mocked as hate speech so this generation is so utterly lost and i wouldn't necessarily expect that somebody my age and and my convictions and all would would find an opportunity to communicate but the lord has uh surprised me with that so i'm i'm grateful to be able to speak at a time like this when everybody's wanting to hear a voice of truth and and all i do is open the bible and say what it says and that is the truth that god uses to transform hearts i don't have to empower that truth i just have to preach it the power is is in it by the holy spirit so yeah it's a pretty amazing time um for probably the last 15 or 20 years i've been kind of a joke to the the pragmatists to the church growth church strategy people i've been kind of an anachronism i've been kind of like a dinosaur but when the the nation starts to burn and people are wanting real answers they're not going to go to a show they're not going to go to a superficial ted talk when they want the truth when they desperately need the truth they're going to find the truth as god directs them so this is a time for the truth and it's it's an amazing thing to see this this all happening and the darker the night the brighter the light right and the more despair there is the more uh people reach out for hope so just to to be there and to have the opportunity to be as ubiquitous as we are because of the internet is is amazing amazing shiny new programs don't have a lot of appeal at a time yeah this is not a good time for superficial answers no no because you know what are you supposed to do the the streets are on fire the culture is polarized socialism is on the rise i mean these are crazy days and they're not looking for some you know cheesy cartoon illustrated superficial church program that's coming down the pipe the next thing that the pastor has they need the truth what is what is is happening is superficial preaching is becoming obsolete the the people who thought they were at the top of the food chain in terms of ministry and effectiveness in the church are now void they're nullified because this is way too desperate for some superficial approach you got to tell people more than god wants them to be happy and to know that god bestows the knowledge of himself only through the scriptures i think calvin said something like that that that's where people encounter god and that's what this generation needs yeah and you know what's so amazing about it is you don't have to defend that there's there's a power in the scripture that captures even a resistant heart with the reality of its own truthfulness if i've learned anything in over half a century teaching the bible i've learned that it has immense power it overwhelms people with its truthfulness even people who don't believe it can't escape the validity of it because it rings true in their own hearts but just to think about having the opportunity to write articles for these websites where i normally wouldn't you know be considered because i'm i'm another generation or two removed at least and i'm just biblical and they're saying give us more give us more give us more because there's a hunger for this and those of us who know you well know how much of an evangelist you are and you've you've always had that that bent even as a young man preaching in the bus station down in the south you've always been evangelistic that the baptism here uh is never still water there's always people coming to christ in this church and you've also been an evangelist to the church and so as we've watched these last weeks and our church is full of hundreds of visitors uh in the morning and we're grateful that they're here it's just very clear that you're mindful that there's there's still a need for the gospel well yeah um i i've spent my whole life basically doing two things trying to evangelize professing christians so they become genuinely saved because we know the terrors are mixed with the wheat and secondly trying to feed the true believers the word of god so they can be sanctified and i'm very much aware as i'm preaching now and people are listening all over the the world and it's pretty remarkable i think within a just a very brief time this morning more people had downloaded that sermon on facebook than anything that's ever come out of this pulpit in the past and that's amazing and that what that means is that this is getting beyond where we normally reach so and i always want to include in it the sinfulness of sin the hopelessness of man without god and the the answer of the gospel and the forgiveness and salvation that christ offers so yeah there there has to be that evangelistic emphasis all the time and particularly now because we have people listening who don't just need to hear how the world should be they need to hear how they can become right with god so you talked about the wheat and the tares and that's been a hallmark of your ministry is talking about the danger of a false believer the the lordship of jesus in recent months as i've heard you talking about jesus is the head of the church and that our obedience is to him over caesar it's reminding me of the things that you said decades ago and have been saying all these years about the lordship of christ let's talk about the the relationship between the lordship of christ over the over the believer lordship salvation and the lordship of christ over the church you think those two things are really one thing yeah they are one thing but they haven't always been understood that way um in fact blakey's book on on scottish preachers written in 1880 or 1890 something like that he chronicles how that in the church in scotland believers acknowledge christ as head over them but the issue of christ as head of the church was not that clear because when when england was catholic the pope was the head of the church and when the particular king was a protestant didn't want the pope to be to the head of church the king of england became the head of the church in fact to this day if you go to the scottish parliament building on the royal mile in edinburgh and you look up at the very top of the the ceiling you'll see a seat for the king still in the building so the world was still trying to figure out not that christ is the lord over the believer but that christ is actually the head of the church and not the pope and not the king and it was in the battles of the 16th 17th century that the church crystallized that because it was fought over and i think that what typically happens in church history you know this very well is that doctrines get crystallized when they're embattled when there is a reason that we have to fight this battle and we're back at that point right now i i have great regard for the jurisprudence system i have a great reject guard for the government and respect for authority i have nothing but honor for the judge who several judges who have weighed in on our case and as of now i think there have been five different judges two individual and three on a panel i have great respect for them and for what they do but none of them individually nor all of them collectively is the head of the church so they they can adjudicate things in their realm they cannot adjudicate things in the kingdom of god and the lord is the head of the church and that's why we're here regardless of what a judge says they are not the head of the church and that is where the church has taken its stand through its entire history it's always taken its stand there and we have made heroes out of those people there's hardly a pastor alive today who wouldn't go back and if you asked him if he knew anything about church history he wouldn't be able to identify the heroes of the christian faith and inevitably they were they were against the the church of their time whether it was calvin who went against the catholic church and and wrote systematic theology and commentaries and started a seminary and his seminary became known as the school of death because the guys that were trained there would go back to france and the catholic church would kill them because they preached the gospel whether it was john knox who was hated and rejected but was faithful to preach whether it's the covenanters whether it was the great ejection in england when he threw all the faithful puritan preachers out of their pulpits on one sunday so throughout church history we've always given honor in the past to those who are not subject to the powers that try to invade the kingdom of god and i'm not doing anything differently and neither are any of our elders are you included we're taking our stand where where god's faithful leaders have always taken their stand isn't that we don't love those people it isn't we don't respect them it isn't that we don't want to see them come to faith in christ we do it isn't that we're angry with them it isn't that we don't think they provide a necessary service in the world they do but when they step in and tell the church whether it can meet or not they have overstepped their bounds because christ said my kingdom is not of this world so we will do what christ calls us to do and like the apostles will obey god rather than men and will take the consequences whatever they are they may begin this week i'm not sure possible yeah and if you end up going to what we call in new mexico la pinta um i i guess i'll go with you but i may need bail money mcarthur so i think what you just said is so so crystallizing and helpful to think about that that i wonder if you're actually preparing future generations of pastors to make a similar stand do you think that this is what's this is what's ahead for us in the future i think we've had enough of the pragmatic stuff i think the church has been sold out to pragmatism weak willed unbiblical preachers that are just um personalities um narcissistic self-focused personalities brokering their their charisma and their skills and their communication ability to build what they call a church when it isn't a church at all and life is far too serious for those they're making daisy chains that what they're telling people is uh shy of what people want to hear it's time again for the word of god life is far more serious at least from my perspective than it's ever been and i've been around a long time and seen it in a lot of forms but i've never seen the level of despair and i think i have to add that this level of despair that's in our culture as you know because you work with university students has been being developed for the last 30 years or more in the university system they're the ones there there where everybody's trained to be godless immoral self-centered shameless and you can't keep sowing those seeds decade after decade after decade without producing a generation of people who actually believe that but that kind of hedonism is empty void they can't establish a meaningful self identity so they have to find a tribe where nobody questions them or is allowed to question them because that would be hate speech or or they become nihilistic and nothing means anything they can't establish meaningful relationships certainly not lifelong relationships um so this is not a time for frivolous superficial pop psychology answers to people's deep seated questions and and when you realize as well everybody lives forever everybody lives forever the um the eternal things weigh heavy on my heart when we think about the consequences of jesus's lordship in our lives you're talking about eternity we're talking about the consequences of of all that we're facing right now what is the worst thing that can happen to us as a church i mean we go up against the county we go to the supreme court potentially i mean what's the worst thing that could happen to us macarthur well the worst thing that could happen to us would be to stop being the church that's right the worst thing could happen to us would be not to be here and not to be proclaiming the word of god not to be living to the honor of christ not to be the shining light on the hill we need to do this and the world is looking at us the entire world is is looking at us i can tell you that because um i don't know how to do social media but all the people who do uh show me all the streams of things and you know there there's everything out there good bad and indifferent but the the attention of the world is on us and i think we're beginning to see other pastors be strengthened other pastors say hey we need to be the church we need to we need to open the church we need to not be afraid of this effort to terrify people this is a massive effort to reset the entire global culture including the united states of america and the only way you can do it doesn't take an army to conquer a nation it just takes fear and it doesn't even have to be a real fear it just has to be an artificial fear that people buy into so this whole world and this culture is being manipulated in horrendous ways uh out of fear and um the the one thing that we cannot demonstrate is fear because we don't have anything to be afraid of the worst thing can happen to us is we all go to heaven and that's the best thing could happen to us shy of that we've got nothing to fear in the year 2000 a book came out with your name on it called why government can't save you an alternative to political activism some people have been asking macarthur has your view of the christian's relationship to government changed since then no i take the same view of government that the prophets in the old testament took i take the same view of well you heard my view of government today you call the government to account when it steps out from under the conviction of the true and living god i was serious when i said this morning when i heard the the presidential candidate democratic presidential candidate say if he gets elected he's going to fill he's going to fill the white house with muslims i think he thought that was advancing this culture but that is where we are that there is no difference in the mind of leaders in this country between the true god and satan there's no difference you can have god or you can have satan it really doesn't matter that's how far gone we are um so this isn't about politics this isn't about activism activism is where you destroy in other words your goal as an activist is to destroy whatever exists that you don't like and replace it with something else and and you use manipulation and political means or social means to do that all i want to do is preach the bible to the culture to its people to its leaders and it's it's it's amazing how much has opened up uh and how many people are willing to hear this and i i am very encouraged when i get a message from the president thanking me for taking the stand i'm taking and telling me that he's he's behind me and he's got my back that's pretty amazing to hear [Applause] 20 years ago you wrote these words in that book rather than demanding our rights and creating for ourselves a world where we feel safe and accepted we need to see the deep spiritual needs of the world and concern ourselves with offering people hope through jesus christ that's what being a living sacrifice is all about right so that was in the era of the moral majority and i had an issue with the moral majority because it doesn't matter if you go to hell moral or immoral it only matters that you go to hell that's right it doesn't matter whether you go to hell as a policeman or a prostitute doesn't matter you go to hell as a as a an unconverted moral man or the most dissolute immoral person on the planet morality doesn't do anything uh but if you if you push morality if you just push morality morality morality we've got to be moral we've got to be moral we want to create a moral country you begin to um to develop a hostility toward the immoral people and uh it was in that era when when i wrote that that i forget the exact year they got a call from the white house when george bush was president and some white house people had been listening to a sermon i did on the deadly dangers of moralism deadly dangers of moralism and i got a call to go back there and to to talk with them about the fact that they were so hostile toward the other party's immorality that they had turned the mission field into the enemy and the problem with fighting for morality is all you end up with is phariseeism if you want to know what the moral majority looks like go to the new testament look at the pharisees that's the moral majority lost on their way to hell whited sepulchres denounced by jesus completely moral and totally lost so we're not for morality that's what i was talking about this morning i wasn't telling people to be moral i was saying you better submit to god or you're going to be judged it's a stand for righteousness to stand for righteousness justice truth honesty uh worshiping the true and living god yeah this i love this morning sermon let's talk a little bit more about it you took us on a kind of a tour of the psalms and the prophets and even into the future talking about how the nations must obey jesus christ and that they will answer to god not just individuals but nations and that's undeniably clear in scripture it's part of the motivation for missions and the the national focus of the scriptures that every knee will bow every tongue confessed that we'd go out into the world all of that was kind of coming together in in this morning's sermon was a tremendous just look at our responsibility to be that example of worship and righteousness and then an unbelieving world right and and we have to be like the prophets and we have to warn the rulers of this nation and every other nation of the dire results of turning away from the true and living god that is that is a formula for judgment that without remedy unless one comes to faith in christ so um that that's taking the scripture i know there have been some somebody told me there's some people who are criticizing saying well macarthur is looking at government as a theocracy no no that whoever made that up isn't thinking very clearly which is a life career for people on the internet but it doesn't pay well but no yeah but i wasn't talking about there's there's only been one theocracy in the in the history of the world and that was israel and when they sinned against god god judged them horribly and horrendously and they're still under his judgment until they come to christ and he'll restore them the next theocracy will be the millennial reign of jesus christ there's nothing theocratic about the us or any other nation that's we're not talking about a kingdom on this earth ruled by god we're talking about rulers acknowledging the true god for the sake of the blessing that that brings to their people in a temporal sense and they will be held accountable for that as will the nations so a theocracy in the past in israel a theocracy to come when jesus christ rules on his throne in the meantime we all live in a very pluralistic society our neighbors are jewish and muslim and we we live in a world where there's going to be lots of different views of the world so help us think about how we should relate to both the world around us in light of what you said this morning the accountability the whole world has and how we relate to our government that's not going to be a christian government ever well i it's a god ordained government marriage is a god-ordained institution government is a god-ordained institution romans 13 and it's ordained for the well-being of man the protection of those who do good the punishment of those who do evil so you can have a functioning culture and a functioning society they can enjoy the benefits of common grace and can allow god to be seen and manifest in the order of that society much more so than in the chaos of a dysfunctional society but where we have one simple job the the role that the church plays is to put on display the transforming power of christ what you heard in those testimonies tonight transformed lives just totally transformed lives the church is that collection of transformed people and the they're letting their light so shine before men that they may see their good works and glorify their father who's in heaven or as paul says le you know your lights in the world um the the church then is light and we talked about that a few weeks ago it's salt it has a subtle influence of righteousness and it has an open declaration of truth and being light but also the church is primarily called to proclaim the gospel and that starts with focusing on the true god so if i if i would look at my responsibility to america what i did this morning would be what i would call pre-evangelism it's not actually going through the details of the gospel but it's saying there's only one god and he has revealed himself in his word and you need to come to him and worship him and honor him and obey him or you will be judged you will forfeit blessing in this life and you'll forfeit blessing forever in the life to come so you start pre-evangelism by your definition of god i remember when i was in moscow some years ago and i sat down with a bunch of russian pastors around the table and these are you know godly guys who've gone through a lot of suffering and persecution in russia one of them said the muslims worship the same god we do right now that's a pastor a faithful pastor and i said no the god of the bible is god and the god of islam is satan satan not god satan but that's sometimes hard for people in the middle east to get because the term allah is the term god and you see it even in a bible in arabic so we have to begin with sorting out the true and living god which is what i was saying today and calling nations to acknowledge the true and living god i'm i'm not asking america to go into dietary laws they were they were basically set aside in the new testament we don't need to bring them back i'm not asking them to adhere to any of the sort of separational behaviors that god gave israel to keep them separated from the pagans those were all set up set aside don't let anybody hold you to new moon a festival a sabbath you know any of those externals and you don't even expect them to act like christians no i don't but i expect that if they're ever going to come to the knowledge of the true god uh whoever comes to god must believe that he is right hebrews so you have to start by believing in the right god so what i did today is so utterly foundational by saying there's only one god and if you don't come to that one god you are under judgment and if you're a leader that judgment is multiplied because you're leading an entire popular population of people away from the true and living god but that is the norm that's what romans 1 is saying when they knew god they glorified him not as god they basically replaced him with created things you know animism and gods of their own making and the wrath of god is unleashed on that so i don't you would you would see this of course there's a lot of evangelical preaching about come to jesus and you'll fix your life but there was recently a survey you probably saw it of evangelical christians and the third of them thought jesus was a created being well if you think jesus is a created being you're not an evangelical you're a heretic that is a satanic lie but that's what a third of evangelicals believe so what i'm trying to do at some point is go back to square one and that was square one today that's why you go to the old testament right the old testament's got two simple messages and they basically were laid out by god in deuteronomy you're familiar with them very familiar with them 26-29 right you you come to god and you obey his word and what you're blessed you disobey god and what cursed that's the that's what the old testament is telling you from beginning to end you obey god you're blessed you disobey god your curse that was the that was essentially the summation i was going to go there this morning but i ran out of time on that one but um but i'm trying to start where you have to start he that cometh to god must believe that he is that he is the god he is and not some figment of somebody's imagination or some false god and the survey you're referring to is done by a i mean a reputable evangelical organization ligonier they call it the state of field actually lifeway did it and they passed it on to ligonier it was kind of a lifeway which is southern baptist survey i honestly don't like those surveys because i think they're revealing in that a 30 of evangelicals think jesus was not god but he's a created being by god when you say that's what evangelicals believe you just created a new kind of evangelicalism so what what that the effect on me is that's tragic those aren't evangelicals those are heretics the effect on everybody else is oh i could be an evangelical because i don't believe he's god either so now you have just widened the tent and they give those questions and give you a percentage of surveys and what those surveys actually do is recreate a false form of christianity in people's minds you would think that they'd be as discerning as we are and say wow that's a tragedy but the undiscerning person is going to say hey i can be one of those and you you wind up with a trojan horse do you think the word evangelical is even useful anymore are we evangelical um well you on galizzo it means to preach the gospel it's a good word but we have to keep changing words rc sprole and i used to talk about this a lot we would be on a golf course and he'd say johnny mac he'd say we got to come up with a new word because evangelical is no good anymore it's been co-opted by all kinds of people so one day he said i got it we're going to be imputationists i said that's not going to work rc they're going to think we're cutting off people's limbs [Music] no that's yeah he said you're probably right so i think he went to heaven without a word yeah you know we never got we never got that conversation finished we're still trying to find a word and we're christians true believers maybe two words yeah and we're we're evangelical in that we we preach the gospel yeah yeah so again this morning i think was an epic journey where you brought all people and all nations under accountability and condemnation through the witness of the scripture to the one true god through his son jesus christ there's no other way he made that very clear so in thinking about how individuals and nations need to respond to that and and how individuals need to need to respond to that in light of all that's happening in our culture and going back to that politics idea a little bit there's maybe two extremes people could make the idols that you talked about in this morning's message they can make politics an idol and think that's the secret if we can just get control that was what you were warning about with the moral majority and there's there's those of us who are not they're not our enemy they're our mission field right so political idolatry over that on one side and then some kind of political maybe apathy or ambivalence is the way the christian relates to government somewhere in the middle there um well i i would say we only relate to government on one basis and i said that this morning those that uphold the true god and his law we affirm those that do not we cannot affirm it's that simple it's not really economics in and of itself but i'll promise you this somebody who upholds the true god and his word will have the right economic view of personal responsibility um will have the right moral view there there there is no such thing as one who gives honor to god and upholds his law who wants to forward the lgbtq agenda or any other deviant agenda so it's i think at one point in the message i can't remember exactly i said the only distinctive mark that we're looking for with anybody who's running for any position of power is what is his view and what has been a demonstration that he holds that view with integrity of the law of the true and living god sometimes a catholic will do that um sometimes the protestant will not do that so that's the only issue we can discuss economics we can discuss the error of um giving away too much and not expecting people to earn it and having some sense of dignity and the accomplishment of that those are other issues to be discussed and the bible discusses those as well but it's never politics to me politics by definition is the art of compromise the only way politics works is through compromise so historically the idea in america was to get these two parties to give and take and if you could get them to give and take you could work out a common agenda we have seen that come to a grinding halt those two parties don't work together at all it's far worse than anything anytime in my life because the animus in the in the angst is so deep because it's no longer a discussion about economics about labor and ownership it's all moral it's all will you accept the lgbtq agenda will you accept transgender uh will you accept homosexual marriage will you accept the abortion of babies maybe even after they're born the killing of an unwanted baby that's not politics that's morality so it for us as christians it's it's it's easier now than maybe it was 25 or 30 years ago to navigate the balance between uh power and labor which doesn't seem to be the issue today it's it's it's all moral and while we condemn the the immorality and we support those who are moral and will uphold the law of the true and living god we don't hate those people because they're not the enemy they're god's enemy but they're our mission field and we're told to pray for them and the assumption is to pray for their salvation by the way i hope what i said uh reaches the ears of some of the people who need to hear what i said today but that's the business the lord is in um i'm in manufacturing he's in distribution i i come up with a sermon and he does what he wants with it so you you were on a skype call or zoom call whatever it is this week with a bunch of pastors yeah the master's fellowship and i was listening in on that and you spoke to them about some of the questions they had in their churches and so i wanted you to take a few minutes and talk to our church tonight there's still some folks who aren't with us yet they're either not comfortable or they work in health care and they can't come into the crowd quite yet or they're immunocompromised can you be a healthy church member and be live streaming in this season you want to say something for those folks yeah it's no different than any other year it's no different than any other flu seasons you know you got to be careful if you have issues and i understand that i we've never i've never made an issue out of it i i think there's a lot more going on than the virus for sure as i've been saying california rate of covet is one one hundredth of one percent it's infinite testimony we have the lowest death rate in the continental united states of any state from this and it's a lot lower than the numbers indicate and the average age of or the mean age of people who die with not from covid but die with it is i think 80. so we understand that older people and we like octogenarians around here thank you thank you but i but i don't want to tell people look i would tell anybody if you don't feel well you stay home if you if you feel like you have a compromised immune system and you don't want to expose yourself to something but that that's just normal common sense life you don't have to by this fear that we're facing this unheard of death that's lingering around us we've been what nine weeks at grace church you're here you're not sick and i i don't know what else we can say you don't have anything to fear but anybody who's sensible and doesn't feel well of course and if you feel a little bit safer you know with a mask or something that's that's your choice to make you might want to read a little more about that but um we we're aware of how you feel about the well it's not so much how i feel about the mask yeah it's how i don't know as much but it's how i see the questions that are happening it's how i feel about the mask you've had in your pocket for three months this one this one's this one's six months old actually i don't think you take that one into surgery i also think my beard will kind of prevent its effectiveness but so let's let's talk to people who are outside of our church and who i mean there's a lot of people in our culture who are genuinely afraid oh yeah that's the idea and yeah that's the idea that i love hebrews chapter 2 verse 15. that the reason jesus became through an affair of death yeah take us out from that slavery that enslaved us all our lives the fear of death talk talk to our people about talking to their culture about the it's not that we're daredevils that's not what's going on we've always lived without a fear of death yeah it reminds me of what groucho marx says i'm not afraid of death i just don't want to be there when it happens what is there to fear in death death far better to depart and be with christ and i understand that that might be the perspective of somebody my age not somebody a lot younger but we understand even more than that we understand that the years of our lives are determined by god and that's all written in his book uh he wrote down the number when we weren't even born right that's right when we didn't even exist and we were being woven wonderfully in the womb he numbered our days so if somebody asked me the other day if i get mad and i said what would i get mad about what what what is there to be mad about what i i'm blessed beyond comprehension i'm going to heaven i'm watching the providence and the power of god unfold what's what's there to be mad about well do you worry about things what sort of worry about what's there to fear my years are predetermined um and they're in god's hands and there's perfect calm in my heart i i don't have i'm not concerned about what the courts might do or what you know punishment or whether somebody's going to haul me off to jail or whatever now that would just be the next adventure um i had a friend years ago ralph kuiper and he had a little favorite thing he did when he'd fly he would get the stewardess and he would say what would happen if this plane crashed well you you don't normally say that on a flight to the sturgis but it was the way he introduced the gospel and he would she would say well sir i don't want to talk about that are you afraid of that well doesn't everybody know that for you there would be something to fear for me that would just be a novel way to get into heaven and he did that in a kind of an offhanded kind of humorous way but yeah just to understand that your life is already determined if you're faithful unless you go before your time because of sin so just be faithful be be joyful be sensible you know you don't want to walk into a contagious ward and be foolish you don't want to lie down on the freeway and say okay god it's not my time yet so make sure they go around me um but yeah i think we should be joyful and you know that's what people pick up when they come here is there's so much joy and sunday mornings in this place people are really amazed at that it's not fear there's just joy it's a unbounded joy and they see all these kids all over the place and families and there's just no fear and that's for a couple of reasons one we know this thing isn't what they're telling us it is and we also know that god's in control of all of our lives and that's part of our testimony in this day and is why i'm telling pastors like on that call open your church have church i i don't think that the powers that be are going to let up on any of this until people finally say we're not doing it anymore we're just not going to do this i think businesses it's just crushing what's happening to people who spent their whole life building a business and until they say i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm gonna open my store i'm gonna open my shop i'm going back to business until people finally say we've had it we're not buying it anymore and there's an overwhelming movement back this they're going to keep the the the control because control is the ultimate head trip for somebody who wants power mac i admire your faith and i think that this season isn't different than other seasons because you're a you're a black and white guy you read the bible you believe the bible you respond to the bible and what i've seen in your life is is you treat providence the same way when things happen in our world that seem so to us 20 20 or unguessable or or erratic you have this the same demeanor you have towards scripture you see this is god's will and it's something i think is so helpful for our church and for me personally as you lead us and you model that faithful response to both god's word into providence so thank you pastor you're you're taking good care of us in these days thank you mack you got a final word well um i would just say just maybe a good wrap-up point is this is an incredible incredible moment in the history of the church for you to be here don't you feel that way i mean this is amazing to be a part of this and to have the focus on us i'm glad they're looking at a place that exalts the word of god that believes in god has strong faith mature believers kind of fearless willingness to stand in the will of god and take what comes but do it with love you know i was saying to jenna ellis who's our constitutional attorney and i was saying twice in my life this has happened back in 1978 there was a case called the nelly case and i along with some of our other pastors was sued for clergy malpractice this was the first lawsuit against clergy for clergy malpractice there's medical malpractice but there was no such thing as clergy malpractice so this was this was a novel invention and what happened was a young man a ucla graduate who was coming to our church and taking some classes in seminary had taken his own life and his parents sued the church they said that he had a predisposition to depression and my preaching on sin had exacerbated his depression and brought about his suicide so we were culpable for that suicide so we were hit with this lawsuit and clergy malpractice was a threat to all churches because and on the other side that the people that came along with the family that sued us were the psychiatrists and the psychologists who wanted the church out of the counseling business so they could have all the money they don't like the idea that religious organizations do counseling and amicus briefs were filed on our side by the by the rabbis and the priests who wanted to continue to be able to counsel people in their religious communities and so this case went for 10 years and it went ultimately to the u.s supreme court and we won at the california state supreme court level and they pushed it to the u.s supreme court and the u.s supreme court upheld the decision of the california supreme court that was 1988 i think when it was finished then there has not been a whisper of clergy malpractice since 1988 that was a watershed decision by the supreme court of california upheld by the united states supreme court that saved endless churches from being sued for something a pastor said in a counseling situation to someone you can't even comprehend how critical a case that was it was absolutely critical there's a book on it written published by the university of kansas on the nalley case natalie versus grace community church we want to read about it but again the lord picked us to fight that because we had sam erickson who was probably the top constitutional lawyer in the country was one of our elders he's since gone to be with the lord and he knew that constitution very well and we won that on the first amendment here we are all these years later and this has come and again we're the church that's standing in the gap and the lord has brought along jenna ellis who's just an unparalleled constitutional lawyer to to be on our team and i think the lord picks carefully who fights these battles for the sake of other churches so i'm i'm anxious to see this thing keep moving ahead so that we can protect the future right for churches to be the church in a dying culture if ever this culture needed the true church it's now and the the good part of it is it's going to filter out the the weak and shallow churches hopefully which may be what the lord has in mind purging pastor we pray for us father we do thank you for allowing us to leave the darkness and come to the light by your grace and your sovereign will thank you for bringing us to this place for such a time as this in history thank you for this blessed and beloved congregation of people and all those who recently have joined with us thank you for saving us sanctifying us giving us the hope of eternal glory thank you for using us to proclaim the excellencies of jesus christ in the world around us thank you for pouring out blessing on us so that people can see the transforming power of the gospel when we ask that you would keep your hand on grace church may we never do anything that would remove us from the circle of your blessing and we pray that you will move the hearts of all who sit in judgment on us may they recognize that you are the true and living god and you expect men to rule righteously and justly we would pray that you would even use this time and this season to bring to salvation some of the leaders that are a part of this very very challenging opportunity we would pray for the salvation of all those who come near this church and may they hear the truth and repent and believe continue to protect us and use us for your glory we pray in christ's name amen you

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 272,629

Rating: 4.8979225 out of 5

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

Id: KEOHcBRNJYs

Length: 55min 8sec (3308 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020