John MacArthur – Grace to You – Bible Q & A
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. (1 Corinthians 7:14)
As you know, a couple of weeks ago we completed our study in the wonderful epistle written by Jude which ended with a promise that God is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before His presence with glory. And because that introduced to us the wonderful doctrine of eternal security, or better stated, the perseverance of the saints, or the preservation of the saints, we spent a few weeks talking about that doctrine. And in the discussions that I had with you regarding that, I said that the end is determined by the beginning. Our salvation is secure to the end because our salvation was predestined in the very beginning to be completed. And we remember that Romans 8 makes a monumental and very clear statement to that regard. When in Romans 8 the Apostle Paul writes, “For whom He foreknew, He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.” That is all whom God predestined will become conformed to the image of His Son in eternal glory. And thus whom He predestined He called, and whom He called He justified, and whom He justified these He also glorified.
John MacArthur – Grace to You“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).
The Puritan writer Thomas Watson listed seven ways to determine if you are poor in spirit (The Beatitudes [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1971], pp. 45-48):
The Doctrines of Grace sermon series
At some time in your Christian life, you may have struggled with questions like, When a sinner is saved, who chooses whom—does God choose the sinner, or the sinner choose God? Did Christ die for the sins of everyone, or just the people He saves?
The vast majority of those kinds of thorny, persistent, mind-boggling questions are directly related to the sovereignty of God, election, predestination, perseverance, and the question of “free will.” Those, of course, are doctrines associated with Calvinism. All are vital to a sound, biblical understanding of the gospel, but they are not without difficulty.
In The Doctrines of Grace, John MacArthur takes you to God’s Word and walks you through challenging truth that’s often neglected, maligned, or mischaracterized, but critical for every Christian to understand. This series will help you come to grips with what you believe about God, the gospel, and the nature of man.
John MacArthur – Grace to You
It was Martin Luther who said:
“The world at the present time is sagaciously discussing how to quell the controversy and strife over doctrine and faith, and how to effect a compromise between the Church and the Papacy. Let the learned, the wise, it is said, bishops, emperor and princes, arbitrate. Each side can easily yield something, and it is better to concede some things which can be construed according to individual interpretation, than that so much persecution, bloodshed, war, and terrible, endless dissension and destruction be permitted.
“Here is lack of understanding, for understanding proves by the Word that such patchwork is not according to God’s will, but that doctrine, faith and worship must be preserved pure and unadulterated; there must be no mingling with human nonsense, human opinions or wisdom.
“The Scriptures give us this rule: ‘We must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29).”
by A. W. TozerChapter 6 from Man: The Dwelling Place of God (Camp Hill, Penn: Christian Publications, 1966).
That many persons find the Bible hard to understand will not be denied by those acquainted with the facts. Testimony to the difficulties encountered in Bible reading is too full and too widespread to be dismissed lightly.
In human experience there is usually a complex of causes rather than but one cause for everything, and so it is with the difficulty we run into with the Bible. To the question, Why is the Bible hard to understand? no snap answer can be given; the pert answer is sure to be the wrong one. The problem is multiple instead of singular, and for this reason the effort to find a single solution to it will be disappointing.
John MacArthur – Grace to You5. How did the preacher’s message begin?
The message began as a true word from God and was given as truth because God’s purpose was to transmit truth. It was ordered by God as truth and was delivered by God’s Spirit in cooperation with holy men who received it with exactly the pure quality that God intended (2 Pet. 1:20-21). It was received as Scriptura inerrantis by the prophets and apostles, i.e., without wandering from Scripture’s original formulation in the mind of God.
Inerrancy then expresses the quality with which the writers of our canon received the text we call Scripture.
The World Wide Web had quietly been implemented less than a year after the Soviet Union broke up. Still, by 1993, when the first edition of Ashamed of the Gospel hit the shelves, no one but the earliest Internet insiders had even heard about the Web—much less seen it. Most people had no clue how quickly or how drastically the Web would alter the world as we knew it.
I remember being told at a strategic planning retreat in 1996 that the World Wide Web would eventually become the primary vehicle for the dissemination of our radio broadcast and recorded sermons. (At the time, radio and cassette tapes were still the only media we were using for audio content.) When the men at Grace to You who stay abreast of new technologies predicted that within twenty years or so cassette tapes would be a totally dead technology, I thought they were exaggerating. “You can’t access the Internet in a car,” I pointed out. “Even if you could, who wants to carry a computer on the car seat, when it’s so much more convenient to pop in a cassette tape?”
John MacArthur – Grace to You – Bible Q & A
Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! (2 Corinthians 13:5)
The Corinthians, prompted by the evil insinuations of the false apostles, had demanded proof of Paul’s apostleship. He reluctantly defended himself, not for his own sake, but for the Lord’s, and so the Corinthians would not be cut off from the truth he preached to them. But in this passage, he turned the tables on his accusers and challenged them to test and examine themselves. The Greek text places the pronouns before the verbs for emphasis and literally reads, “Yourselves test to see if you are in the faith; yourselves examine.” Instead of arrogantly and foolishly challenging the genuineness of Paul’s relationship to the Lord, the Corinthians needed to examine the genuineness of their own salvation. The familiar New Testament terms peirazo (test) and dokimazo (examine) are used here as synonyms. They convey the idea of putting something to the test to determine its genuineness. The test was to see if the Corinthians were in the faith. Pistis (faith) refers here not to the subjective element of belief but to the objective body of Christian truth —the Christian faith.
Horatius Bonar (The prince of Scottish hymn writers)
For ease of reading, I have divided this article into 3 parts. Please see further on this blog Parts 1 and 2. – Grant Swart
FAITH AND THE GOSPEL (PART 3)
“Shall we tell men that unless they are holy they must not believe on Jesus Christ; that they must not venture on Christ for salvation until they are qualified and fit to be received and welcomed by Him? This would be a forbearing to preach the gospel at all, or to forbid all men to come to Christ. He is well qualified to come to us, but a sinner out of Christ has no qualifications for Christ but sin and misery…. Shall we tell people that they should not believe on Christ too soon? It is impossible that they should do it too soon. Can a man obey the command of the gospel too soon or do the work of God too soon?… Continue reading
Spelling errors can be changed with an eraser or liquid paper. When you get lost trying to follow a map. you can ask for help. But there is one mistake that doesn’t give a second chance; rejecting salvation through Christ. Once a person comes face-to-face with God. his eternal destiny is established.
What can you say to someone who knows and understands how to become a Christian but doesn’t? And what does God have to say about those who fully know the gospel message but don’t take the final step of receiving Christ as their Lord and Savior?
These messages will spur your heart to have greater concern for unbelievers!
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “Precious Deaths,” delivered February 18, 1872.
Let us be persuaded of this, that no believer dies an untimely death. In every consistent Christian’s case that promise is true, “With long life also will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation;” for long life is not to be reckoned by years as men count them. He lives longest who lives best. Many a man has crowded half a century into a single year. God gives his people life, not as the clock ticks, but as he helps them to serve him; and he can make them to live much in a short space of time. There are no untimely figs gathered into God’s basket; the great Master of the vineyard plucks the grapes when they are ripe and ready to be taken, and not before. Saintly deaths are precious in his sight.
John MacArthur – Grace to You
In today’s spirit of ecumenism, many evangelicals have called for the Protestant Church to lay aside its differences with Rome and pursue unity with the Catholic Church. Is that possible? Is Roman Catholicism simply another facet of the body of Christ that should be brought into union with its Protestant counterpart? Is Roman Catholicism simply another Christian denomination?
Turn to John 18, starting in verse 13. Jesus, speaking to His disciples, says,”‘I speak not of you all, I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, he that eateth bread with Me has lifteth up his heel against Me. Now I tell you before it come, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he who receiveth whomever I send, receiveth Me. And He that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me. When Jesus had thus said, He was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me.’ Then the disciples looked
John MacArthur – Grace to You – Q & A
It isn’t your task as an evangelist to give immediate assurance to people you lead to Christ. The Holy Spirit will do that work: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16).
For the Love of His Truth 