TM22-11 Panel Q&A #3 (Selected Scriptures)

well welcome to our final q a session and this time we don't have a theme which means i can ask anything i want and some of you have stopped me in the hallway this morning give me suggested questions not bad questions either so uh i want to start by asking um a question about your influences john um two pastors that i've had in my lifetime were you and warren weirsby and both of you are expositors different kinds of expositors but you both had a major influence on me and my two best friends in college were also fanatically supportive of the idea of expository preaching it was steve krieloff who was here this week and uh doug heck who died last year doug was the one who got me started memorizing scripture and steve was the one who gave me my first john mcarthur tapes and then you've been a profound influence on me um my question is what what are the major influences on you and because when you begin doing verse by verse preaching there weren't a lot of examples of that there weren't people lobbying for expository preaching what convinced you that that's the way to go well my dad's uh of course the greatest influence in my life uh he i'm born into a pastor's family so i i heard him for most of my young life and we were very close until he died at the age of 91. so um the early years of his ministry he was he was more of an evangelist in fact he was an evangelist for the fuller foundation in los angeles and he was an evangelist with the moody bible institute in chicago did a lot of city-wide meetings and evangelistic effort and that so in the first part of his ministry he was in evangelism but once he settled into pastoral ministry he was completely devoted to bible exposition and i think the influences on him were twofold it was a guy named g campbell morgan a british expositor yes and w.a criswell down at the first baptist church of dallas and my dad had a robust and thorough commitment to the authority of the word of god and when he wasn't explaining the bible he was defending the bible everything was always about the scripture so while i was very young he developed into an expositor went through john roman's acts verse by verse by verse so i was exposed to that then i went to talbot seminary to study under dr charles feinberg and feinberg a jewish guy who had studied to be a rabbi a brilliant brilliant man he was converted to christ while studying to be a rabbi and i ended up at dallas seminary got a thd there and was basically taught expository preaching and exegetical study went from there to johns hopkins got a phd in archaeology and he was an amazing guy he had an immense influence on me because he was my mentor through seminary and he was relentlessly committed to the veracity of the text and accuracy in the text he was he was very very narrow in his tolerances for how you handled the word of god and the first time i preached the first summary i preached in seminary in my first year we all had to preach to the student body and the faculty and they gave comment after the sermon and he i walked out the door and the faculty would hand you their comment sheets to each guy who preached in his little sheet said you missed the entire point of the passage and he was so furious with me that he called me into his office and he couldn't understand how i could he said did you did you spend any time on that i spent a lot of time how could you spend a lot of time and miss the whole point of the passage so that was the most profound lesson of my seminary days and um he forced me to to maintain integrity with dealing with the text and that had a huge influence on me there was um there was one other guy that maybe a little more obscure his name was well he was donald gray barnhouse's personal secretary a guy most people wouldn't know him but i spent a lot of time with him that was ralph ralph kuiper yeah he was he was only at 10 vision he was almost blind so whenever he came to our seminary somebody had to drive him around because he couldn't drive i spent a lot of time with him and he taught me how to explain the bible with the bible he gave me my first copy of treasury of scripture knowledge which has allowed me to understand that analogy of scripture scripture is true that is the scripture is analogous to itself there's no contradictions and the bible has its own best explanation so he basically taught me how to use the bible to explain the bible so those are the strong influence and theologically i think the guy that moved me from just straight up exposition into theological exposition was david martin lloyd jones and he had that effect on me when when i was going through the book of matthew and you'll be familiar with this done and i read his sermon on the mount and uh because that interpretation which was an accurate one was very different than the one i had been taught right which took the whole sermon on the mountain shoved it off into the millennial kingdom and made it irrelevant for life in the church and i was completely reoriented to the theology that was related from that sermon on the mount which is vast and sweeping doctrine so those were the main influences yes you know uh you read lloyd jones on the sermon on the mount years before i came to grace church so i wasn't there when that happened but i've listened to all of those tapes and i noticed that if you listen to the early first four chapters of matthew there's a there's a dramatic shift when you get into the sermon on the mount and you're saying that was lloyd jones's influence on you as i recall you went on you took a few weeks off or a summer vacation and read lloyd jones while you were away is that right well yeah i read first of all i i started reading what he wrote and he had written on romans and ephesians and i read preachers and preaching and uh some other books to get into his head but what helped me the most was his his stuff on the sermon on the mount it was again it was a large volume it was comprehensive and it was theological exposition of course um as time went on uh i i grew to want to know more about him and so i read ian murray's two volumes which i think total up to almost 900 pages on lloyd jones and i marked it up and marked it up right and i found that more than any other preacher and maybe because of such a vast biographical amount of material the influence was greater but probably with all of that that i read about him he had the most influence on me for for anybody that was dead and i i didn't ever meet him but i did meet his wife and his family and as you remember the martin lloyd-jones trust was distributing his tapes uh uh you know in in the uk and in europe and they they asked me if we would allow them to distribute mine because they wanted to they wanted to carry both his preaching and my preaching and the lloyd jones trust which which validated the fact that he had had an influence on me right which is a wonderful reality yes and don i i know you are also a meticulous verse by verse preacher i would ask you about your influence but i i know you're going to say it's john mccarthy yeah that that's an easy answer when i first became a christian um i came out of a liberal background a liberal church and i began to look for a church that where i would at least hear the gospel and the only criterion i had was i wanted to see the pastor open the bible and teach from it and i grew up in tulsa oklahoma which is the home of every unclean charismatic bird right and there weren't there weren't a whole lot of there weren't a whole lot of expositors in tulsa but but i found one and uh he opened the bible and preached from it and that was that was where i uh started my christian life the good thing is that was in 1971 you could go back to tulsa now and i know of at least seven churches that have biblical expositors in the tulsa area and every one of them was trained at the master seminary so john you have generated an entire generation of expositors we're grateful for that well you know it just seemed obvious to me uh because again because of my my commitment to the authority of scripture the the inerrancy of scripture the sufficiency of scripture why would i do anything else what i can't you know people say well i believe the bible and i believe in the inerrancy of the bible i can tell 15 minutes into your sermon whether you do or not because if you're just telling me what you think or what somebody else thinks you're giving me other authorities you can tell what a person's view of scripture is by by how they preach it and i've said this to our guys at the seminary don't tell me the bible says this i hear preachers say the bible says the bible says the bible says that makes me believe you show me instead of saying the bible says let me see how the bible says it so that's the that's the most that's the most dynamic thing let the bible speak and you do that by by careful analysis of the text in such a way that you're not drawing the conclusion by yourself and then trying to get them to believe it they have to draw the same conclusion because you've put them through the process yeah and that all makes perfect sense and seems almost self-evident when we hear you say it because we've seen you do it but before you actually established that model i think most of us had been exposed to preaching of a different kind and maybe it wouldn't have been that that self-evident done yeah one thing that i would say just from uh looking back on my own history as i moved toward ministry was that i was first familiar with john's teaching very early in my christian life as a young man and we were nancy and i were in a church that was next door to a very well known seminary nearly said cemetery and that would have been pretty accurate too in the chicago area and one of the things that stood out to me is these men came through and men from the seminary cycled through the pulpits so many times i heard them say now i've been taught to teach you this way but i'm going to do something different this time and that was a big red flag to me and they'd go and they'd tell stories and they would manipulate the text in ways that even a chiropractor wouldn't do to it and uh and i just thought you know i i don't want to be if i go to that seminary i'm going to come out like them and i did not want that and so i applied to one seminary when it was time for me to pursue my biblical training it was a master seminary and my my thinking at that time was if they don't accept me i'm not fit for ministry because i cannot go anyplace else it was not that i wanted to be the next john macarthur but i wanted to handle the word of god with the respect and the the depth that john represented and uh you know and the lord used that and directed me directed me through it and the other thing phil i've never said this publicly but here later in my in my later years one of the real formative influences of my life was being a co-pastor with you at grace life and seeing the way that you handled scripture and so you can steal john mcarthur's stuff i yeah that's not yeah you're so deaf self-deprecating and i appreciate that about you but um you know and just the just the serious and repeated way that you treated the doctrine of justification over and over and over again showing that that by your example that that doctrine is easily misunderstood if you don't handle it carefully and handle it often and so i in our church truth community church oh a debt of gratitude to you as well as to the esteemed brother on my right yeah thank you justin i'm not going to leave you out i'll come back to you but i have a follow-up question for john um you mentioned ian murray in his book on martin lloyd jones uh i i recently saw a list of books you you drew that you uh that had influenced you most of them were biographies and at least four of them had been written by ian murray so i know he's been a profound influence on you as well and you've become good friends with him talk about that a little bit well yes ian lives in edinburgh scotland so we're friends at a very vast distance but he and gene have become very dear to myself and patricia through the years i was drawn to ian murray when i started reading the biographies that that the banner of truth press produces and what drew me to ian was the fact that every biography he wrote went deeply into the theology of the individual right you can read biographies you can read a biography and and not even know what theology that the guy holds for example you can i read the 650 page bonhoeffer book by eric mataxis which is a brilliantly written biography but at the end of the biography you wouldn't know anything about the theology or the spiritual life of dietrich bonhoeffer but you can't read a murray book without knowing the theology the depth of the convictions because that's what's prior priority in ian's mind yeah so when when i found a guy who would help me not only know the story but the uh the the process by which he developed his theology and how he thought his biographies became very rich to me so i just i would read you know eventually all i could get my hands on and uh we've had some marvelous tours patricia and i with the murrays driving us around scotland and taking us to all kinds of places that had history going back to the the puritans and back to even the reformers and some famous names and when you get to jump in the car with ian murray and get a tutorial uh for uh for a week on church history in scotland it's it's pretty remarkable so yeah he's been both a personal uh teacher to me as well as my favorite biographer yeah he has an unparalleled ability to deal with political theology which interests him the conflicts between you know different theological ideas uh and and you always know where he stands and yet he's able to write about this without ever be sounding belligerent or mean or any of the things that you're doing very honest when he wrote evangelicalism divided yeah you know i had him come to grace church to a shepherds conference and lecture on evangelicalism divided because he perfectly understood it it was like reading my own brain when i read that the whole billy graham issue and all the conflicts with that and um and he's he's honest enough that even in the book he wrote about me he wished i had done a few things that i haven't done the funniest the funniest ian murray story which i love to tell he and gene were at our house for breakfast um and we had just had sunday services and we have an orchestra and you know beautiful music and so they've been married i don't know 60 years or something and they're sitting at the breakfast table and ian says um you know i love the singing at grace but you have to have all those instruments you have to have all those instruments and i said well i guess not i guess not and he said you know it would just be so pure if it was just the congregation to which his wife said oh personally i love all the instruments [Laughter] so i thought you can't convince her in 60 years [Laughter] i don't think his argument's gonna hold up yeah yeah you'd find out darlene's the same way with me she she doesn't agree with me i love that about them it was just so funny because he's he's got his convictions and his idiosyncrasies which are yeah i'll make a confession to you you read ian murray's biography of uh jonathan edwards and i know that had a powerful impact on you because you you uh identify with edwards and the fact that after he'd been in that church for years he still had critics who drove him out and and you read that at a time where you were going through some difficult things in your ministry and you marked it up and you wrote notes in the in the margins and you said how much that book impacted you and i said can i read it and you loaned me your copy and i kept it i gave i bought a fresh copy and gave you back the fresh one oh thanks a lot but i but i have your copy that you marked up and i'm not giving it back that's my gift to you phil thank you that's one of many things you yeah are there other things like that that i don't know about it yeah there are okay let me ask you this justin because that was a brilliant presentation on mysticism and you defined it so well and all of that the question that always comes to mind and that always comes up when i've taught on mysticism and warned people look god is not speaking to you by a voice in your head he's speaking to you in his word the question will come back well how do i know whether i'm called to the ministry or not is there something mystical about the call to ministry and i'm going to let each of you answer that but you first since you dealt with that yeah i don't really think there's anything mystical about it anything mystical you need to run from but as far as the you know i heard this lingo growing up all the time in seminary all the time you have to be called you have to feel a call hear a call some still small voice inside of your head which is totally unbiblical taken out of context from elijah's time in the cave but no i mean james says if any of you desires to be an elder he desires a good thing so uh what i tell young men who come to me and i've had these conversations on a pretty regular basis men will come to me and say i'm i'm thinking about going into ministry and thinking about going to seminary thinking about being a pastor do you have any words of wisdom i would say if if it's something that you desire to do and you're biblically qualified to do it and if they're not if they don't meet the biblical qualifications then there's your answer then no don't go into ministry but but if you have the desire and you meet the biblical qualifications then do it if it's something that you want to do then then do it now i would also say if you can if you can see yourself not to get mystical but if you can see yourself doing anything else and and being satisfied at doing that which is perfectly fine i mean it's perfect not everybody not every christian man is supposed to be a preacher um we need christian dentists and plumbers and accountants so if you can see yourself doing something else and being satisfied and doing that then don't go into ministry don't go into ministry you agree with that don yeah i absolutely it's biblical so there's not anything to disagree with the thing that i would add is to just kind of build on what justin said is i i think that there's there's that subjective desire of the man but there's also should be an object objective confirmation from the christian leaders that know a man a man shouldn't go into ministry or be pursuing it as just in his own at his purely on his own initiative and land in a church just on his own initiative there should be the affirmation of the people of god that have heard him teach and can affirm it that where he has where he is ministered under the authority of elders or church leadership and has proven himself faithful if you want the greater thing of preaching the word of god you need to show yourself faithful in the smaller things and i've i've gone so far to say that if you know if you desire to to tell a young teenager for example considering ministry you know you start with making your bed every day and and respecting your parents and just developing faithfulness in the little things on a consistent basis because he who is faithful in a little thing will be faithful and much and so there's a there's that external affirmation from the people of god to add to the desire of the man and those two things should be consistent with each other never in conflict john yeah that's absolutely right there there's only two two factors in this the individual and what the leaders of the church have to say and that's precisely what the apostle paul said to timothy you know that you basically were put into the ministry by the laying on of the hands of the elders and i think there's way too much entrepreneurialism in pastoral ministry a guy who just decides on his own to launch off in a church accountable to no one ordained by no one validated by no one and i think there's one so those those are the things you have to have the desire if a man desires the office of an overseer here desires a noble work that's fine and you you basically have to then authenticate that desire as legitimate by looking at him and seeing if he has a gift to deduct a cost the ability to teach and uh that that could screen some people out because if you say you have the ability to teach and everybody listening to you says no you don't you have to have that affirmation i remember in seminary there was a guy in our preaching class never forget it and he preached his first sermon and he struggled through it and at the end of the first five minutes he stopped and said i can't think and talk at the same time and we all agree that if you can't do that you probably shouldn't preach thinking and talking at the same time are necessary at least he was honest i i know a lot of preachers who obviously can't think and talk at the same time but anyway so i think i think the given there's only one skill in the requirements and that's deductive cost that's uh that that has a component of being able to teach but it also has a component of being teachable because the only way you can be effective teaching is to be teachable so just rushing into ministry and self-elevating without the church's affirmation of your gift and the leader's affirmation of your character and qualification um is to do a great disservice to the to the kingdom and the body of christ yeah and john one of the things that you've said so many many times and so many different contexts is that time and truth go hand in hand this is a character evaluation that doesn't take place over the course of a few months a man has to be watched over a long period of time and you know you can have guys that rush into it but that's not the way that it should be done no you don't this takes office you don't put a novice into this because he's not ready for it yeah and it and the corollary of that is that the man needs to be patient in pursuing the opportunity and phil i'm going to say something about your past that you'd probably just be as happy that i didn't but one of the things that i've always respected about you so deeply is that you were at grace community church for 10 years before you taught your first home bible study yeah and and that that's the kind of thing that i'm talking about you you waited and and then the opportunities started to come to you but it wasn't you never put yourself forward it came to you over a long period of time before and now you're you know who you are and and such a benefit to the body of christ i remember i remember when you came and you told me you would never thank you both of you yeah i remember when you came and you said you would never teach that's why i hired you because i knew i was safe i know i know it it's absolutely true yeah he uh it was lance quinn who goaded me into teaching and john said to him why are you doing that phil's an editor he's not a he's not a preacher and uh i i also remember the first time i ever preached in a service at grace church and i was glad that john wasn't there because it's intimidating to have him there but he listened to the tape afterwards and when i heard that my heart sunk and he said he said you know what you'd do really well and i said no what he said when you read the scriptures so which is a great lesson i thought you know as long as i stick close to what the bible says i should be okay right so yeah that happened [Laughter] all right yeah no in fact what you just said about uh able to teach also implies being teachable that's an excellent thought i've never thought of that and i also think in that same regard a lot of people think able to teach means this guy's a glib talker but you could be a really good public speaker and not biblically able to teach right yeah not only that having confidence in your glibness is a curse because you ought to be fearful based upon what james says stop being so many teachers for theirs is a greater condemnation the question is never do you have the ability to talk the question is are you faithful to the message of god so somebody who somebody who can make it up fly as they go is a danger to himself and the church there ought to be a there ought to be a sense of fear people ask me if i get nervous before i speak and my response would be the only time i would be nervous before i preach is if i was unprepared my dad said to me when i was very young and was starting into ministry he said don't ever enter the sacred desk he called the pope at the sacred desk unless you are fully prepared to speak for the lord i mean that still rings in my head and then on top of that feinberg said don't miss the point of the passage and that that kind of direction i mean this is a most serious thing you could ever do the the my worst fear is to say god said when he didn't say or to fail to say god said when he did say the reason that i'm an exposer the reason i went through the whole new testament was because i didn't want to pick and choose what god wanted to be heard so for me it was always to try to be faithful to everything that god had revealed so i i think um [Music] if you're going to go into the ministry you don't start with some kind of natural gift you may like in the case of phil think you don't have that natural gift but when you get the word of god in you it's like jeremiah fire in your bones and it comes out not because you're you have some natural gift but because the spirit of god enables that spiritual gift and the truth will literally over power your own weaknesses you know one of the common comments on my commentaries one of the well-known theologians commented on my commentaries and kind of a depreciating comment he said they're fine for the untrained layman and i responded to that by saying good because that's exactly who i wrote them for and that's exactly who i've preached to my entire life that's right that's right so that's so it's not that you're some skilled orator well you remember i mean you've you've read this stuff that the guy who wrote seven volumes on preachers wrote about me that he didn't understand why anybody listened to me at all yes he couldn't figure out any reason to listen to me at all i i went to all the wrong schools i don't have any rhetorical skills and uh that that that's fine with me but what i do have is a responsibility to be faithful to the word of god and if i am faithful to the word of god it will transcend my my own weaknesses and they'll never they'll there'll never be a question of whether it was my oratory or the truth of the word of god that that had the power that yeah that by the way is a great article that what john is referring to is a uh an item on him it's maybe three four pages long in a series in a book that was a series of books on preaching when he gets to the current era he does this little vignette on john mcarthur theologically he's in totally different camp he's not at all sympathetic with the uh our commitment to biblical inerrancy but he describes john's preaching perfectly and actually honors you by what he says he says there's he he analyzes john's preaching he says nothing here that would be entertaining or compelling why do people listen to him and he concludes it's because he speaks with the authority that's inherent in the word of god it's it's really a good article we'll put it on the grace to you website next week i i can't off the top of my head give you a reference to it but we'll put it on our blog because it's something i think people should read again and again anyway so one advice let me start with you justin because i don't want to leave you out and we'll ask again what would be your best advice for someone who is preparing for ministry a young man who wants to go into ministry i had this conversation with a gentleman yesterday actually i would i would say a couple of things number one study to show yourself approved devote yourself to the study of god's word but but paul wrote to timothy and he said watch your doctrine and your life closely yes sound doctrine yes sound theology know these things watch your doctrine but also watch your life watch your life your conduct sometimes people ask me how can i pray for you and it's such an encouragement to me to know that people do pray for me all around the world for me and my wife kathy both and i i tell them the the greatest prayer request i have for my life is that not only in what i teach but also in how i conduct myself that i would bring honor to christ i never want to do anything to bring any kind of reproach on the name of christ so that's how you can pray for me and that's what i would say to a young man going into ministry is watch your life one of the things that and john and i talked about this i asked him in our interview that we did a couple months ago one of the things that really bothers me about our soteriologically reformed circles is that there is a glaring lack of sanctification in many of our circles there's a lack of personal holiness in our circles and there are some well-known reformed to use that term preachers who take great um they they take their what they perceive at least to be their christian liberty and they flaunt it in front of others whether it's alcohol and or profanities not even a christian liberty but they some of them seem to glory in using profane language even from the pulpit and it's uh it's kind of a young restless and reformed crowd and and they they they'll talk theology over a glass of whiskey or whatever and uh they don't seem to realize that that a lot of our brothers and sisters have been saved out of that stuff and they're going to flaunt that in front of them and they're just it's it's it's just a lack of wisdom and a lack of sanctification a lack of personal holiness so men watch your life watch your doctrine in your life closely cultivate your personal holiness if you're not holy read the book by the way by j.c reil on holiness if you've not done that do it read read holiness by j.c rile guard that in your life guard your marriages and i told this gentleman yesterday too that our that our wives are our first ministries right our our wives come before they come before the church they come before ministry our wives are number one so guard your marriages guard your life guard your holiness and that's that is something that is a glaring problem in in our circles yeah john you've had quite a lot to say about the [Applause] the tragic lack of emphasis on the doctrine of sanctification and the necessity of sanctification talk about that a bit well the young restless and reform movement had a robust doctrine of divine sovereignty yeah that i think was more related to their desire to be macho men and to see god as the ultimate macho man who was in charge it was more psychological than theological they they had a in many cases a clear understanding of substitutionary atonement the doctrine of justification but what was obviously missing in the whole young restless reform movement was any robust doctrine of sanctification it just wasn't there exactly as you said i remember we did an entire series of articles on the grace to you blog which probably could still be pulled up on the drinking pastor and the cursing pastor and and all of that a number of years ago that that to me and i i had a lot of conversations with leaders in the evangelical movement at the time and i said you guys have to understand this thing is going to collapse this thing is going to collapse in a series of disastrous ways because these guys think they can be reformed without being sanctified and that's not possible because if you you can accept the truth you see the doctrine of justification if isolated from sanctification becomes a sort of a locked in salvation without any implications you know okay i'm i'm good forever you know i've been had the righteousness of god imputed to me through faith in christ and without understanding that sanctification is what god requires and a progressive sanctification becoming more like christ not flaunting your liberty but so it did disintegrate i mean the whole mark driscoll mars hill explosion and one after another after another and some of the guys that you saw on the screen during your presentation are headed down exactly the same trail given enough time the truth will come out and at some particular point you cannot live an unsanctified life in the public eye without being told without being found out that's right um i mean i think i'm in my 53rd year at grace church and that's pastoring an intimacy with the congregation they know me they know patricia they know my kids grandkids they are now taking care of my great-grandkids every sunday in church and if i could say anything to to a young pastor i would say when you've been 53 years in a place if you still have the love and affection and trust of the people it's a grace gift that god has given you through sanctification and it's more i think your sanctification than your preaching at some point if your sanctification is called into question your preaching loses its authenticity but if you want to be half a century in a place you you can't have a hidden secret life right did you want to add anything to any of that done no just to just emphasize the role of the local church in that that all of these things are lived out in the context of a local church under the authority of existing church leadership if a man wants to lead the people of god he needs to first show a and i'm just adding to what's already been said and presupposing everything that's already been said he wants to ultimately lead the people of god and teach the people of god he needs to show that he's been willing to follow the leaders of god and to be taught by the teachers of god's word that are established those two things go hand in hand and you can't bypass the one in order to get to the goal there's not a shortcut like that you know i could add to that too that i get pretty pretty hammered by the internet uh false accusations just i hadn't noticed incessantly and you know i find my comfort in second corinthians 1 12 my conscience is clear and i find my comfort when i look patricia in the in the face and i know she believes in me and she trusts in me and when i come together with my children who my love and my grandchildren and they love me and they believe in me and the elders of grace church uphold me in their prayers and the congregation of grace church is my family it really is of no consequence what some attacking force would have nothing to do with my life or nothing to do with our church say about me they they have their own purposes but i don't need to deal with them the lord will deal with them in his own way but i tell you this while on the one hand that is the greatest comfort is the the trust that your church gives you it also can be the the greatest burden if you violate your integrity and if you don't take heed to yourself so i i think you you need to let your life be so open that there's an accountability that goes beyond any kind of intimate circle so that everybody can know you and and have access to you so that who you are becomes a parent that's the only way you can last for half a century in a ministry and i'm not saying i'm unusually you know elevated spiritually i'm not i'm i'm mortal just like anybody else but the lord has kept me from terminal sins and uh patterns of sin in my life that could disqualify for a ministry and and i want that exposure i i want my life open i don't want to hide anything because i think that there is there's the ability for people to believe me uh when they know me yeah and i i know i'm not alone in this john i love you for that the your ability to uh just be devoted to to the idea that god is the one you're out to please and it really doesn't matter what a horde of critics might say about you um that's there's something very pauline about that yeah um anyway all right to change the subject here's a question that was asked to me in the hallway that that is a good one and i think it affects more people than we might know in first corinthians 5 paul says look i didn't tell you to go out of the world you need to be in the world and not of the world but in the world to to reach unbelievers but he says in verse 8 i wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person or covetous or an idolater or reviler or a drunkard or a swindler not even to eat with such a one so that's a pretty clear commandment and the question is how does that apply within the family say one's own children who may have abandoned the faith or moved away from the lord or whatever say for family gatherings just normal family gatherings thanksgiving dinners funeral receptions things like that do we do we exclude people from those on the basis of that verse or is that verse talking about how we behave in public what would your what would your counsel be to parents who had an adult child who is living a life that isn't glorifying to christ well if you're asking me first of all that you wouldn't isolate yourself from an unbelieving child that's exactly what paul is saying i'm not saying that but suppose they profess to be but if but if they profess to be christians and are living in some kind of continual pattern of sin then i don't know how you avoid the application of that passage you need to find ways to communicate with them you need to find ways to pray for them regularly i don't think it means you isolate yourself completely from them but you don't sit them down at your table as an accepted guest in that condition so maybe if it were me and there was a sinning child who professed christ and for example this this often happens some son is living with a girl and he professes to be a christian at thanksgiving he wants to bring the girl he's living with to thanksgiving dinner i mean that is an open and shut case the the answer is no um [Music] and that's the point there you have to isolate that person so they feel the alienation that that alienation is very important part of the discipline and the disaffection that helps them wake up to the reality that they have just made a decision that forfeits that fellowship in that relationship so if you know this person is not a believer that that's very different you're still evangelizing them but if if they profess to be believers then and are sinning believers they they need the discipline of alienation and that's exactly what that is put them out of the church but put them out of the of the normal course of fellowship in the family that's the table is not like meeting at um bob evans and having breakfast the table is where you sit down and fellowship it was a much more um a much more collegial kind of multiple hour event that is being talked about there which which acknowledged some level of acceptance compatibility in in a similar vein what counsel would you give to parents who uh whose children let's say even adolescent children are are claiming to be either transgendered or homosexual falling in with the spirit of the age and what they're being indoctrinated in school to do what's your best advice to those parents christian parents well tell them the truth tell them the truth tell them it's all lies i mean you've got to save them from that you you can't let a child think that he can decide his gender that's insanity right and if they're getting indoctrinated with that in public schools yeah we'll get them out you know i mean that's government education is going to be lgbtq sensitive and transgender uh affirmative that's where it's going to go i mean the president said he's concerned about making sure there's a place in the world for transgender seniors ever met a transgender senior in your life i don't even want to think about that we have one of them who's a health official yeah in the u.s government and it but again i think that's going to be the rare situation because i don't think people who buy into that when they're young or ever going to survive long enough to be adults seniors do you do you get a lot of questions about that do you do you face that with parents who come to you for no because we're too cut and dried on that that would be like asking um if what do i do when my kid thinks he's a potato chip how about you don do you do you do people ask i've never had potato chip no i've uh i've never had someone ask me about a concern that their kid was a potato chip [Music] then you justin not yet it's interesting i i asked each of you that because to make the point i think people who are regularly taught by expository preaching are not going to be easily confused by those dilemmas right yeah and one of the things when i taught my series on transgenderism back in 2019 one of the things that i made clear was that members of our church cannot affirm their children in a transgender lifestyle out of a so-called sense of love that that would be grounds for church discipline to affirm a child in the transgender lifestyle it has to be confronted as as john said and you know to i'm sure in a room of this size some of you if not many of you are dealing with that the added thing that i would say and this is kind of a recurrent theme in my comments is involve the leaders of your local church and let them help walk you through that and not simply try to do it on your own we need to draw upon the wisdom of the church leaders that god has appointed over us to help us work out these principles in particular applications what to say when to say it those kinds of rights in fact people even even the best of christians are going to be confronted with this in the workplace because more and more you've got businesses that insist that their employees be affirming of gender fluidity and things and they'll require you to call your fellow employees by their preferred pronouns what's your counsel to the person in your church who says my employer is telling me i have to do this is it wrong for me to call a transgendered person by his preferred pronoun yeah i i think that we have to avoid that we cannot do that we cannot participate in the deception you agree with that justin absolutely you cannot affirm someone in their sinful delusion the most loving thing you can do for someone is to tell them the truth and and i've heard i've heard john say this before that the only objective measure we have of our love for christ is our obedience to christ and it is things like this and these are i've i've talked to people who have been in face these dilemmas it may mean that you lose your promotion maybe it means you lose your job if you don't affirm your co-worker who yesterday you knew you as dan now wants to be called danielle and he shows up in a dress and if you don't affirm his delusion you're going to lose your job what do you do christian well you stand on the word of god you speak the truth speak it in love but you speak the truth and if it costs you your job you do the right thing and you trust god for the results i i think we have to understand what's underlying all of this okay um homosexuality is a perversion and what's happening with and transgenderism is just one feature of homosexual perversion and deviation what is happening is in the schools is homosexual teachers are grooming the next generation of kids they can assault yeah okay this is grooming they they they want to they want to justify their own perversion but more than that they're preparing targets for their deviation in the future this is this is child abuse of the rankest and most horrifying level uh you know you can you can have people lose a job because of so-called sexual harassment because somebody put his hand on a lady's shoulder or something and she screams sexual harassment or whatever while all of this is being advocated in the schools where they're literally purposely grooming a future generation of homosexuals that they can assault that's exactly what this is and the government is in full complicity with it so we fight it at every point and at every level down the line we do but you've noticed i'm sure that within the evangelical movement the broad evangelical movement this may be a minority opinion because there's so many voices telling us that if you don't use a transgendered person's preferred pronouns you're not loving your neighbor the way you should what's your answer to that john well you only love people if you tell them the truth lying doesn't love anybody they need to know what we've already heard in first corinthians 6 you know if if you're a homosexual you're not going to enter the kingdom of heaven plain and simple you have to be one of the such were some of you to enter the kingdom of heaven so um how would you how would you evangelize a homosexual if you didn't bring up homosexuality what would you say to him it's okay that you're a homosexual it's okay that uh maybe you've deviated so you're a guy but you want to be called her but let's talk about your sin um wha what what what sins would you talk about if if you bypass that one what what would you say you know are you are you kind to your mother or what i mean you'd have to talk about that i mean because that's so defining and what else are we in the world to do but to confront sinners and point out their sin and then give them the good news of the gospel you know a grace church part of being in southern california is being in an area where there's a massive amount of homosexuals there have been for decades and decades and we've had people who are leaders in the gay pride parade in the gay community converted and baptized at grace church i see one of these guys every single sunday of the year when i go to church he's the first one to greet me there every week yeah i parked near you and yeah i get there earlier than you he's already standing waiting for me because christ has so changed his life and um you know i got a phone call from a guy a 70 year old guy and uh this is an interesting thing this is about two weeks ago and he he said um i i want to i just say thank you for your ministry uh he said for the first i think 45 years of my life i was a homosexual and i lived the rankest kind of homosexual life and and then i came to christ and i'm so glad for the stand that you take he said now i'm almost 70 years old and i want you to know this i read my bible every day for four or five hours and i still can't wash my mind of 40 years of corruption he said keep warning people keep warning people and he said i would love to have more of your commentaries because i need to be reading the word of god just to keep my soul clean so i sent him a whole box of commentaries and but i mean this guy's 25 years out of this thing and he's he's not able to completely divest himself of the horrors of those experiences so memory can be a wonderful thing and it can also be a terrible thing why because one of the ways satan tempts you is recycling your old sins and that you just don't want to have those to be recycled yeah and just to kind of build on what you're saying john the uh i have friends who follow my ministry that have been that the lord saved out of homosexuality and one of the most encouraging things uh about ministry is to have them affirm the teaching that i've done on homosexuality like you were talking about and and thanking them that earth you know they thank me for it because they because they know it's true and i would rather have the affirmation of one person like that than the friendship of thousands who you know have not repented of their homosexual sin amen amen all right let me ask we're running out of time so one last question that i'll ask of each of you and we'll start with you justin what is your biggest challenge in ministry did you have to start with me well i thought that might be easy i've traveled with you and i know you face some huge challenges you're about to go to madagascar right how are you going to do that i'm going to get on a flying machine we're going to pray for you uh you know the uh thank you no i i'd say honestly uh the biggest the biggest challenge that i face in ministry is is not the logistical stuff it's not it's not traveling and the the challenges that i and i do face challenges with my handicap and traveling they're certainly there but one of the beautiful things about the body of christ is no matter where i go there's always brothers there to to help me and and uh it's been a just a beautiful thing to witness it's been a great encouragement to me i'd say i'd say probably the hardest thing uh is especially when i go overseas is when i travel that i'm that i'm away from kathy yeah and i miss her i miss her when i sometimes she goes with me domestically sometimes she does but uh not all the time but internationally i'm i'm going by myself or with a friend but uh i especially miss her when i go overseas because you know there's an ocean apart separating you and that you just can't get back to her if you needed to so all right she's a good influence on you by the way she is yes she is in many ways don you know i don't want to sound uh super spiritual here but it's just uh you know my ministry would be let's put it this way my ministry would be a whole lot easier if i were more sanctified than what i am sure so you know can just leave it there and if this is my last opportunity to to say anything and i certainly defer to john but i just want to say one thing that i was thinking about driving down here this morning um which is off off topic of your of your question but uh phil and john you know i've known you guys for 25 years or more and you know i just i just want you to know that in the midst of all the battles that you guys are on the front line uh facing that that my love and the love of truth community church is completely with you without qualification that i uh you know i i love the ministry of grace to you i love the staff at grace to you jay flowers and all those other guys in leadership at grace to you i love the elders of grace community church that existing elder board you know and god helping me i always will there it is as i sit here and uh you know just think of what you guys stand for and what you have done and to know you privately and to know you personally you know it reminds me of what paul said in second corinthians 7 that that i am i'm with you to live together and to die together and my i just want to say that publicly that's the way i feel about you guys and and i always will yeah thank you we we are supremely blessed at grace church and uh i think everybody at grace church would echo that john well it's uh it's it's tough when you ask me what's my greatest challenge like there was only one yeah you got a church full of people right well i think it's it's it's always the same it's it's just to be faithful to to respond to people uh it's it's not so much a challenge for me to preach because i i i do that on my own my challenge is to be sensitive to the people around me and and how i can be an encouragement to them to invest in them there's so many people in our ministries and there are so many friendships that the lord has developed through the years and i always i want to be a faithful shepherd to the congregation and particularly to those in leadership and so i think that sensitivity patricia helps me a ton with that as you guys know because she's she's very sensitive to people and uh i i want to make sure that um i don't lose that that personal touch because that's really the most enjoyable part of ministry are the friendships but but i want to always be faithful and be sensitive to the people around me who serve so well and who do so much and work so hard and and let them know that i love them and support them and be an encouragement to them and i need to say without exaggeration there have been more than 50 people this week who have come up to me privately and said tell john that we love him and his ministry has absolutely made a humongous difference in our lives we owe our lives to oh my him thank you and and i was going to say i think there's a room full of people who would echo that but i don't need to say that uh just uh if each of us could tell you the story we'd have you here for forever uh we love you john and thank you for your faithfulness oh it's my joy thank you thank you for the privilege 54 years this is your 54th year we just celebrated your 53rd anniversary at grace church and you've preached through every verse in the new testament you've preached through large chunks of the old testament you're doing now the book of ephesians again with fresh study it's not like you just lean on old notes and re-preach the same thing it's it's you're still hard at work um and i don't know of anyone else who has been that diligent for that long um you're an example to all of us and we thank you yeah amen amen so don would you close us in prayer well father we are humbled before you at the knowledge that you have revealed yourself in the word written and incarnate we thank you for this wonderful gathering of your people to celebrate your word to be taught from it and to think through issues of life and ministry together father we pray not only for john and justin and phil but for all that are in this room that you would cause them to grow in the grace and knowledge of our lord and savior jesus christ that you would strengthen and sanctify them completely in body soul and spirit and that you would lead each one in this room safely into your heavenly kingdom in christ's name we pray amen amen you

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 61,975

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

Id: zgJeVdup__8

Length: 65min 39sec (3939 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022