The Benefits of Suffering for Christ

Hi friend, this is Phil Johnson.

Welcome to a special edition of grace to you.

I am here in the studio with John MacArthur and were taking a break from our brand-new series called the world versus the kingdom of God, to talk about something that well is related to that theme.

In fact, it concerns something that you may have heard about in various news outlets in just the past few days so John, thank you for taking the time to be here today. I'll just start by saying that you have stirred a lot of discussion, both online and around a lot of water coolers, discussion, and a little bit of debate with an open letter that you sent to the governor of California and then you followed up that with a sermon to your flock at Grace Community Church. Later that same week and that message is so important that were going to preempt our normal grace to you broadcasts tomorrow and the next day, but I wanted to spend today talking with you about this Y you wrote it and what happened you made some comments at Grace Church a week before the letter went out.

That sort of let people know it was coming to play those and let our listeners hear that now before you go have something I want to talk to you about change the subject for a moment that is on my heart and it's very very important to me and I need your help with this. So we were watching a culture that is under divine judgment and you can think about that in terms of a culture or you can realize that the people who defy God in the culture are under divine judgment. It's very personal and struck me this week. In a way that it had in the past. Governor Gavin Newsom who is decided that he is going to lead the nation in providing the slaughter of the children that God creates in the womb has fostered himself as if he were Haran and I am deeply concerned for the jeopardy of his eternal soul. I have talked to him in the past and I know he was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, but a line was crossed this week that really really gripped my heart.

He began putting up billboards all across America advertising. The website in California that you can connect to. If you want to have an abortion and on all those billboards he included the words of Jesus. This is what he put on those billboards. Jesus said in Mark 1231 you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. He had the terrifying audacity to use the words of Jesus to support the slaughter of the ones that he creates in the womb. The jeopardy of his soul is evident. I say this because my heart is grieved that Christ should be so dishonored billboards across the country with the words of Jesus trying to support abortion terrifying. My concerns about his eternal soul because he will meet his maker and there's a passage in Psalm 50 listen to verse 16, but to the wicked.

God says what right have you to tell of my statutes and take my covenant in your mouth.

The statement read it again, but to the wicked. God says what right have you to tell of my statutes and take my covenant in your mouth you passed my words behind you, and God says in Psalm 50.

I consider this I will tear you in pieces.

There will be none to deliver you the jeopardy is clear, but there is a closing verse, and that some Q offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me and to him who orders his way aright, I shall show the salvation of God that Psalm ends with mercy and the offer of salvation and is the church of Jesus Christ with compassion. We want on the governor and all who follow him and all who reject the Lord to know that no matter what they have done the offer salvation.

The offer salvation. I think with a new kind of resolve. I want to ask you to begin to pray for the salvation of the governor and the people around him. We can't do anything else with no political solutions do anything we can cry out to the Lord to be merciful because we care. This is why the church is in the world and that he would understand what he has done that he returned from sin. Repent, along with those who accommodate that. Follow that and cry out for mercy from God, who will granted, through Jesus Christ, amen. Right.

So John talk about what motivated you to write this letter. I think I could tell from your comments there that it's it's a sense of righteous indignation that someone would billboard a misuse of Scripture, such as the governor of California did well. I think I saw it as an assault on the person of Christ and on the word of God. And that's exactly what it was you don't support that kind of blasphemous criminal behavior of killing babies in the womb with quotes from Jesus that is in gross devilish misuse of Scripture, and it is a blasphemy against the Lord Jesus himself who said permit the children to coming to me for of such is the kingdom of heaven so I know I I think I felt somewhat like the psalmist who said zeal for your house has eaten me up and then Jesus quoted that money tore into the crime going on in the temple and said you've turned my father's house, which is to be house of prayer into a den of robbers and I think the that that was stepping across the line to me when you when you tried to get Jesus in support of rampant massive transgression and it sits a Herod like thing to want to massacre babies. That's what Herod did and he did that, hoping to kill the son of God in the process. The same thing with Pharaoh in the Old Testament and Pharaoh did the same thing and Moses was was rescued from that.

So I saw this is another misrepresentation of Christ in another attack on his his creation that needed to be addressed in a how do we address it to me.

We all we all resent abortion. We we hate the idea of it and I suppose there's a frustration among all of us because week.

We can't seem to do anything about it. We can't voted out. We will have enough power. Certainly the city of California we don't.

We can't stop it, even though the Supreme Court remove the Roe Wade case they didn't eliminate abortion. It still Gupta states to decide what they want to do.

We would like to get rid of it. It's mass murder. We can't do that and I thought the frustration of that leads me to one conclusion and that is there's no political solution to this. The only hope for writing this wrong is to go right at the head right at where it originates. And in this case, it originated with the governor of California and in that state is the biblical approach did you go back into the book of Exodus and Moses confronts Pharaoh and indicts Pharaoh and says let my people go, so that the prophet of God confronting authority is something you see throughout the word of God.

I I made a list of my donor 50 different occasions where this happens throughout the Old Testament and and included those in the in the message that I preached and you have the same thing in church history of rulers and kings and authorities being confronted by faithful preachers of the gospel with the church fathers through to the to the to the Puritans and speaking the word of God to the authorities is part and parcel of the church's mission in the world. So we speak to government. We speak to the authorities and what what our messages is you must conform to God's word. You must bow your knee to the revelation of God and the God of that revelation. So how do we do that well it was but it's just the pattern is direct you go to whoever the ruler is a new address that and it's it was interesting to me that is it just became a compulsion for me to do this because this was a line that never should've been breaching that I had not noticed anybody doing it and that's kind of the feedback has been since we put that letter together for the governor of California.

People have been saying why doesn't somebody else is why has this not been done. Why are people in Washington lobbying with politicians to get righteousness into this nation when, in order to even have an audience with them. You got to compromise to start with you. I wanted to follow up on that because you said earlier, there is no political solution to this, and over the history of your ministry. You have stayed mostly out of partisan politics and what you just said is it is stressed by Scripture as well. Pulses righteousness doesn't come from the law. The law defines what righteousness is. But it doesn't produce righteousness.

Also, as if righteousness could come by the law than Christ died in vain. So the gospel is about salvation from sin is not about political strategies and all that and you've made that clear over the years and thus stayed out of the realm of partisan politics. The problem is partisan politicians in America have not stayed out of the realm of morality and government policy is becoming more and more a threat to the church.

This is not a political ploy you not you, not lobbying for any kind of political policy here, or any of that. The. The gist of this letter is to call the governor himself to repentance. Will that is what struck me.

I had had a conversation with him on Larry King some years back in which she claimed to to be a Christian and said I guess I believe the Bible so you know II know I knew him and that was that conversation was at the very time he was basically mandating same-sex marriage in the city of San Francisco writing as a mayor of San Francisco writing that's what the discussion was about, so I knew he was lost at that point and then I when I see him go from that years back to having the brashness and the hubris to promote the slaughter of infants" Jesus the jeopardy that it struck me the jeopardy of his eternal soul was just more than I could. I could handle and II would have under some circumstances just confronted him personally if there was some personal sin to be dealt with and I knew about that and I and I had that access but once he decided to make his transgressions public and blanket the nation with his sin, then after fitting response had to blanket the nation with the call to repentance. But is it does nothing political about it. There's no political answer to this. My concern is that this man is going into a horrendous eternity without God forever unless he repents and trust Christ and the punishment, the severity of that punishment is compounded not only because of his own rebellion, but because he's just he's just reaching out to garner as many other rebels as he possibly can to dishonor the name of God and denigrate the person of Jesus Christ. The culpability is massive and it struck me that it's his eternal soul that concerns me, and all those who follow him. He's got lots of people around him who were buying into this, I don't. I doubt that he came up with adverse right yeah you know and just from your tone and see it's evident to me that your indignation is balanced by a genuine concern for his soul that also came across in those comments you made to your church a couple of weeks ago. As I listened to that I found it sobering and and moving in away and convicting that we need to pray for our leaders were commanded to do that in Scripture do hold out any hope that he might hear that and repent. Is there any precedent for that, but it's rare. Honestly it's it's very rare when you get to that level of boldness and the pattern of looking back in redemptive history is that if you just take a general category of the prophets who confronted rulers. It didn't turn out well.

There are some blessed exception.

Well I just going to say that the exceptions are rare that the king of Nineveh, Nineveh and Jonas time in Jonah's time repented as an amazing scenario in Scripture doesn't give us all the details we'd like to have about it and then in Daniel for Nebuchadnezzar the king of the world means that the known world in the Mediterranean. He was the ruler of the world and one of the one of the worst bad guys and all the Old Testament last guy you'd expect to repent right that he was. He was as bad as a pagan king could possibly get. And he was so so severely evil that the Lord literally turned him into an animal, wandering out in the wilderness for seven years of his life but at the end of that. His senses came to him and he bowed his knee to the true and living God and I believe I believe you will be in heaven. I believe he's there now but even more dramatic story is the story of Manasseh. Manasseh was the most evil king in the history of the people of Israel.

He was wretched he was as wretched as you could possibly be, and he was confronted and rejected that confrontation, but eventually he was literally hauled off by ropes hooks were put into his body and he was marched off to Babylon and that would be about a four month walk while and and if this is in humiliation from this wretched sin that he had perpetrated on the nation and his sin was so bad it was so bad that God even said that if Samuel and Moses had interceded for him. God still couldn't stop the judgment so he created such evil everywhere that there there was no way to stop the captivity in the Babylonian captivity was result of it. In fact, the Bible says that Israel was Judah, the southern kingdom was taken into captivity because of the sins of Manasseh, the worst, but the amazing story of Manasseh is he came to repentance. Second Chronicles 33 this incredible repentance and the Lord restored him back. So here is this King who was the worst of all kings ever in the details are almost unspeakable, but he repented and the Lord showed him mercy and so much mercy and this is kind of interesting footnote to it that he actually appears in Matthew chapter 1 because he's in the line of the Messiah it goes from Hezekiah to Manasseh to Ammon. His wicked son and then to Josiah, and the proceeds to cry so evil.

Manasseh was in the messianic line that that's a rare thing you do have in the New Testament, Sergius Paulus, who was a Roman official who believe the gospel, but dumb, very rare pilot know Jared no Agrippa almost but no but doesn't mean you give up and with that in mind that we don't know the purposes and the will of God, and we do know that sinners are responsible for their rejection.

If they reject you present the gospel to the sinner boldly and in pray for his salvation. That's what Paul said in first Timothy to pray for kings in those in authority over you and get talking about that that that's an interesting verse given everything you're saying about the likeliness that an important ruler of a powerful ruler who is wicked in his heart would ever respond to a call to repentance. And when Paul wrote first Timothy to Nero was on the throne. Probably the most notorious notoriously evil. Caesar whoever sat on the throne. And yet Paul says pray for him. He sank.

Pray for salvation right yes because the whole passage in first Timothy two is God our Savior, who will have all men to two come to believe in Christ as a mediator for always talk about salvation. Pray for the salvation of rulers.

Yes, that it is amazing to think about.

Pray for the salvation of Nero who launched persecution. Nero was so corrupt in his own life incest at me. He was the murdered family members.

He was the worst of the worst and so here. These people are these believers are praying for the most wretched figure in their world and praying for his salvation and he is coming after them to kill them and that reminds me of what our Lord said in Matthew when he says you're never more like God than when you pray for your enemies so I'm sincere in saying I am praying for the salvation of the governor of California. The present United States and every other leader for the sake of their eternal soul look up. I don't have to pray for Christ to triumph in the end that's prewritten. I don't have to pray for the return of Christ. I can long for that he will come and establish his kingdom. But I am told to pray for those in authority and the, the, the result of that is that we can live a quiet and peaceable life in with a measure of godliness so that the only way you can fix the culture is the salvation of the ruler.

That's what that saying we live in California so this affects us personally, but the truth is, the problems in California are just a microcosm of political issues that exist across the nation and literally around the world that the world seems to be barreling further and further into darkness. As time goes by. As you look at that. Are you hopeful are you discouraged you think it's possible that there would ever be another reformation or revival that the Lord would delay his coming or do you think were were looking at the last days and is there any way to know well yeah I think Kim I think were looking at the last days and there are a lot of reasons for that, but I don't get discouraged because we always triumph in Christ, but my concern is for the salvation of these people and the realization that there are degrees of punishment in hell. And when you trample underfoot the blood of the covenant counted an unholy thing is the book of Hebrews is when you know Christ's name. And you know the gospel, and you use and abuse that name for evil purposes that that is a horrific thing to face God with that kind of record because that's the severest punishment so my concern is not to help Christ win the battle, the calling of the church in the world is to cry out for nonbelievers to repent.

Starting with the people at the very very top and I'll see the church doing I see the church hiring people to go to Washington in lobby with politicians to get what they want or suing or compromising, and I think people were irritated me writing that letter because they've been trying to convince the leaders of this country that we are harmlessly good guys and you know we we want we want you to like us so we can keep building our church and keep drawing big crowds and they don't want to make their powers angry daily wannabes them. They want to appease them, which is a terrible compromise because if there's going to be a quiet life. If there's going to be any measure of godliness in a society. It's going to happen when the people in charge have been converted to Christ and I and I pray for that it can happen historically if there have been times like that.

There have been kings that were genuine believers in Christ and made a difference in their society.

Again, sobering thoughts, and John as we wrap up this broadcast would you lead us in a prayer for kings and all who are in authority so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

Lord, we do come to you and ask that you would by your grace and for your glory bring salvation to the rulers of this country we think of the governor of the state of California Gov. Newsom we think of the president Joe Biden with think of senators, congressmen, judges, magistrates, governors, whoever they are. People in authority. Even people in authority over the military and over the policeman people in authority over education and people in authority over civil issues as well as criminality. Meet me there be conversion of these people may they come to faith in Christ so that we not ruled in such a dominating way by the devil's henchmen and we ask this for your glory that your grace could be put on display. It would be such an amazing amazing, almost breathtaking reality to see well-known leaders who have shaken their fist in your face and worked against you, even in blasphemous ways to bow the knee is Nebuchadnezzar did her bow the knee as Manasseh did and recognize you are the true and living God, and you rule in the world for their own sole sake. In this the souls of those around them. We pray that you would put your salvation on display for your glory. Thanks for being here for grace to you with John MacArthur. I'm Phil Johnson. We preempted our regular schedule today to bring you a timely discussion about the open letter that John recently wrote to the governor of California.

I hope you empathize with the righteous indignation that prompted John to address Gov. Newsom and I also hope you share John's concern for the spiritual condition of the governor and for the spiritual condition of all rulers at all levels of government everywhere now to help answer questions that you may have about the issues John considered. Today we want to give you a free copy of a booklet by John called chaos, corruption, and the Christian response.

All you have to do is let us know that you want a copy.

Request your free booklet when you get in touch with us today.

Call us at 855 grace or go to our website TTY.org to request John's booklet called chaos, corruption, and the Christian response. Get in touch today. Again, we want to put a free copy of this booklet in your hands. Ask for it now chaos corruption in the Christian response. You can go to our website TTY.org or speak to our customer service staff during regular business hours. That is 7:30 AM to 4 PM Pacific time Monday through Friday and our phone number again 855 grace and if you'd also like a free copy of today's interview on CD.

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Well tomorrow we again interrupt our regular schedule to bring you a message. John preached just a few days ago titled calling rulers to repentance be here for that and invite someone you know to tune in for 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on racing