John MacArthur

Turn to Philippians 4. Philippians 4. Here's Paul. Things aren't going real well. He's a prisoner. Tough, really tough. Life is in constant threat. And what's his attitude? Chapter 4, verse 4. Rejoice in the Lord Always. Again I will say, rejoice. There's the joy, right? There's the joy. This is a living illustration of someone who knew all that was his in Christ. So let your gentle spirit, your moderation, your temperateness, your calmness, your tranquility be visible to everyone. And why? Because the Lord is near. The Lord is near, and I have all his promises. So verse 6. Be anxious. For what? For nothing. And oh, by the way, he said, if you prayed for anything, he would give it to you if it's in his name. So in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. You want peace? Pray, give it to him. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. What else would you want in life but joy and peace? And oh, by the way, you have the truth, verse 8. So concentrate on it. Whatever is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and good report worthy of praise, dwell on those things, the things that you've learned and received and seen in me. So sums it up in verse 13. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. He's not saying that in some fickle way. He's saying, I have received all the promises of Christ for my life. This is plenty to do what he's called me to do. I can do all things through him who strengthened me. There's a guy who could handle life right, and life was really tough for him. But the promises were true and he believed them. Amen.

Like the guy who wrote his sweetheart and said, I'd cross the burning sand to be by your side. I'd swim the English Channel to be near you. And if it doesn't rain tonight, I'm coming over.

I always go back to the story of John Payton, that great missionary who went to the New Hebrides. He graduated from school and he was sent to the New Hebrides with his wife. There were only man-eating cannibals there. They landed on that little place. They had to row a dinghy because the ship went by, didn't even go to the shore. They rowed to shore, didn't speak the language, didn't know anybody. All they knew was people had come there and never returned. They had become somebody's lunch. So they got on the shore. It's pretty tough, you know, to get on the shore of a place inhabited by cannibals whose languages don't speak and figure out how you start, right? I mean, you don't put a little sign that says, Sunday school class, Sunday at 930, we welcome you all. That isn't really the way you do. What do you do? You don't know the language, you don't know the people, and your threat of life hangs over your head. I remember reading in a particular book something of the story of that, and later on the chief of the tribe in that area was saved and he came to John Payton and he said to him, Mr. Payton, I want to ask you a question. He says, in those early months that you were here, he says, who was the army that girded your place of dwelling every night and protected you? God's holy angels apparently even became manifest in that protecting time. But Payton stayed there after a few weeks. His wife gave birth to a baby. The baby died. A few days later she died. He slept on their graves for three or four nights to keep the natives from digging them up and eating them. Stayed there alone, and he stayed there for 35 years. He says in his biography that at the end of those 35 years, I don't know of one native that hasn't made at least a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. He went there with all the great hopes. The only thing he ever loved really in the world was his wife, and then the cherished baby had to sleep on their graves, and all alone he stayed. But God used him because he was content to do God's will no matter what it cost him, and that's what it means to aim your life at his purposes.

When I confess my sin, I'm not saying, Oh God, please forgive me. I beg you, please forgive me. I want you to forgive me like they used to say in revivalist-type meetings. Pray it through, brother. Pray it through. Keep plowing in there. Keep banging on the door and God will forgive. No, no, no.

Just to kind of wrap up, I want to go back to the Reformation and give you a couple of illustrations. The greatest revival the church ever knew, in my judgment, was the Reformation back in the 16th century. And the Reformation really came about because there was a restoration of biblical expository preaching. Take for example, John Calvin, whose impact was probably without parallel. He was relentless in his exposition of Scripture in Geneva. He started in 1536 and he exposited the scripture until 1564 with a three year break when he was exiled by the city council. But it wasn't just Calvin. R.L. dabney says all the leading reformers, whether in Germany, Switzerland, England or Scotland, were constant preachers and their sermons were expository. We may assume with safety that the instrumentality to which the Spirit unleashed power in that greatest of all revolutions was the restoration of scriptural preaching. That was the Reformation came because of that.

Yes, I remember that well, in the first few weeks of the shutdown, when it really wasn't clear how dangerous the virus might be. And so you preached to a nearly empty auditorium. When I say nearly empty, I mean in an auditorium that seats, what, close to 3,000 people. There were eight, maybe 10 of us. But then people just started naturally to filter back in and just come. And within a couple of months, the building was half full. And that was before we even announced, we're just going to open the church. The church opened and was packed before we ever made it official. Looking back, people have said to me, why did you take that stand? Where did you get the courage to do that? And I said, that's not courage, that's just consistency. This is the church we meet because that's what we're demanded to do. It is consistency, too. One of the moments in the documentary shows a clip from a tape that you preached back in 1975. So that's what, close to 50 years ago, in which you said, and these were your exact words in if, for example, some ordinance came along and tried to close down Grace Community Church, would we say, oh, it's all right, we forgive you. We'll all go home and just forget the work of God. And then you say, not on your life. We'd be down there with every sort of legal thing you could imagine trying to prove that we had the right to exist and the right to exercise religious freedom. You said that in 1975.

You know why? For example, an illustration. In my life, I have found that the closer I am to the circle of people around me, the easier it is for me to live a righteous life. You know why? Because that circle holds me accountable, right? When I have a circle of godly friends that I love who are close to me, they make me accountable. They keep my life in their perspective, in their view. And if something isn't right, they point it out, and that forces me in to the line.

You know, I've spent so many years studying the Bible and preaching, and I know if you poked me in the middle of the night and I popped up, I'd probably recite Bible verses or preach a sermon. I dream about spiritual things. I have biblical dreams. That happens to me a lot, or dreams about the church. That's the context of my thinking, see, and I thank God for that. God is gracious to me because he could have put me somewhere else and I wouldn't have the luxury of studying the Bible all the time. But the filling of the mind, and then as you teach it, you see, when you need to teach the Word like I do or any other Bible teacher, you have to take it and saturate yourself and saturate and saturate. You can't just write it on the notes and fire it off. It's got to go through you. And whatever you give away has become so much a part of you that it controls your life. And as you proclaim it, your life is evidently glorifying God in the speaking of his Word.

You'll hear sometimes a wife will come in and she'll say in the counseling situation, oh, she'll say, Pastor, there's no way we can get along in our marriage. No way. I'll say, well, is your husband a Christian? Yes. Are you a Christian? Yes. I mean, there's no way two Christians can get along. Well, you don't understand. We're not compatible. Does the Holy Spirit dwell in both of you? Yes. You both have Christ living in you? Yes. You think Christ is compatible with himself? Well, yes. But you just don't understand. No, you don't understand. You don't believe God. You don't believe God that if God be pleased to keep a marriage together and if God be powerful to make it so, if you just get your life lined up in the right direction, it'll all happen. But don't disbelieve the power of God. You know, it's like the lady who came to see her pastor and said, my husband rubs me the wrong way, to which the pastor replied, well, turn around you old cat and everything will be fine. The solution to the problem is to get yourself right, not to disbelieve God's power. You see, God can do it, if you're in the right position. And the simplest things in life, we need to believe God.

And so even though he has helped Peter in the past, he's gone out of his way to show him his power to walk on water, he has fed him at the point of the feeding of the five thousand, he was there at the transfiguration, he has heard the great confession, and really it came out of his own mouth, but from God's heart, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Peter has been on some tremendous adventures with Christ, where he has seen displays of power, even in the garden as the soldiers came, and when Jesus spoke, they all fell over backwards like dominoes. I mean, Peter has seen some great things. Amazingly enough, he's even seen the resurrected Christ in the upper room, and by this time of John 21, had a personal audience with the resurrected Christ. And yet after all of that, he's still flaky. I think he felt inadequate. I think he looked at himself and said, Peter, every time you've ever been given a test, you blew it. Who's to say you're going to pass one now?

Illustration. If somebody comes to a prayer meeting and they stand up and they say, oh, I had the most wonderful thing happen. You know, this lady that I've been sharing Christ with, I've been praying for her for years, and this week we knelt together in my house and she opened her heart and she invited Jesus Christ to come in. And I'm so thrilled now she's a believer. And here she is with us tonight. Thank you for praying for her for these last few months. And immediately when that happens, ripples are going to go through that and some of you are going to say, oh, praise the Lord. You're going to get big grins on their face, oh Lord, thank you. You know who those people are going to be? Who are they going to be? They're going to be the ones who are doing what? Praying for her. And there's going to be some people sitting back there going, staring around, totally indifferent. You know why? They weren't involved. You see, the reason to pray is not to force God's hand. The reason to pray is so that you can be in on what he's doing, because then you can join the hallelujah chorus, you see, and praise him.

And then there was Hophni and Phinehas, who were the two sons of Eli, the high priest. And they decided that even though their father was the high priest, and even though they were in the priesthood line, and even though the standard for their kind of life was very high, they would live any way they wanted. And so they committed sexual orgies on the very steps of the temple, and God literally slew them both. They were slaughtered. The terrible consequence of this.