Welcome to the 2008 Shepherds
Conference General Session Number 5 Questions and Answers with
John MacArthur This session is always an enjoyable time for
me to kind of find out what is on your minds, and I would just
encourage you that a more complete answer to the questions that
you ask can usually be found in resources and things that
are available already. If you go on the website at Grace
Community Church, or if you go on the website particularly at
Grace to You. There are all kinds of things there that you can
access in terms of how to explain a given passage or how to understand
a certain doctrine. I have just been over the last
number of months doing a series on the great doctrines, what
you would probably know as the doctrines of grace, broadening
beyond that a lot of other issues that we would consider in the
category of doctrines. And, of course, many passages
of Scripture. So there are lots of resources
there that you can find. There was a question asked, for
example, about how do I explain the problem of evil. That's a
question that needs to be answered. We all need to answer that. We
need to have an answer for that. And I did a message about a year
ago. In fact, I think it was exactly a year ago on the Sunday
night before we started Shepherds Conference on why does evil dominate
the world. That is available on a CD, and
that gives you the most complete and concise answer that I could
put into one sort of hour or a little bit longer than an hour
package. So that's simply to illustrate
the fact that there's a lot of resources available. Pulpit Magazine
is another very good resource. connected with Pulpit magazine,
online magazine. We update that every week with
new articles and new material and new input to keep you posted
on the issues that are at hand to help you be informed so you
think clearly about things you're facing in your ministry and you
can help your people as they face the very same things. But
perhaps dive into a couple of these questions because I think
they're the sort of obvious ones that came out of what I said.
The first several questions came in on the subject of contextualization
because I made a fairly strong statement about the fact that
contextualization as such is a curse. I really believe it
has become that in the church. It has become the dominant category
in which we define ministry, that in order for ministry in
the contemporary environment to be effective in the church
growth paradigm, we have to contextualize. We have to change the way we
do music. We have to change the way we
dress. We have to change the way we look. We have to change
the... The way we talk, that is to say
we have to connect with people at the level of their exposure
to the culture. We have to show a familiarity
with their music and their movies and television and whatever it
is that runs through their assaulted minds, we have to have some level
of familiarity with. Now this isn't anything really
new. I can think back not too many
years ago, really, probably 15 or 16 years ago when a very prominent
pastor in the United States took his entire church staff into
a triple-X pornographic film experience because he felt that
they needed to understand what people in their church were watching.
This was then advocated in a national way through a Christian publication
that this was the way we ought to conduct familiarity with the
things in the world if we're going to reach the people who
are exposed to these kinds of things. This, you might have
thought, would take a while to get there. That's the first...that's
fifteen years ago and that was the first time I had seen anything
like that and it seemed at that point to be very extreme. but
it has become a kind of a...for me at least, a kind of a symbol
of where the church growth movement was going to go in embracing
culture and believing that the only way you're going to get
people into the Kingdom is to queue them up, tee them up culturally. Somebody handed me yesterday
a downloaded printed piece from a church in Fresno in which the
pastor said, using the Bible to evangelize people is useless.
We're going to be leading our church, senior pastor, we're
going to be leading our church in how to do effective evangelism
without the Bible. And that's kind of where we've
come. That is not an extreme illustration
by any means. What I'm trying to say is what
God uses to save people is the Bible, is the Word of God, the
truth of God's Word. It doesn't matter where you are
in time. It doesn't matter where you are
in geography. It is still the Word of God. And the way to have
an impact in ministry is not to come up with really great
stories. The way to have an impact in ministry is to effectively
help people to understand the Bible. Okay? That's all I'm talking
about. If an illustration assists in
their understanding, fine. But the point that you're dealing
with is get them into the Scripture. You are not the authority. The
authority can't reside with you. The impact can't reside with
your cleverness, with your ability to access their thinking pattern
through some cultural means. They must understand that you
are giving them a message that transcends you. That is not your
message. You are not the authority. The
authority is the Word of God. They have to be brought under
the authority of the Word of God. They have to be brought
under the authority of the Word of God, which means they have
to see that God is, as we heard this morning, holy. And not only
is God holy, He is angry with the wicked every day and He has
a right to be angry with the wicked every day. God has a holy
aversion to sin. And it is a severe aversion to
sin. I'm going to preach on that on
Sunday morning, talking about Christ's agony in the Garden
because that's where it plays out in the life of Christ which
puts God's holy aversion to sin on display. To give you a simple
hint, the reason Jesus Christ is sweating great drops of blood
is is because the agony is so severe that He is literally wracked
in His humanity and in His deity to think of having to abandon
perfect righteousness to be made sin. His temptation, therefore,
is the opposite of ours. Our struggle is to abandon sin
and embrace righteousness. His struggle is to abandon righteousness
and embrace sin. This is an agony beyond comprehension. People say, why did Jesus go
to the cross and then in the garden if He was willing and
no man takes His life from Me, why does He agonize in the garden?
Because this is the most normal thing for holy God to do, agonize
over being made sin. Those are comprehensible thoughts
that can be conveyed to any person with half a brain. And you don't
have to wear certain clothes, and you don't have to act a certain
way, and you don't have to be a certain level of cool in the
culture to communicate that. All ministry is mind to mind. Do we understand that? And the
sooner you can learn to leapfrog the culture, the better. It's
mind to mind. We're after how people think. and how they think about truth
and God and sin and salvation is what we're after. And so in
any context, all you're endeavoring to do is to help them to understand
the authoritative Word of God. Sometimes you have to back up
and demonstrate to them that this, in fact, is the Word of
God. You start from wherever they
are. If, for example, in the book of Acts you're evangelizing
Jews, you will find that whenever the Apostles evangelize Jews
in the book of Acts, they start with the Old Testament because
that's a given. When they evangelize Gentiles,
such as in Acts 14 and Acts 17, they start with creation because
that's a given. Pre-Darwin, everybody understood
there had to be a cause for this effect. And so, you start at some point
where they are, but eventually what you're going to tell them
is the God whom you identify as the unknown God is the God
who made the heaven and the earth. He is the God who determines
the boundaries of all nations and He is also the God who commands
all men everywhere to repent because He's appointed a day
in which you will judge the world and you'll judge the world by
that man whom He has ordained. who is that man, the Lord Jesus
Christ, and you're into the gospel. You want to get to the gospel
in the Word of God as rapidly as you can. You want to bind
people's fear, bind people's conscience to Scripture. And as I said the other day,
you have an ally in the heart. You have an ally in the heart
because the law of God is written on the heart. God has accommodated
that. and the conscience accuses or
excuses. I don't care who you're talking
to where, you have an ally in the human heart because there
is moral law written in the heart. And so all we're endeavoring
to do is bring to bear on people the truth of Scripture about
man, about sin, about judgment, about forgiveness, about heaven,
about hell And the explanation of the Scripture in the end is
the issue. They should be trembling not
under the cleverness of your arguments, but they should be
trembling under the weightiness of divine authority. I don't
care what kind of clothes they wear, what kind of music they
listen to, that is irrelevant to me. And I say this, please,
for you to understand. We keep having people roll into
this church month after month after month and join this church,
and 80, 85 percent of these people, or maybe 90 percent are in their
30s and under. And they are the very generation
that this church growth movement says we can't reach. Not only
that, they come from every race and tongue and tribe and nation.
This church looks like Los Angeles. And there are all kinds of cultures
here. And all we struggle to do is
to help people understand what the Bible says and its implications
in their life. You say, well, why do you wear
a tie? I wear a tie because I have respect for this responsibility. If a banker wears a tie? He has
respect for his job. There's a certain expectation.
I wear a suit because I think this is a more elevated experience
for people. I'm not trying to identify with
bankers and stockbrokers only. I'm trying to convey what I think
people try to convey at a wedding, that this is more serious than
just any normal activity. and so they clean up a little. This is actually, gentlemen,
the most serious occasion any person will ever attend in their
life, the preaching of the Word of God. I don't want to make
this the norm. I just think we live in a culture
that is sinking so fast into the casual. We have a whole generation
of people who have never been to anything formal. anything
serious. And as the culture sinks, I just
feel like we need to hold some kind of standard. And I know
it kind of works like this. You know, if my dress goes down,
the people at the bottom go down, and then we've got gym shorts. All I'm saying is it doesn't
matter. It's the ability to convey effectively
the meaning of Scripture, and the Scripture does its own powerful
work, its own powerful work. Superficial things aren't the
issue. I never use an illustration from a movie. I never use an
illustration from a song. I never use an illustration from
a television program. Because to be honest with you,
I really don't want to affirm anything in that culture. I am largely clueless about that. People ask me a lot, they say,
do you...what do you read to get in touch with a culture?
Are you kidding? Like I could avoid it? Like it's not thrown
in my face all the time? But I know one who understands
the human heart and the culture changes, the human heart never
changes, never, never. And the law written in the heart
never changes. And the Holy Spirit does His
work. And I was kind of hinting at this a little bit, but there's
this new trend now to get away from the law. because it's not...it
doesn't recognize the need for contextualization. And the latest
palaver is about we've got to stop talking about Law because
we have a whole generation of people who don't believe in absolutes
and they don't believe, therefore, in absolute Law. And we have
to shift gears and start talking about idols of the heart. This
is a new trend. They do worship certain things.
They worship sex, or they worship money, or they worship their
career, or they worship their body, or they worship their girlfriend,
or they worship whatever it is they worship. And they will understand
that. And there's certainly truth in
that, right? My little children, save yourself from idols, 1 John
ends that way. So I understand that. I understand
that kind of have no other gods before me. I understand the significance
of idolatry. But clearly the themes of New
Testament evangelism are all based upon bringing the law of
God to bear on the heart of the sinner so that the sinner is
literally driven into the ground under the full weight of his
own guilt. And I don't think you can scrap that paradigm because,
again, you have the ally in the heart, you have the Holy Spirit
convicting the world of sin, righteous in judgment, and so forth. So
I think what I'm trying to say in this contextualization thing
is, look, I've been doing this a long time now, a long time. This is 40 years here at Grace
Church. I've been preaching on the radio
for a long, long time. And Grace to You goes out every
day and there's a sermon on Grace to You radio. that may be six
months old and it may be 32 years old. And the people listening to it
wouldn't know the difference because all I'm trying to do
is explain the meaning of the Word of God. And you want to
use every avenue you can do to use that short of any kind of
affirmation of the corruption in the culture. I don't need
to borrow from that. I certainly don't need to accredit
it by overly...by being overly familiar with it. So that's what I mean. People
say, well Paul became a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the
Gentiles. Of course, because to the Jews you could start with
the Old Testament. To the Gentiles you had to go back to creation.
You had to start at some starting point where you have common ground. That's all that means. Becoming
all things to all men simply means looking into the situation,
understanding where they are in their religious thinking and
finding a starting point to move them to Scripture. There are
a couple of other questions that came. What verses advocates of
the church growth movement use to defend their position? I don't
know of any. I don't...have you ever heard
any church growth advocate use verses? I haven't. I think the only illustration
I know of that is Rick Warren uses 1 Corinthians 14 about worshiping,
speaking in tongues, and if an unbeliever comes in, he's going
to think you're crazy. And so he says that verse instructs
us that if there are unbelievers there, we've got to change what
we do. Really? That's certainly not what that
means. That means don't ever do that
because people will think you're crazy. But again, if you're talking
about serious exegesis, serious exposition of a defense And of whatever aspect of the
church growth movement, I haven't seen anything like that. You'll
hear from Phil Johnson tomorrow afternoon, I think, a very important
message on Acts 17 which is another one that gets used for tweaking,
contextualizing your strategy. That's a very popular message,
by the way, from Mark Driscoll lately, using Acts 17 as the
sort of biblical formula for that, and Phil will deal with
that tomorrow. A couple of more questions, as
this election approaches, how should we shepherd our people
when it appears that there is no clearly pro-life candidate?
Well, look, guys, I mean, let's just go back to the beginning.
Whoever becomes President of the United States has absolutely
nothing to do with the Kingdom of God, okay? It doesn't have
anything to do with the Kingdom of God. I know that the cable
television channels would want you to think that this is the
most important issue on the planet. Talk about overkill. It's absolutely
absurd. Actually, what it's going to
result in is somebody becoming president and actually taking
the job seriously. That's frightening. Jimmy Carter
did that and almost destroyed the nation. He actually thought it was a
real job. He actually thought you were
supposed to do something. He actually thought you were
supposed to change the world. He didn't get it. So, look, you do what your conscience
tells you to do. when you vote. But if I can help
you a little bit, if you're going to have your
brain operated on, you might say, well, I would like to have
a Christian, but I'd rather have a guy who had been in there before
in somebody else's brain and knew what was where. You understand what I'm saying? I would tell you, this appears
nowhere on my priority list. But I understand that the Kingdom
of God and the Kingdom of this world are two completely separate
entities. And I have enough to do in the
church and I do think that...and I've given this message, some
of you may have heard it on Focus on the Family, when God abandons
a nation. And I think we're experiencing
Romans 1 wrath right now in America. That message is also available
because I think when Romans 1 goes into action, God gave them over
to sexual immorality. We had that in the sexual revolution.
God gave them over secondly to homosexuality. So, women with
women, men with men, and the consequence of AIDS which is
even described there in Romans 1, and then thirdly gave them
over to a reprobate mind. That's what happens when God
turns a nation over. First there's a sexual revolution,
then there's a homosexual revolution, and then the mind is gone and
you can't find your way back. And then you vote all those immoralities
into law. That's where we are. So I'm not
surprised that this nation has the kind of interest it has in
the kind of leadership it has. Kind of goes with the picture.
On the other hand, just to clarify so I don't get accused of being
indifferent, wherever and whenever I can actively affirm or vote
for something that is righteous, I do that. home churches. There have been a large movement
recently toward home churches. Is this coming out of the Barna
book on...I think it is. Barna has an aversion to preaching
and it shows up in a lot of the things that he produces. And
that's the book in...was it called Revolution or something? Anyway,
and he said the church was going to be out of existence in 50
years if we didn't shut down the pulpits, get the pontificating
monologues out, and we needed to have home churches. I don't
think the church and the home are the same thing. I think a
church can meet anywhere, including in a home. But I don't know that
you could ever find in the Bible a defense of the church and the
home being the same thing. This is emerging church stuff. for sure. It is the idea that
if we're going to rescue the church, it's going to die if
we don't rescue it. And if we're going to rescue
it, we've got to shut down traditional Christianity and we've got to
get into the homes and have dialogue and personal touch and listen
to everybody and hear from everybody. And, of course, that's exactly
what the emerging church is saying. My assessment would be this,
that movement, first of all, is insignificant in the big picture
of the true church, and secondly, it'll die. It'll die. Because the more you fragment
Christianity down into tiny little pieces, even if it's not the
real thing, the more it tends to disappear. So I don't have
any concern about that. There are always going to be
a zillion forms of the church of the tares. But I think if you want to see
Christ build His church, you're going to see Christ build His
church around the proclamation of and the application of the
Bible...the Bible. So I don't get too exercised
about where these sort of anti-church groups meet. It's their theology
that's bad. It's aberrant. Their understanding
of the church is bad. It's aberrant. And I think it
has within it the seeds of its own destruction. All these kinds
of movements have their little moment in the sun. They're hot
for a little while and then they disappear. That's why I was saying
the other day, if you don't have a transcendent message and a
transcendent ecclesiology, you'll do the same thing. If you want
to guarantee the coming obsolescence of your own ministry, then over-define
yourself by the culture. Just over-define yourself by
the culture and you'll be obsolete. What did it take Willow Creek
15 years to say we've been doing it all wrong? They're done. And now they invite Brian McLaren
to come in to try to leapfrog into the emerging church to capture
the next wave. If you want a ministry that is
never obsolete, that is always relevant, you just stay on track
doing what the Word of God says to do. We talked about it the
other day. So these things just come and go and come and go and
we warn people about them because it can be very seductive. But
we understand that you stay on track if you stay in a ministry
that is biblically defined, okay? Maybe we'll take a couple of
questions now from the aisles. We have just maybe 20 minutes
or so. There are a lot more questions
that I didn't get to, but yes, sir, now we'll...give me your
name first. Kyle. Hi, Kyle. I was wondering if
you could give us some advice. What advice would you give to
a young pastor or young elder on balancing the work of the
ministry with being a godly husband and a godly father in his home?
JOHN, Right. Good, Kyle. This question is
asked all the time, and I'm not sure that I'm an expert. You
probably would want to ask my wife how she felt I did on this
through all these years. I think, first of all, And this
is the critical thing, guys, and it's so obvious. You need
to love your wife. You need to cultivate that, cultivate
that, feed that in your own heart, in your own mind, and never let
anything intrude on that. Don't let any other woman draw
your affections in any direction for ten minutes. Don't get sucked
up. into prolonged counseling sessions or counseling sessions
with women who will always come to you because their husband
isn't what he should be, and they look at you as the pastor,
as the model of Christian virtue, and there's just some things
in there that can not be healthy. So you just do everything you
can to cultivate your love to your wife in your heart of hearts. I think the simple thing to me,
I don't see marriage as complicated. It's a very simple thing. If
I know that something will bring my wife joy and be for her spiritual
benefit, I do it. It's not brain surgery. It's that simple. I do it. You
say, is that a sacrifice? Sure, from time to time. But
the dividends are tremendous. So it's that simple. If I know
something would bring her joy and would be on the positive
side of spiritual benefit, I do it. It's not a question of time
and hours. It's a question of attention.
It can be as simple as saying, would it bring her joy if I gave
her a phone call? today and asked her how she's doing. Would that
be a spiritual encouragement? It's simple things. And then
when there are things you don't want to do and she tells you
she would like you to do them, you, you know, grit your teeth
and break through and do it. So I think... I just think that's where it
starts. It starts when you really work
hard at cultivating that kind of love commitment to your wife.
And I think the same thing with your kids. I love my children. The truth of the matter is I'd
rather be with my children than anybody else's children. I love
to be with my children, and so growing up through the years,
they have always been the object of my love, the object of my
affection. I think cultivating that, investing in their lives
so that they know You love them, You will sacrifice for them,
and then you just...then it's just a...it's an adventure in
process as you try to work it out. But I think the key thing
is to cultivate that affection in your own heart with your wife. And I'll tell you something else
that I think is really, really important. You need to convey
to your wife continually your profound love and affection for
the church and the ministry and the people you work with because
if you don't and she turns on the church, your conflict will
never end. You don't want to cultivate in
your wife or your children anything but the most positive, thankful,
grateful, fulfilled, satisfying attitudes toward your church. Even with issues and problems,
you want to take the positive side of that in front of your
family so that they are always loving what you do. When they
don't love what you do, they have a hard time letting you
do it. So you cultivate, I think, those
kinds of things. And then I think you take the
first responsibility, of course, which is you've been given the
mission field of your own children to lead them to Christ. And when
they come to know Christ, I think this is for me the greatest joy
of life, four children, they all love Christ. You know, they
married four that love Christ and they're raising the next
generation. I'm baptizing my way through the ranks of my grandchildren,
14 of them. Now I think I baptized down about
four deep into the group. They're being raised in the things
of Christ in here, and so there's just a commonality in our family.
There's just...and it isn't a question of, you know, why hasn't Dad
come home and why doesn't he spend this time with us and where
is he and why is he doing this? It transcends all that, I think,
in the affection that is there. So I just think you cultivate
all those love relationships. You know, and there are some
practical things. I've said this many times, but I used to say
to my boys, I'll come to your games if you come to my sermons.
So, that sounds fair to me. The things in their lives are
important things, and that's one of the neat things about
being in the ministry. You know, you've got some latitude with
your time. Take advantage of that. I used to drag some of
my kids, even when they were little, maybe one at a time off
when I would go preach in an evening and, you know, watch
them fall asleep at the age of seven on the front row. But they were
with Dad for the day. And those are very, very important
things to do. They need to love what you do.
They also need to know how much people love what you do. You
don't want to isolate them from that. If you're loved and appreciated
by your people, exposing them to that is really good because
they love you and they want to know that you're loved. And if
they know your people love you, they'll love the people that
love you. So, I think it's more the cultivation of those relationships
than any kind of, you know, I take half of Monday, that's, you know,
whatever. I just think it's the cultivation
of the big picture. And have fun with your family.
Do all the things that every other family gets to do, that
kids love to do. Make it fun. Don't become so
somber that life loses its joys. Kids need to be kids. They need
to have fun as kids. But the key cultivation is that
cultivation with your own wife. That leads to another question
along that line, too. Somebody asked, how important
is it for a husband and wife to be on the same page as far
as ministry and worship is concerned? Can a man be an elder if his
wife doesn't even attend the same church? No. Next question. Are you kidding me? That's a dead giveaway that you
can't manage your own household. Okay, next question. Robert. Hi, John. My name is
Robert. I want to thank you in advance for signing my four Bibles
I want to bring to you later on. You guys are too smart for the
ministry. a writing pen collection I've
heard about from Dick Mayhew a few years ago. Could you talk
to us about that? JOHN PODESTA Oh, well, you know,
I write everything with a pen. I don't use a computer, never
have. They tried to get me under a computer and it was just ridiculous.
And that was because that was in the day when they brought
this monster into my study and dumped it on my desk and a manual
like this, you know, there was no such thing as a mouse. So
I said, forget it, you know, if it's not broken, don't fix
it. So I write everything, everything
with a pen, every outline, everything, my rough drafts. In fact, one
of the funniest articles in the L.A. Times was a number of years
ago when the MacArthur Study Bible came out, this was the
banner on the article in the L.A. Times, Man Writes Study
Bible By Hand. What kind of a dinosaur is this
guy? So I don't own a computer. I
don't buy a computer, and consequently, I don't spend money on a computer,
but people give me pens. I guess it started, and I think
I counted the other day, I think I have 20 pens. Twenty or twenty-two
pens. I preached for Steve Lawson,
and he gave me a pen. I did a study Bible in Italy last year, and
they gave me a pen because everybody knows that everything I write,
I write with a pen. So they all have some...how can
I say this? I've never bought one. But they all have some relationship
connected to them. So it's like a little bit of
a history. It's just a little bit of a history
of my life and relationships. And when, you know, when you
take out a pen that was presented to you in Italy at the reception
of the MacArthur Study Bible, like this one, and write with
it, all that is there, all that reality, all that memory is there.
And so they're like little...I guess you could sort of tell
my history. Probably, Steve, you could go
through my history by just looking at the pens. Patricia gave me
the first significant one when I wrote the Study Bible in English.
A little pen that has the date of that on it, and that was sort
of the start of this little progression. But I want you to know, I do
not need more pens. No more pens. See, my sons are
always hanging over this little box of pens and wondering when
I die who gets what, I think. Anyway, all right, next question.
My name is Wayne Cantwell. I'm from Omaha, Nebraska. I had
a question relating to the doctrine of justification, in particular
the idea of the righteousness of Christ. When that is imputed
to the believers in account, does that include the act of
obedience of Christ in His life or is it only His obedience in
death? It includes the righteousness of Christ which was one righteousness
manifested both actively and passively. That is an artificial
split, that's an artificial bifurcation, how can you say that Christ granted
to us His active righteousness and not His passive righteousness,
or His passive righteousness and not His active righteousness.
There's only one righteousness in Christ. Okay? One righteousness
in Christ, and it is that righteousness which is granted to us. When He said to John the Baptist
that I must fulfill all righteousness, He therefore said, there is no
category of righteousness which I do not fulfill. And therefore
when the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, it is imputed
to us intact as the righteousness of Christ. Did I get it right? I think that was a nod. Was that
a nod? Thank you, John. My sister asked
me via email last night how I would describe the conference so far.
I could only think of one word, electrifying. Thank you so much. My question, I heard you teach
on this a few years ago, and I still am experiencing this
question among a lot of the Christian leaders I work with, and that
is if you could just give us a clear difference or definition
of the difference between inerrancy and infallibility. Well, inerrancy
takes it down to the words. Infallibility goes up from there
to the totality. When we talk about an inerrant
original text, We're saying that there is no error in any part
of the original autographs of Scripture. Therefore, all that
it says is infallible. That's the typical distinction,
although the words may be closer together than that, that's the
way theologians refer to it. Infallible seems to be the broader
term. Inerrant seems to be the narrower
term. I ask because I see some of these
guys using the term infallibility as an excuse for not being inerrant. JOHN, Right. The problem is you
can't say that the Scripture is infallible if it's not inerrant. You can't say that. They want
to say that. They just don't want to deal
with the words. They don't want to...they don't want to deal with that
every word of God is pure like silver refined in a furnace seven
times. They don't want to deal with the purity of the...but
they want to maintain the totality. They want to say, well, yes,
it's the infallible Word of God, even though every word is not
accurate. Well, that's a serious...that's
a serious defect in infallibility because the only way to come
to infallibility is through inerrancy. Okay? Good question. ROB CARROLL, JR.: : Dr. MacArthur,
my name is Rob Carroll. I'm from Jacksonville, Florida.
And I was saved in a Southern Baptist church. I was raised
Catholic. JOHN MACARTHUR, JR.: : It can happen. ROB CARROLL,
JR.: : Yes. It was... JOHN MACARTHUR, JR.: : I've heard of it before.
And I was a Catholic and learned through this church about salvation
by grace and faith instead of works. And I didn't realize at
that time it was an Arminian church and I've realized since
then that every Calvinist knows he's a Calvinist, but most Arminians
don't know they're an Arminian. And in the first twenty-three
years, twenty-four years of listening to you on the radio, I You always
affirm the doctrines of grace and sovereignty of God and predestination
and election, but I rarely heard you use the term or define yourself
as a Calvinist where in the last couple of years it seems like
I've heard that more and more. So one question was, is there
a reason that you've seen the need to define yourself that way?
Because sometimes that term means different things to different
people. And you know, I almost...I've had some friends that kind of
went along this journey with me through the same Southern
Baptist church. And I've seen some become even critical of
Arminians to the point of almost believing they're not saved in
some cases. And I know that you've had a relationship with Jerry
Vine, so I know you must believe he's saved. And I just kind of wanted
to ask you about the use of that, defining ourselves as a Calvinist
as opposed to...in the Scripture I want to just quote was 1 Corinthians
1.12, obviously about where people in Christendom define themselves
under Paul or Apollos or someone else. I don't define myself as
a Calvinist openly, typically, on the radio or television or
wherever. Here with you in this setting,
I would do that. At a Ligonier conference, I would
do that. There's certain areas where I
do that because there is an accurate understanding of what that means.
If you just use that term in sort of the open evangelical
air. You're going to have to deal
with all kinds of misconceptions. And the truth of the matter is,
I'm really not a Calvinist. I'm really not. I'm a Biblicist. I think Calvin would feel sick
if he knew people were identifying themselves as Calvinists. I think
he would not identify himself that way, as if he were...that's
right. Mark it down, John Calvin never
claimed to be a Calvinist. I mean, that would be the last
thing he would do, would offer himself as the definer of all
theology. But there are environments where
that's a given, and so you can deal with that. The reason that
I haven't done that was for the very reason that you identified.
I spoke for Adrian Rogers in his church. I spoke for Jerry
Vines in his church. I've spoken in many, many, many
churches, many places in the world. I've spoken for years
and years through Russia where those things are a problem, in
Italy where those things are a really big problem. And I never
label myself that way. I go in and I teach the Word
of God and let the Word of God do its work. And when the light
dawns on people and they see, for example, the sovereignty
of God in salvation, all of a sudden they see it everywhere. They
see it on every page and it becomes a component of every doctrinal
category. But I think it's a lot better
to sneak up on them. I really don't use labels as
such because I think labels tend to play to misconceptions. People want to over-identify
people. You know, people used to ask
me, are you a dispensationalist, are you not, and this and that.
And I've never really labeled myself. In any category, if I
can avoid it because I just want to take the Word of God and explain
it and see what comes out of it, and eventually if you study
the Word of God, you end up with the things that we all affirm
as the true biblical pattern of the doctrine and the doctrines
of salvation. You get there from Scripture.
I'd rather get there from Scripture than sort of throw up a big wall,
and so I don't wear the badge, okay? Hi, John, my name is Jerry
Garwood from...I work at Raytheon, I'm a rocket scientist but I
also love Jesus and I'm here to learn more about how to serve
Him as an elder. My son Tom helps run your bookstore,
Tom Garwood. Anyway, he went to seminary here
and God bless you, it's an awesome place. Given that God saves only
the elect and that He desires all men to be saved, according
to 1 Timothy 2, 4a, does He desire? that the non-elect would be saved?
And if so, what prevents His desire for the non-elect's salvation
to go unmet?" JOHN, Yeah, and that's, of course, the basic
question. What does it mean that He is
not willing that any should perish? The question is who are the any?
Clearly in 2 Peter the any are the elect and you can show that
in the book. Who are the all men? In Timothy,
again, that's not a universal all, it has to be defined by
the context. In, for example, the gospels it said, all men
perceived that John the Baptist was a prophet. What do you mean
all men? Everybody on the planet? Who do you mean? All has to be
defined by the context. And I think in both Timothy and
in Peter, you can define those clearly in a context that indicates
that our Lord has a desire for the salvation of all who have
been chosen and all who have been chosen will be saved. You
also have to define those verses in the larger context of Scripture
and what Scripture teaches in other places. So I would suggest
to you that, first of all, talk to your son. because He knows
the answer. And then I would suggest that
a commentary on 2 Peter that I did really deals with that
specific subject. So do me this favor, go over
by the bookstore and ask for the commentary on 2 Peter and
that's my gift to you, okay, from the bookstore. And tell
your son not to worry, he can put it on my account. There you
go. All right, we've got time for
a quick question, and we're going to have to cut it off quickly
over here. AUDIENCE MEMBER Yeah, my name is Dan. If we came on
board a church and have recently discovered that subtly they are
an emerging church, should we continue to stay? Should we just
leave? What should we do in that case?
You want to find out what their view of Scripture is, and if
they do not believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, the clarity of
Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, the infallibility of Scripture,
you need to go. When you say emerging church,
does this mean they're turning down the lights and lighting
candles and incense in the corners? There's so many different forms
of it. So you want to know what's their view of biblical authority.
Secondly, what is their view of the person of Jesus Christ
and the gospel? If there's any deviation on those
issues, find a place where they're faithful to the Word and faithful
to the Lord.